clew's reviews: a book log

A Tenured Professor, John Kenneth Galbraith

Possibly a roman à clef, but I haven't looked up who is our Princess. It's about an economics professor with a scheme (to calculate irrationality in the markets) that's good enough to make money by speculation instead of publication; he does make a pile, but the indignation of the irrational reels him back in after a while. (Lovely set piece of Senators huffing about how un-American it is to bet against the market.) Maybe Galbraith just wondered what would happen if a fairly normal person, someone with no urge for a Batcave or polar mansion or world domination, had such a power.

Them, Jon Ronson

Most of the eerie groups described (to Ronson) as 'Them' actually exist, and are (when he visits) mostly laughable or pathetic, instead of immediately eerie. The Ruby Ridge family is especially sad. The Bohemian Grove is pretty funny, especially since Ronson sneaks in with paranoid right-wing Texans. The other side is that the groups are also dangerous or powerful, or linked to them, or innately opposed to any open society - the 'kinder, gentler' KKK (not kidding!) seems to be foundering on internal contradictions, a Rockefeller and Wolfensohn and Kissinger certainly could alter the fates of nations, meeting secretly. I finally felt depressed by the ubiquitous tendency to have groups of Us and Them and have secret meetings and defenses.

The Walls Around Us, David Owen

The best part of this was at the very beginning, describing the looming, encroaching fear you develop after you've bought a house - especially an old house - when it becomes obvious that it is actively falling apart, rotting, decaying, and constant effort on your part could only make this pause, no matter how gloss the paint. You'd think any mind that lives in a mortal body would be used to this. Maybe it's displacement. The rest of it is like background articles from Fine Homebuilder with a bit more about Owen's house and a bit more background research. He did visit a plant that makes paint for nuclear power plants to find out why we don't all want to use it on our porches.