Nonfiction – Page 69 – education and deconstruction.com

Molly Ivins

The Book of the Week is “Molly Ivins” by Bill Minutaglio and W. Michael Smith, published in 2009. This is a biography of Molly Ivins– witty, brash journalist.

Born in 1944, Ivins was someone whom Malcolm Gladwell would characterize as an “outlier.” Her daddy was a social climber in the oil industry in Texas. The family was good friends with the political Bush family. They lived in the wealthy area of River Oaks. Ivins and her older sister and younger brother went sailing on her father’s yacht and their house had a swimming pool.

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, female journalists were relegated to writing about food, the country club and fashion. Except for Ivins. She did years-long stretches writing about urban issues and politics for newspapers in Minneapolis, New York and Austin. While at the New York Times, she wrote, “I am becoming a Yankees fan, that’s how low I’ve sunk.”

Ivins was morally repulsed by the conflicts journalists had. She thought objectivity in reporting was virtually useless. Her irreverent, wickedly funny articles, frequent participation in the nicotine- and alcohol-fueled social culture of journalists, and her generosity in her personal life earned her a large following.

Read the book to learn the details of how Ivins achieved her fame and eventual fortune.

Why I Left Goldman Sachs

The Book of the Week is “Why I Left Goldman Sachs” by Greg Smith, published in 2012.

This career memoir details how the author experienced the change for the worse in corporate culture of stock brokerage Goldman Sachs (GS) over the course of a little more than a decade, from 2000 to early 2012. The company lost its way in terms of its mission and values, which embodied fiduciary duty and integrity.

In 2000, the author completed the selective, elitist, highly coveted summer internship program at the brokerage. He saw how principled the money managers were in recommending truly suitable transactions to their clients; not necessarily the most profitable ones.

When he began working there as a full-fledged staff member the following year, he took to the work, possessing the right combination of talents, skills and abilities to focus for long hours on conferring with clients and doing what was financially best for them. The goal was to build trust in order to foster a long-term relationship. It stands to reason that that is a more profitable course of action than seeking to rake in maximum money in the short term– which would provoke disloyalty from the client, when the client realizes he’s been taken advantage of.

Smith writes that a gradual change was occurring at his workplace around the start of 2005. At the time, he admittedly was “drinking the Kool Aid” like everyone else. The megabucks were multiplying because conflicts of interest were increasing betwen the brokerage and the government and other entities with which the brokerage was associated in various ways. The CEO and COO of GS were all for it. Their yearly letter to shareholders reasoned that such conflicts were inevitable, and were a sign that business was good. A telling example: GS netted approximately $100 million when it helped its client, the New York Stock Exchange merge with publicly traded, electronic exchange Archipelago in a $9 billion deal.

In the early 2000’s, one trend in the securities industry that would contribute to huge financial losses for the big firms including GS, was automated trading via software. The autotraders of the different firms were programmed to engage in largely the same behavior. They sought to trade in obscure, off-the-beaten path investments in markets in which it was difficult to find a buyer when it came time to sell. And they were all trying to sell at the same time. That was not a condition the autotrader creators had anticipated.

Another aspect of the big picture was that the people selling the financial products– more specifically, derivatives– did not themselves, understand what they were selling. It might be recalled that a derivatives debacle plagued the securities industry in 1994. Apparently, in 2007-2009, the greedy people involved in this rerun of a financial catastrophe failed to read their history, or had short memories. And governments of entire countries like Libya, were suffering losses of billions of dollars, thanks to GS, in 2007.

Read the book to learn much more about the outrageous occurrences borne of avarice witnessed by the author and the world during what became for him, an ordeal, characterized by the saying, “The fish rots from the head down.”

The Oil Road – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the ebook, “The Oil Road” by James Marriott and Mika Minio-Paluello, published in 2012. This is a series of vignettes of visits of the authors to territories where fossil fuels (namely, oil and natural gas) were or are being drilled for, collected or transported, where a disaster took place, and the issues surrounding the fossil fuels industry.

The authors traversed mostly Azerbaijan, Turkey and Soviet Georgia. They spoke with people in rural villages whose lives were disrupted by greedy corporations. In the mid-1990’s, a group of companies (including BP, Amoco, Lukoil of Russia, Ramco, Unocal, Pennzoil and State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic) formed a consortium to consolidate their power and protect their geopolitical and economic interests. Those interests would be to make the maximum amount of money; environment and unlucky peasants who happened to live in villages where oil pipelines were soon to be constructed be damned. The pipelining of natural gas involves “… intense lobbying, billions of dollars of loans, and the balance of political and economic power.” It was not uncommon to intentionally submit a lowball bid on a project so that “…US diplomacy ensured that the cost overruns on the [oil] pipeline [construction] were carried not by private oil companies, but by Turkish taxpayers.”

In the late 1800’s, oil was originally used in the form of kerosene in lamps, obsolescing whale blubber, distilled alcohol and tallow. Businesspeople found other increasingly profitable uses for it through the decades, due to political, technological and cultural forces, of course. A few powerful business families, such as the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds and the Nobels controlled the oil going into WW I. Spheres of influence shifted with the Russian Revolution and tribal, land and religious disputes, too.

Read the book to learn about: instances of companies’ irresponsiblity, companies’ weaseling out of trouble after serious incidents and destroying a way of life for rural, powerless peoples; numerous accidents waiting to happen; why governments of developed nations couldn’t let BP go bankrupt after its spring 2010 disaster; and who the major beneficiaries of the business are. Here’s a hint: “…profit generated mainly flows to London and New York… ultimate power drivers were in Washington, London and Brussels.”

House of Versace

The Book of the Week is “House of Versace” by Deborah Ball, published in 2010. This is the story of how a family and its business recovered from a tragedy.

The two brothers, Santo and Gianni, and a sister, Donatella, started running a high-end clothing design business in the 1970’s. Gianni became the indispensable partner. His talent lay in creating trend-setting clothing and changing the culture of the fashion industry. Donatella recruited celebrities to wear the Versace brand by sending them free products and inviting them to lavish parties.

Around 1990, Versace began to woo female models whose faces appeared on the covers of fashion magazines, rather than women whose whole bodies– supermodels– appeared in photos. The former had to learn how to strut down the runway, however, and convince Versace to pay them big bucks. Appearances in the tabloids, rather than appearances in fashion shows, had previously been their major publicity vehicle. Donatella spared no expense in recruiting them, treating them to luxury travel and clothes. Versace’s competitors had to follow suit.

Read the book to learn how, by 2004, the company had become nearly bankrupt. There were a number of causes; the major one, however, was the aforementioned tragedy.

Struck By Genius – Bonus Post

This blogger skimmed the repetitive ebook, “Struck by Genius” by Jason Padgett and Maureen Seaberg, published in 2014.

This ebook tells the story of how Padgett, the victim of a mugging, suffered a traumatic brain injury, and not only lived to tell about it, but also experienced improved cerebral processes (along with some negative side effects) due to it.

Padgett developed the conditions of savantism and synesthesia. The former causes his vision to form geometric patterns in everything he sees; he also acquired a natural, conscious talent for mathematics and physics which he had not previously had. Synesthesia means he sees a specific color when he sees a specific number or letter.

Read the book to learn of the psychological problems that have plagued the author since he was violently struck on the head, and the two with which he still grapples; how he finally became sufficiently functional to learn more about his conditions, and to find and contact other people with the same symptoms.

Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets

The Book of the Week is “Don’t Be Afraid of the Bullets” by Laura Kasinof, published in 2014.

This ebook’s American author fell into a freelance journalism career. Fluent in Arabic, she is passionate about the Middle East. She had written freelance articles while witnessing unrest in Cairo in the single-digit 2000’s. She had cultivated contacts in the community in Sanaa, Yemen’s capital, and was one of only a few correspondents in the country when anti-government violence erupted in the spring of 2011.

Although very suspenseful, this ebook (perhaps translated from Arabic?) was also edited sloppily. This blogger takes issue with a few misspellings (like “Marriot”), more than a few awkward prepositions and typos like “it” instead of “in,” misplaced words here and there, and sexist content. The author, in her mid-twenties, still calls herself and other grown women “girls.” She also uses the term “stewardess” (!) rather than “flight attendant.”

Read the book to learn about Yemeni culture in everyday life in peace and in war, the author’s appearance on a hit TV show, her abduction and other traumatic episodes, how she came to feel an exaggerated sense of self-importance, became desensitized and came to feel invulnerable to the bullets and shells flying around her, and the attitude of the people toward the installation of a new regime in Yemen.

Here’s the Deal – Bonus Post

This blogger read Howie Mandel’s autobiography, “Here’s the Deal: Don’t Touch Me” published in 2009.

Mandel has been a TV and movie actor, game show host and stand-up comedian. In this ebook, he reveals all of his psychological issues– ADHD, OCD, desperate need for attention, etc; “I was constantly consumed with my own pranks. I had no sense of boundaries.” Although his creative antics are amusing, he has poor impulse control. This has led to damaged relationships.

Read the book to learn how he became famous, despite, or arguably, due to his various mental and physical problems– he has used entertaining others as a coping mechanism to forget about the negative aspects of his identity.

The Snakehead

The Book of the Week is “The Snakehead” by Patrick Radden Keefe, published in 2009. This ebook recounts the details of a pivotal human-smuggling incident involving people of Chinese descent.

In early June 1993, a boat hit a sandbar in Breezy Point in the borough of Queens (New York City) in New York State. Most of its occupants were illegal immigrants originally from China. They were “smuggled” rather than “trafficked” in that they had willingly bribed a “snakehead” to help them move to the United States without identification documents, knowing the risks of their journey full well. Trafficked individuals also have the desire for a better life, but are usually unaware that they will be sold as property.

Organized crime in Chinatown in New York City in the 1980’s was rampant, consisting of not just arrangements to further illegal immigration, but of extortion, gang warfare, conspiracy, hostage-taking and money laundering. “But there was only so much money in shakedowns, burglaries and kidnappings.” The heroin trade carried heavy prison sentences. On the other hand, there was big money (approximately $30,000 for the snakehead per person) in human smuggling and it carried light prison sentences.

At the start of the 1990’s, two major reasons that immigration laws were lenient for political asylum seekers from China were: 1) The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre had reminded the world of oppression in China, and 2) The country had a draconian population-limiting political system, allowing women to bear only one child and thereafter be forced to have an abortion or the men, to have forced sterilization. Another factor that contributed to the arrival of an excessive number of illegals on U.S. shores around 1990 was the fact the the Immigration and Naturalization Service was a poorly treated, underfunded and understaffed agency, that competed with the customs department– whose contraband confiscations made it a political darling.

Read the book to learn: why, around 1990, there was also a shift in the transportation method, routes and entry points for illegal smuggling; which perpetrators got caught and their fates; and the valid arguments on both sides of the debate over the legal and ethical issues on people’s entering a nation without the legal means to do so.

Webs of Power… – Bonus Post

This blogger “clicked” through the ebook, “Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising” by Starhawk, published in 2002.

The ebook is the author’s description of what her activism is about. She explains that the way globalization is currently occurring is wrong because big corporations are favoring money over people. Greedy corporations (and governments) are destroying the earth and life on earth.

One specific way governments are allowing this, is through the World Trade Organization. The United States joined the Organization and signed the trade agreement called GATT. That agreement lets the Organization, whose member-countries’ representatives, appointed via cronyism, make laws whose disclosure is denied to the world. No hearings of their proceedings are permitted. The actions taken by this secret society affect workers and human rights worldwide and of course, the environment.

The negative consequences have included, for example, allowing poisons to permeate the world food supply, endangering species and keeping drug prices high, all to the benefit of global corporations. What is not a secret is that those companies have, in recent decades, increased their profitability by moving their production facilities to nations where they can get labor at minimal cost while avoiding pesky health, safety and environmental laws. The author argues that this has also resulted in significantly increased income inequality the world over.

Read the book to learn of additional ways greed and power hunger are wrecking the world, and the role the author has played, through planning and organizing protests, training protesters, protesting and writing in trying to prevent further harm; and of her various proposals for governance and allocating resources in ways that do the greatest good for the greatest number.

All or Nothing

The Book of the Week is “All or Nothing” by Jesse Schenker, published in 2014. This suspenseful, eloquently written ebook tells the exceptional life story of a member of America’s “Generation Y” who has beaten the odds for survival, considering his situation.

“I had two jobs and no place to stay, but I literally cared more about having drugs than even a roof over my head… at night I slept outside, swathed in a blanket of newspaper… ”

The author describes in vivid detail his ordeal in connection with substance abuse– of his own making– and how he got through it. He wrote that in Fort Lauderdale, sellers of illicit drugs diluted their wares with “… laxatives, Benadryl, sugar, starch, talc, brick dust, or even f–g Ajax” and how all junkies commit thievery against each other.

Schenker also recounts his experiences in the restaurant industry, where he encountered other addicts in the kitchen. The culture is also one of an abusive hierarchy; the justification for this is that everything must be perfect. On more than one occasion, when the author’s food preparation was less than perfect, he was loudly berated and had a tray with his creations violently thrown at his chest.

Read the book to learn how Schenker transferred his skills at manipulating other people, from getting high to getting his career in gear. Malcolm Gladwell would categorize him as an “outlier.”