Arianna Huffington on Book TV

Arianna Huffington, Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream

In her latest book, Huffington Post editor-in-chief argues that America is in decline as an economic and political leader and that the country’s middle class is rapidly disappearing. With little optimism, Ms. Huffington lays considerable blame at the feet of corporations and says the country may never recover the status lost over the last decade. She discusses the current state of the country with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo at BookTV.org here.

Bush Returns to Arena, Memoir in Hand (WSJ Video)

After remaining mostly out of view and silent on policy debates since leaving office, George W. Bush is about to promote his memoir, “Decision Points,” to be published a week after the Nov. 2 elections. Peter Wallsten of the Wall Street Journal has all the details.

Just Released: Tony Blair’s ‘Journey’ (Video)

Tony Blair’s autobiography, “The Journey,” goes on sale today amid protests over his participation in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. See a preview of the former Prime Minister’s latest work here. (courtesy webcastr.com)

Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World- Liaquat Ahamed (Penguin)

Very few authors can truly claim to have foreseen a global financial disaster before it happened. Liaquat Ahamed is one of the few who can take credit for such foresight. As a successful hedge fund manager and Brookings Institution trustee, he is more qualified than most to write about sweeping economic issues.

A Timeless Problem

“Lords of Finance” is a journey through time. We find ourselves immersed in the financial crisis of another era, The Great Depression. Quotes from famous economists and Depression-era businessmen and excerpts from their writings serve to highlight eerie similarities between the past crisis and our own.

The Lords of Finance

The ‘Lords of Finance’ referred to by Ahamed are Benjamin Strong (USA), Montagnu Norman (UK), Emile Moreau (France), and Hjamlar Schacht (Germany). These four represented the key central banks of their time. They oversaw the first truly global economic collapse in human history.

Ahamed brings his central characters to life with sophisticated style. Although most of today’s modern readers are likely to be unfamiliar with these former financial giants, Ahamed effortlessly re-creates their individual personalities, allegiances, quirks, and exploits.

The Cause of The Depression

Contrary to the title, Ahamed does not place blame for the Great Depression squarely on the bankers themselves. Instead, he blames the excessive collection of reparations from post World War I Germany. Clearly, the bankers would not have been able to exert any control over the collection or institution of the reparations even if they had been so inclined.

“Lords of Finance” is an invaluable read for a country on the brink. Once before, our nation stared down a global financial disaster. As we hear rumblings of a potential a double-dip recession, we should remember that we’ve been here once before.

Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She spends much of her days blogging about Education and CollegeScholarships. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

The Sugar King of Havana – The Rise And Fall of Julio Lobo (Penguin Press)

“The Sugar King of Havana – The Rise And Fall of Julio Lobo, Cuba’s Last Tycoon” is an atmospheric exploration of Cuban politics and society in the turbulent years from 1898, when the island gained independence from Spain, through the early days of the Castro revolution and on to the current twilight of that fading system. Author John Paul Rathbone, whose mother was a friend of Lobo’s daughters, interweaves family memories of a privileged life in Old Havana with the dramatic biography of his larger-than-life subject to create a story that is both sweeping and intimately personal.

Julio Lobo’s father was a self-made millionaire who re-located his family to Cuba in 1900 after being forced to leave Venezuela by a revolutionary leader named Cipriano Castro (no relation to Fidel). Sugar trading was rapidly becoming the cornerstone of Cuba’s economy. Young Julio determined to master every aspect of it and master it he did. After managing to survive “The Dance of the Millions”, a bubble market that will have the ring of familiarity for many readers, Lobo began building his empire. In 1934, in a masterpiece of market manipulation, he cornered the New York sugar market, a stunning feat that vaulted him into a position of dominance he held until his assets, along with those of his competitors, were nationalized after the revolution.

It’s a credit to Rathbone’s skill that he’s able to recount Lobo’s business dealings in a way that’s not only lucid but exciting. Nevertheless, he also makes clear that Lobo was complex and cultured, with interests ranging far beyond the mere accumulation of wealth. At one point he owned the largest collection of Napoleonica outside France. He also courted numerous women, including Bette Davis and Joan Fontaine. He was said to have filled one of his swimming pools with perfume when Esther Williams came to visit. At one point, sentenced to death by a pre-Castro government, he was pardoned minutes before facing the firing squad. Later, he survived multiple gunshot wounds from a gangland assassination attempt. Colorful as his life was, Lobo is also portrayed as a modest man, a devoted father, and a generous, progressive-thinking employer. In fact, Che Guevara had such respect for Lobo’s methods that he asked him to serve as the Minister of Sugar in the Castro government. Instead Lobo went into exile, first in New York then in Spain, where he died in 1983.

His biographer suggests that Cuba’s ultimate salvation may life in the emergence of new, modern-day Lobos. But readers of this vivid, evocative history may come away convinced that there will never again be a true Sugar King Of Havana. – David Nichols

California Crackup – Mathews and Paul (U of Cal Press)

If, as Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis once said, federalism creates an opportunity for states to function as “laboratories of democracy,” California may be America’s island of Dr. Moreau. Beset by budget gridlock, hamstrung by direct democracy that renders its Legislature inert, and captive to public- sector unions, the nation’s most populous state is imploding with the sort of gusto usually reserved for a Hollywood back lot. As voters prepare for a November gubernatorial election that will pit erstwhile governor Jerry Brown against former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, the need for big ideas to right the state’s course could not be more pronounced.

Into the breach step Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, a pair of veteran California journalists affiliated with the New America Foundation. In “California Crackup,” they attempt two herculean tasks: to dissect California’s dysfunctional public sector and to create a roadmap for its recovery. In the first case, they succeed admirably. In the second, they fall prey to the same emphasis on novelty over practicality that they lament in the “solutions” of others. It will obviously be horrendously difficult, whoever wins in November, to fix a state government that resembles nothing so much as a Rube Goldberg machine.

see article here.

Video: ‘The Obama Diaries’ by Laura Ingraham

Laura Ingraham claims to have gotten her hands on a very special national treasure in her brand new book release… ‘The Obama Diaries.’ Check out conservative talk-radio maven and bestselling author Laura Ingraham’s satirical send-up of the first year of the Obama administration. Is this where it ends or just the beginning? Is she hinting at a traveling road show, too, in this video? Guess you’ll just have to watch and see for yourself.

The Tyranny of Oil – Antonia Juhasz – (Harper)

Long before the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Oil has been a problem. More specifically, Big Oil has been a big problem.

In Antonia Juhasz’s must read, ‘The Tyranny of Oil: The World’s Most Powerful Industry and What We Must Do to Stop It’ – just released in paperback – the author reveals numerous secrets of the oil business; secrets that are having a profound effect on our environment, global economies and the prospect of never-ending wars in hot zones across our planet.

Everyone knows Big Oil is trouble, but ‘Tyranny’ is a book that rips the cover off the ball in explaining just how we got into this mess, how vast the problem is in relation to world economies and what can be done to curtail the influence of what is arguably the number one devastation factor facing the earth as we know it.

Rather than sounding alarm bells, Juhasz (‘The Bush Agenda’) explains the factors that got us to this very unusual place on our history; the early conglomeration of oil interests that was John D. Rockfeller’s Standard Oil Trust of the late 1800’s, to the break up of the company via the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890, to the re-emergence of a virtual monopoly (again) of the business as all the pieces of that former company have now been reassembled through the government approval of over 2,400 mergers and acquisitions resulting in the so-called ‘Seven Sisters’ of oil. (i.e. ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, Total, ConocoPhillips, Valero; not to mention state owned firms like Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, Brazil’s Petrobras, etc.)

Along the way, tales of political corruption (particularly of the Republican party), arduous lobbying, the influence of administrations from Reagan to Bush II, the ‘necessity of war’ to protect vital petroleum interests around the world, particularly in the Middle East, and the oil companies’ lip-service to developing truly alternative energies are all uncovered in the book.

Oil is the lifeblood of the planet and ‘Tyranny’ shows just how far the powerful (7 of the world’s top 10 companies are now oil companies) will go to wring every last drop from the earth (onshore, offshore, federal lands, and even the radically environmentally destructive extraction of ’shale oil’). Political overthrows, explosions, the hundreds of deaths of drilling rig operators and severe pollution are mere inconveniences in the path of Big Oil’s goals. The quotes, records and other documentation will make your skin crawl.

Given the precarious state of our environment, our economy and our politics, ‘The Tyranny of Oil’ is both a must-read – and will be among our finalists for Book of the Year. Get it, read it, pass it on.

Listen to an audio interview of author Antonia Juhasz

Interview: Michael Moore on Books, Capitalism and More

While often viewed as a popular counter-culture filmographer, Michael Moore reminds us of his long career as an author for such books as “Stupid White Men,” “Dude, Where’s My Country,” “Downsize This” and others as well as discussing the DVD release of his latest film “Capitalism: A Love Story” in this video interview.

Mandela: A Biography – Martin Meredith (Public Affairs)

With all the attention bestowed upon South Africa in recent weeks due to the global audience for the World Cup, we thought it to be a good time to spotlight the recent and very comprehensive updated reissue of Martin Meredith’s “Mandela: A Biography.”

Despite an unusually large number of books chronicling the life and struggle of the African continent’s most famous 20th Century leader (including his own 1994 autobiography “Long Walk to Freedom”), Meredith’s work covers perhaps the widest berth of information available on the lawyer turned revolutionary who finally prevailed on reversing years of injustice in the South African nation. Meredith, a Brit, has written extensively on the plight of the African continent – from the diamond mines to Zimbabwe, from Mugabe to the making of South Africa itself.

In “Mandela: A Biography”, Meredith recounts the history of the man alongside the history of the nation. From tales of the nineteen-century Xhosa-speaking peoples, to the rise of African nationalism, to the development of Johannesburg, and the influence of the Communist party, the story of South Africa and the story of Mandela are inextricably intertwined. No detail is left out in following Mandela from life as a barrister to his emergence as an anti-apartheid revolutionary and the way in which his work went on even as he was exiled to a life sentence in prison through his supporters (and the Free Mandela movement) and his wife Winnie Mandela.

A rich combination of stories make up the chapters of Mandela’s own story, from the work of the African Resistance Movement (ARM) to various trials and protests, the actual plight of the many victims of various apartheid laws and conditions and their effect on everything from migrant workers to black-owned businesses, the imprisonment of desenters, to the final settling of differences between the ANC and the government. Even through accusations of Mandela’s own improprieties and the leader’s own divorce, Meredith covers every significant turn with extensive research and attention to detail.

What emerges is a tale, not just of struggle, but of a revolutionary overturning of rampant injustice; the golden age of a ‘rainbow nation,’ yet one that somehow still did not bring justice to all and over time created an opportunity for the emergence of a new black middle class, (as well as an ultimately re-corrupted ANC) while eventually – post-Mandela – reversing course through policies of self-enrichment that resulted in many of the most impoverished still left behind.

Based on both its breadth and research, as well as a very personalized portrait of the man himself, Meredith’s ‘Mandela’ is a well recommended read.

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