Stephen Lendman
5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star (My Top 10%) Primer for Every Citizen,June 6, 2012
I've had this book in my stack of “to be read” books for some time now, and now that I have read it, I deeply regret not getting to it sooner. Although I have read and reviewed a number of vital serious books in this field, and list ten of them below, I have to say this is easily the single best book of the lot, and I put it into 6 stars and beyond — out of the 1,800 plus books I have reviewed at Amazon, fewer than 10% get this rating.
Perhaps because I had already read the ten books below, I was absolutely floored by the clarity, organization, precision, simplicity, intelligence, and general integrity of this book and its author. Please do take advantage of the Look Inside the Book feature that Amazon offers (click on book cover above). In seventeen chapters, the author has brought to the public a work of elegant explosive yet balanced and measured, FACTS with CONTEXT.
If you read only one book on the destruction of the US economy, the destruction of the US Republic, the destruction of legitimate governance in the USA, this is the one book I recommend. It should not only be read, but also shared. As I go back over the table of contents thinking about what to highlight (I no longer mark up books now that I donate them all as I finish reading them), I am just blown away by the medticulous, sensible, systematic, intuitively coherent manner in which the author starts with the fraud and treason of the Federal Reserve (neither Federal nor a reserve), and ends with his prescription for public banking that I heartily respect.
This book is both a good undergraduate and public reader, and a very fine introductory overview for graduate students. It manages to cover, in one concise volume, the tri-fecta of fraud: the banks led by the Federal Reserve and the global banking system that is privately owned and certainly never acting in the public interest; the illegal, inept, and often treasonous behavior of the US Government and the two political parties that have betrayed the public trust and helped both loot the US Treasury and destroy the US labor market; and the 1% class warfare against the 99%.
If there were one book that captures all that Occupy should be addressing but is not, this is that book.
Here are ten books (my limit–to see a whole range of lists of my reviews, both positive and negative, go to Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog and click on Books in the top menu).
Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History
Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism
The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral Economy
Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class — And What We Can Do About It (BK Currents)
The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future – and What It Will Take to Win It Back
Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
No Logo: 10th Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction by the Author
The Genius of the Beast: A Radical Re-Vision of Capitalism
I cannot say enough good things about this book. Wow. A public service and an intellectual contribution of the first order.
