Reviews and Comments

I loved Krugman's writing ever since I bought the softcover Peddling Prosperity when it was new, and I'm pretty sure I paid full retail price for it. I've subscribed to the New York Times in no small part because Krugman is a columnist there. Mind you, that wasn't the full price digital New York Times subscription. I have to decide if I want to renew once the bargain basement annual rate that I received expires.

But anyway, this "book" is worth an Audible credit if you liked Krugman's columns over the past couple of decades. The articles are not strictly chronological, but organized in sections leading up to the January 2020 publication. Not much about COVID-19 in this book, but Krugman uses what he said 15 years ago to point out that the present day was part of the predictable progression. He's not wrong, but hearing a figurative "see! told you so!" from Krugman (via someone else's voice reading his columns on his behalf) just as we were heading into a global pandemic was weird listening.

I'm giving this 5 stars because Krugman is so much better at punditing than almost all of the other pundits out there (e.g. most of the other columnists at the NYTimes). For me, it wasn't the mind-blowing primer in Keynesian economics that I received in Peddling Prosperity, and Krugman does tend to repeat many of his lessons over multiple books. For example, this book has yet another retelling of the Washington DC babysitting co-op, and how that relates to the Keynesian theory of currency supply. But the babysitting co-op story is really powerful, and worthy of multiple retellings. I liked this book because it was a good reminder of why I like Krugman as a pundit.

I was going to grudgingly give this book 4 stars, but I settled on 3 stars. Vance is a very good storyteller, and the audiobook was worth an Audible credit. I first learned about Hillbilly Elegy in the months prior to the 2016 election. The scathing review that [a:Sarah Smarsh|3314241|Sarah Smarsh|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1523224716p2/3314241.jpg] wrote convinced me to hold off: "Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans (The Guardian)". Her review convinced me that 1) I didn't need to read Hillbilly Elegy and 2) I wanted to read Smarsh's book if/when it came out (and it came out in 2018, and I really liked it).

My friends eventually convinced me to read it (or rather, listen to it). Vance is a more concise and organized storyteller than Smarsh, but Smarsh seems like a more trustworthy journalist. As many critics have pointed out about Vance, he seems to conflate his parents' and his grandparents' upbringing with his own. He characterizes Middletown, Ohio as a small town in Ohio, and not a key component of the "Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN Metropolitan Statistical Area" as it's called by the U.S. Census bureau.

If you're a real political junkie (like I am), this is an important book to read. This book was incredibly influential in the the U.S. presidential election of 2016, and could end up being as important in the 2020 election. I found Vance's upbringing relatable, and like Vance, I also have a soft spot for Cracker Barrel, even though chicken fried steak is horribly unhealthy food. But Vance propagates some dangerous generalizations about "hillbillies" that don't apply to everyone from Kentucky (or other rural areas), so be sure to take everything he says with a big grain of salt, and don't take what he writes as anything more than one guy's perspective. And also note: J.D. Vance told the Washington Post in December 2016 that he was considering running for office.

Those of you that aren't political junkies: just wait for Ron Howard's film adaptation. It should be coming out on Netflix this year.

I had a hard time deciding how many stars to give this book. This felt as intimate (and almost as invasive) as reading someone's diary, and it feels mean to give Smarsh's deeply personal telling of her family's incredible story anything less than 5 out of 5 stars. But reviewing a living person's diary on a book review site is just weird. In fact, reading a living person's diary is just weird. And listening to the audiobook of the author reading their diary is really weird. That was my initial experience: it was weird.

For anyone who is looking for the raw, personal experience of a girl growing up in rural Kansas, this is a fantastic book. Of course, minimizing this as "diary" of "girl" is really unfair; Smarsh provides an incredibly detailed and intimate biography of her mother, and her mother's mother as told from her adult perspective. Anyone who really dislikes J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy should appreciate Smarsh's personally-informed perspective on the rural working class, and the care with which Smarsh doesn't conflate the experience of her ancestors with her own. Anyone who is unsure about whether to read Smarsh's book first might consider reading her very popular October 2016 piece: "Dangerous idiots: how the liberal media elite failed working-class Americans (The Guardian)". Her commentary is a searing critique of all of the journalists who were fawning over Hillbilly Elegy after its June 2016 release all the way until the November 2016 election of Donald Trump. She skewers the “liberal media elite”, who seemed to think they knew a thing or two about “flyover country” because they interviewed J.D. Vance, and maybe did some superficial hillbilly tourism of their own to confirm the stereotypes. Smarsh is an insightful and highly-informed pundit (e.g. her piece in The Prospect “Mapping the White Working Class”), and backs up her hard-earned intuition with cold, hard data.

Smarsh's commentaries reflect what seems to be her writing style: she focuses most of her attention on the conclusion, and creates abundant prose to reach her conclusion, which may or may not be very structured. Her piece for The Guardian took a while to get to the point, but was helped by a well-placed picture of the DeBruce Grain elevator just outside Witchita, Kansas, in the aftermath of the explosion that killed seven people in 1998. Smarsh has a well-integrated anecdote about the impact of the explosion on her community, and about the explosion's personal relevance to her. In her writing (especially in "Dangerous idiots..."), she's frequently able to paint a vivid picture in fewer than 1000 words, but sometimes, the pictures end up taking more words. And she tries to cram a lot of pictures into her Heartland scrapbook.

I think one of the more honest and useful reviews I’ve read about Heartland is Yun's January 2020 review here on Goodreads. Yun gives a very candid and somewhat unflattering assessment of the book, coming to a similar conclusion to my own:

In the end, I had such high hopes for this book, and it just didn't quite meet them. If you approach this book as another diverse voice that helps you understand a country full of diverse voices and experiences, then I think you'll get what you want out of it. But to expect any further insights would only lead to disappointment.

Yun might be selling Smarsh’s book a little short, but I'm guessing she didn't have the same personal connection to Kansas that I do. Smarsh told the story that I was hoping to hear, but Yun seemed to hope for other perspectives. Yun gave Heartland a middle-of-the-road rating of 3 stars (which she explains as "Liked it for the most part. Enjoyable read, but not really memorable."). I give the final hour or so of Smarsh’s nine-and-a-half hour book a full 5 stars. In it, she describes her political awakening as she transitioned to adulthood. I eagerly awaited Smarsh's book in 2017 and 2018, since I believe we need to hear more stories about political awakenings of smart kids in red counties. I believe we need a blockbuster success from someone other than J.D. Vance, but unfortunately, Smarsh's book probably isn't destined for that. And I'm not surprised; the first 80% of the book seem likely to be pretty tiring for many readers/listeners. Still, it's an incredible story, and I'm glad Smarsh told it. I'll give it 4 stars, because I really liked it.

(Note : the review above is rewrite of my much longer review over on Quora. I made a point of murdering my darlings before publishing here. )

Too many words ;-) It's not conversational easy reading like contemporary business books. It's a pain to read it. However, it's a really good lesson in leadership. Sloan clearly didn't believe in pulling rank or letting himself get lobbied to make stupid business decisions by division leaders within GM. One of the central conflicts described in the book is the conflict over whether GM should bet big on copper-cooled engines (e.g. Chevrolet_Series_M_Copper-Cooled), which was (pardon the pun) the hot new technology of the day. It's been so long since I've read the book that I don't remember all of the details, but the short answer is that GM minimized the investment in copper-cooled engines due to GM's willingness to allow for decentralized experimentation.

Microsoft was clearly modeled after Sloan's GM, which I believe played a pretty substantial role in their first few decades of success. In many ways, I think Google is trying to be the modern GM to Apple's Ford.

I read this book during the first Internet bubble, and found it really resonated with me. It will likely resonate the most with artistic people who find themselves trapped executing ideas that don't make sense.

As a business consultant, Richards was brought into organizations trying to infuse spirit and enthusiasm, and (to his horror) observed many examples of managers trying to make their people reflect the larger organization: cheerful on the outside, dead on the inside.

In one example, he finds (unsurprisingly) that a person selling nutritionally-empty breadsticks:

A product manager once told me, “I just can’t get excited about selling those damn pizza sticks. They are vastly overpriced and have zero nutritional value. I won’t let my kids eat them. So I am going through the motions, doing the best I can, and hoping this job doesn’t last much longer.” (p. 23-24)

In a more cheerful example, he talks about a service worker (Billy) who took pride in his craft of mounting retread tires in the early 1970s:

Billy was in his mid-twenties, small, thin, and gregarious; and could Billy ever change tires! Then he attacked the car with frenzy and grace. Billy was truly balletic around the car, removing the old wheels, changing the tires, balancing the new ones, and replacing the wheels on the car. Billy was the Nureyev of tire changers.
At the instant the car returned to the grimy shop floor, Billy tapped the timer again. He looked at the timer, then turned to me with an expression of pure joy on his face.
“A new record,” he shouted. “Damn, a new record!”
Billy’s coworkers applauded.
Billy held the first belief of artful work: all work can be artful.

I found this book really inspiring when I first read it in 1998 (to the point where I had bought several dead tree versions to give to my boss and co-workers). In looking at it again now, I find the advice it gives just as timely today.