PositiveThe New York Journal of BooksThis book includes stories of companies big and small, famous and not so famous, producing products ranging from ice cream to life-saving drugs. Some will find this approach to be unsatisfying because the book does not establish an analytic framework, and it leaves it to the reader to connect the dots between stories ... O’Toole seems to miss a crucial, threshold issue here. Is a company fundamentally or inherently ethical or moral if it produces a high-quality product at the best possible price? ... O’Toole says the purpose of his book is to offer information that \'inspires and guides\' the forthcoming class of corporate leaders. His book surely contributes to his stated purpose.
David Wallace-Wells
MixedThe New York Journal of BooksDavid Wallace-Wells has written his book with the purpose of triggering every possible alarm for every possible impact global climate change could have on mankind and the environment ... Expect to be exhausted and unsettled after reading the first half of the book because that is the author’s goal. Wallace-Wells believes the evidence of the great harm global climate change will do is everywhere, it is irrefutable, and action must be taken now ... In the second half of the book, to some extent, he may undermine what he accomplished in the first half of the book by taking on ideological issues ... the purpose of the book is to provoke action, but Wallace-Wells fails to provide any detailed statement of the actions that should be taken, or the policies that should be put in place to prompt those actions. At best, he provides only short bursts of broad policy proposals.
Paul Collier
PositiveNew York Journal of BooksPaul Collier has written an ambitious, important book about how to understand and address the new economic anxieties faced worldwide by capitalist economies ... this is an ambitious book that proposes challenging efforts to reduce the three great divides. We know, for example, that winning approval for taxes on New York City residents to pay for programs in cities like Detroit would be a political challenge. We know the effort to actually create new clusters of businesses in distressed cities will be a technical challenge. Collier acknowledges that this one book cannot present all the detail that will be needed to succeed with his proposals.
Alan Greenspan
PositiveNew York Journal of Books\"Capitalism in America is an unabashed, detailed defense of capitalism ... This book, however, is more than a history of creative destruction. For example, Greenspan offers a history of the federal government’s increased role in the American economy which surged in the Great Depression ... While Greenspan does not ignore the harmful side of creative destruction, some readers will want more about the labor strife, worker safety, poverty, and pollution of the era. Moreover, for the book as a whole, do not expect the full case against capitalism, including issues of inequality, to be stated and rebutted therein. Still, Greenspan has accomplished a great deal because, by showing what capitalism has achieved for America in the past, he has made the best case possible for keeping and improving capitalism for the future.\