Robert Louis Stevenson - Kidnapped

 I can’t say if it was the content of the book itself, a change in my mindset while reading it or a combination of the two but I felt a real difference between the first and second half of the book.  I would’ve been much happier if the book finished after David Balfour’s eventual return to the mainland from Erraid.  

I think it is fair to say that both halves are action packed, both contain caricatures more than characters and both, at times, stretch the reader’s credulity.  All of this seems appropriate for a children’s adventure novel.  However, for whatever reason, I found the first half to be engaging and the second to be sloppily constructed and overwrought.  The tale of David’s journey to Cramond and his subsequent dealings with his curmudgeonly uncle were great and I found the young nephew’s suspicions to be an excellent starting point for the plot.  Of course, things take a turn for the more fanciful once the adventure begins in earnest and David is kidnapped.  That said, the ignoble crew and the inevitable mishaps were well drawn and of a piece.  The appearance of Alan Breck Stewart provides a good catalyst for David’s eventual escape and the fight scene would have made for a perfect, action packed crescendo - or so I thought at least!  I didn’t have much objection to the self-imposed stranding on Erraid either.  It provided a good foil of ignorance and incapacity to the all too capable performance of Alan and David during the fight!

After that, I felt like the book took a turn for the worse.  Perhaps I thought that after such an ordeal, David would stop at nothing to get back to his uncle as quickly as possible.  Perhaps the somewhat ridiculous Alan Breck began to wear a bit thin as he took up more narrative and dialogue.  I’m not usually a fan of historical characters appearing in novels.  I feel it’s a bit uninventive and usually results in the repetition of a few hackneyed character traits.  This was certainly the case for the highly romanticized chieftain in hiding, Cluny, and Alan Breck Stewart. 

The second half of the book also struck me as far more haphazard and unnecessarily flamboyant.  While the incidents of the first half hung together nicely, I felt the author was scrambling for material in the second.  David meets extraordinary guides, unwittingly becomes an accessory to the murder of the king’s agent, embarks on lengthy clandestine journey through Scotland, which is made to sound more like Hollywood Lord of the Rings set than anything like the real Highlands, without shelter and witnesses a farcical piping competition between ABS and another legendary clansman.  The tone and quality of the dialogue also seemed to deteriorate until I had the sensation that one cliche was being piled on top of another until the whole edifice keeled over.  

The denouement was reasonably satisfactory, with the exception of some highly floral and badly drawn interactions between David Balfour and his uncle’s lawyer back in Cramond but I felt like the book had already been spoiled by the journey from Erraid.  I would recommend this book because, at its best, it’s highly enjoyable but I would have preferred a shorter, edited version.   

Ursula K Le Guin - Earthsea

He stood tall and proud as the mighty oak whilst the wind whipped his mysterious and scarred visage and lightning broke the dark, stormy sky behind him.  He wore simple tweed britches, hand sewn leathern booties and the shaggy fleece of the flippitytoot, from his native lands of Giveashit, for warmth against the harsh winter.  He carried a staff of Baobab, palladian shod.  They called him Pidge but his true name, in the ancient, primordial tongue of the Snifftyflob, was MageLord 3000. 

I should preface these ramshackle reflections by saying I am not usually a reader of the ‘fantasy genre’, depending on how it’s defined.  First, it strikes me that a lot of fantasy books are about a fairly narrow cast of wizards, dragons, witches and ogres.  That’s not to say there is anything wrong with those types of characters.  They don’t pique my interest much.  On the whole, I tend to think to myself, rightly or wrongly, ‘humanity is interesting and varied enough for me I’ll probably leave the fantasy for another day’.  

The prose in the book wasn’t much to my liking and I found it meandering, facil and cliched.  It was never pithy or concise and was often confusing and verbose.  I found a lot of the characters and scenes to be overwritten and full of romantic nostalgia for the world she’s created for them.  ‘What do you expect from a fantasy novel?’, you might ask.  

I got more enjoyment out of the themes in the book, for example, the idea in the first book of Ged battling against the darkness, which he has created, to save his life and identity.  At other points, I felt like it was too much of a mish mash of borrowed ideas, for example, light and darkness (Bible), a young man going on a journey to establish his own identity (Greek epic, Jung).  One theme I thought a bit ridiculous was the desperate attempt to establish a positive female perspective in the fourth book.  In the preceding three books women are depicted as crafty seductresses (Ged in garden, Book 1) or evil devil worshippers and child sacrificers (Order of Preistesses, Book 2).  However, in the fourth book there is an abrupt change from men, mage lords and mighty staff wielding wizardry to a focus on mothering, nurture and the importance of domesticity and anything relating to women while men are scolded instead.  

Book 2 was an impressive piece of writing and struck me as the most creative perhaps because it wasn’t full of ‘fantasy’ characters from central casting.  In fairness to Le Guin, it’s possible that I find some of her characters and style hackneyed because so many people have copied it.  I have read that some people consider her incredibly influential and innovative but I am not really in a position to comment.  

This wasn’t a book that I enjoyed or would recommend because it is too long, the prose is bad and there aren’t enough good themes or characters to make it worthwhile.  Books 1 & 2 are certainly better than 3 & 4 and would be enough to get a taste of her style.  That said my favourite character was from Book 3, so there you go.  It was Sopli.

Will Ashon - Chamber Music: About the Wu (In 36 Pieces)

This book is a work of great passion and obvious obsession with the subject matter. It self-consciously takes a magpie approach to the selection and presentation of material. This is both a good and a bad thing. A precursory glance at the books I’ve rambled about on this blog will show I employ a similar strategy with my reading so, in some ways, I admire it. On the other hand, I’m not writing a book!


Beginning with the good stuff, Ashon knows what he is talking about when it comes to making music, listening to music, selling music and pretty much anything else to do with music. His explanations of sampling techniques and equipment are great. His knowledge of its history and the genealogy of influences are deep and detailed. He breaks down how a track makes its way from an artist’s bedroom to a studio album, or at least how that happened in the mid 90s when ‘36 Chambers’ was released. He knows how record deals work and where to look for the split of royalties between group members. All in all, he’s very strong on music, how music is made and how the music industry works. He has also analysed the subject matter, and seemingly almost any material connected to it, forensically.


On the other hand, the same magpie approach yields some less shiny objects to adorn the nest. Ashon covers huge swathes of non-musical history, anthropology, sociology, economics and geography in a manner that’s much less clear than the stuff on music. He achieves the considerable feat of being simultaneously superficial and rambling on subjects like race, slavery and economics. He references some great books in his chapter length summaries of these gargantuan subjects but, on the whole, there are much better authors to read on these complex topics. Sometimes, the chapters read more like a stream of consciousness and it’s hard to work out what he’s even on about. The chapter about weed would definitely fall into this category and I wasn’t even stoned when I read it! The overall effect is to diminish the quality of the book and make it too long. Occasionally, a nice connection is made or an interesting tangent described but I would have much preferred it if he got rid of about ten chapters and wrote at greater length on the stuff he is really good at writing about (see para 2), which is often too short and left me wanting more. Maybe I should blame the editor, maybe he got carried away with the idea of having 36 chapters or maybe it’s just me who’s irritated by this sort of thing. One of the chapters contains hundred-odd word summaries of a selection of Shaw Brothers films which influenced the group’s members, which struck me as utterly pointless. I would imagine that Ashon has watched them all, which is what makes him such an expert on this topic, but it brings little insight or enjoyment to the reader to read skeletal plots one after another. Similarly, each chapter has a tiny, black and white photo of what I assume are scenes from Staten Island. Again, it’s evident from the book that he has been there and visited all the central locations in the creation of the album and this results in interesting and valuable prose sections. But why try to crow bar in a bunch of average snaps of suburban NY, which are neither interesting nor valuable? Selection of material and knowing what to focus on and what to leave out are the weakest points of this book.


The style of the prose is mixed too. Sometimes it’s like reading a music magazine with puns and pop culture references. Other times it’s all high falutin Granta / Oxbridge stuff with a religious use of ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ (though he does acknowledge the absurdity of this in a note) and words like ‘impedimenta’ and ‘praxis’ bandied around just so you know he is REALLY VERY CLEVER! The prose certainly wasn’t the highlight of the book even though it was good in places.


The book finishes on a high note with a brilliant conspiracy theory about how Ghostface Killah might have been the real architect of the group’s structure and success, which is normally attributed to the RZA. Only a true aficionado would even be able to construct a theory like this and it showcases all Ashon’s undoubted knowledge and immersion in the subject in a very flattering light.


At its best the book is informative, well written and fascinating. However, too often it strays into vague tangents and attempts to cover way too much ground given its scope. It would have benefitted from tighter focus on the areas where Ashon is a real expert and omission of his ill-fated attempts to explain slavery, capitalism etc. etc. in one chapter.

Helen Garner - Monkey Grip

The prose in this book is generally good. It’s pithy and has the odd memorable observation or phrase. A ‘fingernail moon’, feeling ‘like an old scoured out frying pan’ and the feeling of smack being like ‘warm lead running through your veins’. Unfortunately this is married to some rather less good pretensions. First, what I would call cheesy ejaculations. These are one sentence paragraphs, usually a decent warning for grandiose rubbish, that are seemingly selected for their profundity. If only. A few of the worst offences were:

“A person might not be ashamed to wish for love.” (p9)

“I was afraid of his moods.
I was afraid of my own.
I was afraid of being afraid.” (p32) - why is this italicised? Is it a poem?

“There was a life to be made.” (p75)

“Fear of being loved; fear of not being loved.” (p139)

“I would like to love and yet not to love.” (p203)

As if this kind of thing wasn’t vomit inducing enough, the protagonist is also fond of quoting the I Ching. Of course, this is entirely in keeping with what a bohemian Aussie from the 1970s might well have been like. That still didn’t stop me groaning everytime she attempted to use it to reflect on her life. I thought, ‘have you ever considered the deep and universal truth that a junkie who treats you like shit is a bad choice of lover!?’.


This brings me to my fundamental issue with the book. I did not like Nora and could not empathise with her at all. Her self involvement is truly staggering. The whole book is essentially a stream of consciousness with only one topic covered: her unhealthy and inexplicable obsession with Javo. Other characters never develop much and even central aspects of her own are washed away in the deluge of narcissism. For example, she hardly ever talks about her kids to the point where I spent a hundred odd pages wondering how many she had. It turns out she only has one but doesn’t even mention what she does with her when she goes to Tasmania with Javo. I found it hard to like a character who spent all their time worrying about what an uncaring junkie wants rather than what’s best for their child.


Simultaneously, the self-obsession is mixed with an almost total lack of self-respect. Why have a junkie round your children? Why let him treat you like shit and ignore you in public? She’s not even on smack herself! Love is the excuse given. Either that or the hypnotic nature of Javo’s blue eyes, a fact that’s infuriatingly repeated every 10 pages. While being addicted to heroin is near universally acknowledged to be bad for you, people tend to have a much more positive view of being in love. In this case, the two seem to be as bad as each other!


In spite of not liking the protagonist one bit, this book seems an accurate representation of a deeply troubled woman with very little self-esteem. I wouldn’t recommend it and nor would I say I learned anything much from it because I already knew addicts are emotional black holes and people use love as a justification for incredible stupidity. That said, the prose is good and the presentation feels authentic albeit deeply depressing.

Robert A. Monroe - Journey Out Of The Body

Many people dismiss the idea of out of body experiences (OOBE) as, at best, hallucinations and, at worst, fabrications or a sign of insanity. The only OOBE I’ve ever had was when I took too much ketamine. Testimony like this may be behind a lot of the scepticism people express about this subject. The witnesses are under the influence of drugs or exhibit other external distortions of their perception that harm their credibility. Equally, some accounts of OOBEs are made alongside such extraordinarily bizarre claims it’s hard not to dismiss them as delusions or blatant self-interest.


It’s hard to put Robert Monroe in this category of dubious testimony. He was a successful businessman and ran a radio production company.  He was not a cult leader or a drug addict. Indeed, talking about his OOBEs and publicising them was probably more of a risk to his career than a potential boon to it. He doesn’t make any dogmatic claims about what his OOBEs signify and doesn’t link them to a larger schema of beliefs. He simply reports what he has experienced. Furthermore, he was also involved in scientific research. He conducted research into the effects of sound wave forms on human behaviour and had several patents in the field. As such, he tries to be as empirical as possible in his experimentations with OOBEs and reporting of them. He also explicitly recognises their limitations as data points in the scientific method. He makes no wild claims and he seems to be a demonstrably reasonable and scientific person.

The book explains how he started to have OOBEs and details a representative selection of these experiences taken from his extensive notes. He also makes efforts to corroborate his experiences by attempting to visit people he knows and connect with them both psychologically and physically. He collects and collates a large amount of data and even goes as far as to try to have the experiences under various laboratory conditions. He categorises these experiences into three broad groups. First, moving around the physical world we know detached from his physical body (Locale 1). Second, existing in an entirely psychological realm totally distinct from the physical world, which includes contact with people who are dead in the physical world (Locale 2). Third, is a world ostensibly physical world very similar to our own but with significant differences in technology and societal development (Locale 3). The last realm causes him to posit a universe of parallel worlds. So far, so fantastical! However, the manner in which the book is written and the total absence of self-serving claims about the significance of what he has experienced make his account far more persuasive and interesting than anything I have read on the subject before, which admittedly isn’t much.


It’s possible to argue that some of Monroe’s businesses made it in his interests to promote these ideas. The ‘hemi sync’ machine he invented produces altered states of consciousness; a subject this book really piques the reader’s interest in. It could also be argued that his career as a media producer gave him skills in presenting information persuasively. Against this, The Monroe Institute he founded to further exploration of human consciousness is a non-profit organisation. There again, so are scams like the Donald Trump foundation and the CFA institute! I don’t know enough about the man or his institute to comment meaningfully on this but it would be foolish not to think critically about his motivations.


The book encourages readers to try and have OOBEs themselves using various techniques most easily described as akin to meditation. It doesn’t try to get you to join a cult or give all your worldly possessions to The Monroe Institute! In this way, his aims seem to be benign and motivated by curiosity.

Erich Kastner - Going To The Dogs

I read this book quickly and enjoyed the limpid, unpretentious style. There’s the odd brilliant phrase like the woman laughing so hard the narrator expects her ‘to lay an egg’! The characters and the narrative weren’t so good.


Fabian is an unengaging and deeply annoying protagonist. He hardly seems to know what he wants or even likes most of the time. Alongside this infuriating lack of conviction he is also presented as a morally perfect letting homeless people live in his room and slipping tips to prostitutes who he hasn’t slept with. He isn’t believable or relatable in any way. It’s clear that at some level Fabian stands for decency but the conception is narrow and, frankly, not very enticing. The book has Fabian saying to Labude, ‘when you’ve got your Utopia the people there will still be punching each other on the nose!’ (p38) but neglects to show Fabian’s own character as anything other than pure and good. It’s as if the author recognises the problems inherent to the human condition but then merrily goes on to construct the wholly unlikely and unlikeable Fabian as a paradigm of ‘goodness’ who’s also a paradigm of weakness and indecision! To me, this is simplistic and silly moralising that can’t convey anything meaningful about life.


The book had a consistently prudish tone that I would also consign to the rubbish dump of silly moralising. Later on, Fabian declares, “I look on and wait. I wait for the triumph of decency; when it comes, I can place myself at the world’s disposal.’ (p74) Why? Because he is so inherently decent? If that’s the case why can’t he do something more concrete for himself or the others around him? His excuse is because the world is so depraved. But if he is a human, and not some character like Dostoevsky’s idiot, then he’s exactly the same as the world around him and is simply making childish excuses for his own shortcomings. His excuses are also grandiose and delusional; isn’t he inevitably at the world’s disposal all along? The whole juxtaposition of decency (Fabian) set against its opposite (the World) struck me as self-congratulatory, sanctimonious and, most importantly, totally wrong. How is it possible to see the world as one thing and yourself as something else completely distinct from it? It’s all nonsense to me.


I’m pretty ignorant of 20th century German history so I’m sure a lot of the book’s historical significance is lost on me. Even though I had very little idea about the authors, places and events described in this book it is very obviously written to be some form of allegory or metaphor for its contemporary environment. Of itself, this isn’t a problem. However, I found that the author’s style is too heavy handed in this regard. To be effective, I feel like an allegory has to be a good story first and foremost. This book might be the most wonderful description of, or allegory for, the pre-WW2 Berlin but it comes across poorly as a book! It’s been suggested to me that the book’s status as a classic is as a historical document or source rather than as a novel, which would be in keeping with my reading. Events and characters are clunkily bashed around in a manner that might perfectly describe the ambience of Berlin before 1933 but made for very little enjoyment of the text as a pure story.


One section I did particularly enjoy was this section:

“Labude had stood on solid ground; he had tried to march forward and stumbled. He, Fabian, was floating in the air, because he lacked weight and substance; yet he was still alive. Why did he go on living, when he did not know what he was living for? Why was his friend dead, when he had known why he lived? Life and death still came to the wrong people.” (p155)

To me, this captured the contradiction and incomprehensible nature of life as experienced by humans. Very little can be known, even less understood. This quote clashes violently with my interpretation of the rest of the book where both Fabian and the author seem to share the delusion that they know what is ‘right’, ‘decent’ or ‘moral’ and can instruct others on the subject or absent themselves from action until everyone else conforms with their conception of it. Silly sausages!!


In conclusion, this is a bad book written in good prose. It is probably a much more fulfilling read if you’re an expert in early 20th century German culture but I found a lot of its symbolism heavy handed.

Anand Giridharadas - Winners Take All

In America, since 1980, the average income of the top 1% has tripled and the top 0.001% has multiplied by seven times. At the same time, the average income for the bottom half of the income distribution has increased from $16k to $16.2 - a huge fall in real terms when adjusted for inflation. Since the 1970s, one hundred and seventeen million people have been cut off from economic growth - “a generation’s worth of mind-bending innovation had delivered scant progress for half of Americans” (p16). As anyone aware of Thomas Picketty knows, inequality is rampant and ever increasing around the world, so presumably it’s a good thing that the wealthy are giving away their money? Not so fast!


While billionaires and elites make a big song and dance of their philanthropy and their foundation’s efforts to save humanity and solve its problems, the book argues that these are in fact, “lite facsimiles of change” (p122). Problems must be couched in market and business friendly terms and must never attack the foundations of elite privilege or identify them as part of the problem. The book quotes Ford Foundation president Darren Walker saying, “Inspire the rich to do more good, but never, ever tell them to do less harm; inspire them to give back, but never, ever tell them to take less; inspire them to join the solution, but never, ever accuse them of being part of the problem” (p155).


The book also highlights the problem of philanthropy as a PR tool that can cover up the original origins of the givers' wealth. Didn’t Bill Gates and Microsoft indulge in anti-competitive practices? Didn’t Mark Zuckerburg and Facebook illegally sell their customers’ private data? Didn’t banks cause the financial crisis? Don’t Coke or McDonald's sell products that are bad for their customers' health? Didn’t the Sacklers get rich using aggressive marketing techniques and false claims about their product to turn doctors into legalised heroin dealers? According to this account, “generosity entitles the winners to exemption from questions like these” (p165). I feel he's right about this and the phenomenon is undeniable.


Another issue that is referred to obliquely in the book is that the same people making donations with one hand are often using the other to avoid their responsibilities to society at a corporate or personal level. The rich are the greatest tax dodgers as well as the greatest givers. But while you won’t be invited to view and applaud their convoluted tax structures or aggressive business practices, you will definitely be exposed to nauseating PR about how they’re some form of capitalist Mother Teresa. As any decent defender will tell you, when faced with a tricky opponent “watch the ball, not the feet”. In this case, while the ball is being sheltered in an anonymous shell corporation in the BVI, the feet are performing a dazzling array of stepovers to indicate that the person in question is selfless and altruistic. The hypocrisy, double-think and self-delusion is extreme and Girdharadas does a good job of skewering it. The best is an account of a VC guru called Pishevar attending Summit at Sea and giving a seminar on his investment in Uber, railing against the taxi industry it was disrupting. “He had the audacity to board an expensive, exclusive, invitation-only cruise-ship conference full of entrepreneurs, and yet claim it was the taxi drivers who constituted the unjust cartel.” (p68) You couldn’t make it up.  Again quoting Walker, the book encourages us “to openly acknowledge and confront the tension inherent in a system that perpetuates vast differences in privilege and then tasks the privileged with improving the system.” (p171)


Giridharadas calls this elite bubble of ‘doing well while doing good’, ‘social enterprises’ and ‘win wins’ MarketWorld because of the elites’ love of free market principles. There is no place for the government to solve problems or regulate; business and competition must be unfettered by regulation. It must be private corporations and capital, with their profit motives and drive to ever-increasing efficiency, that provide solutions to the world’s problems. He mocks the absurdity and contradiction inherent in a group of greedy capitalists flying round the world in private jets to meet up in five star hotels and discuss solving the world’s problems without ever mentioning the inequalities and unjust structures that facilitate and perpetuate the very same problems.


The book argues that governments and public institutions are a far better way to address society's problems because they are governed in transparent and democratic ways. This means initiatives do not rely on the whims of billionaires or flounder on the conflicts their corporate interests create. I found this idea to be a bit utopian. To be sure, we should not expect vested interests to change the system. Billionaire philanthropist Laurie Tisch puts it very nicely when she says, “the people who get to take advantage of the system, why would they really want to change it? They’ll maybe give more money away, but they don’t want to radically change it” (p195). However, Giridharadas seems to think that the 117m mentioned at the book's outset should want to change the system. Predictably, the turkeys will vote against Christmas; but what about the chickens, or maybe sheep, who should be voting for it but don’t?  Why are Trump and tax cuts for the rich what democracy has chosen rather than Bernie Sanders?  I would broadly agree with Giridharadas that more progressive taxation and a bigger government would help the average American, but the average American doesn’t seem to agree.  Why is this?  This isn’t really addressed in the book even though it is a serious practical problem for his vision.  One explanation is put forward by Tisch in the same interview: that being rich is aspirational.  Poor people want tax cuts because they think they might be rich one day, or so the theory goes.  This is dismissed by Giridharadas as self-interest, which it is in Tisch’s case, but the fact that poor people are voting for Trump is not evidence of elite self-interest.  It is a popular endorsement of radically different ideas to the ones he proposes and this isn’t tackled in any meaningful way.


Writing about a panel discussion at the Clinton Global Initiative, the author criticises global elites for assuming that ordinary voters are gullible idiots who have been tricked into voting for populism.  While the same elites continue ignoring the fact the populist vote is a rejection of the system they have presided over and thrived under.  By the same token, the author doesn’t do enough to explain why people are choosing a radically different solution to the same problem he identifies.  Maybe he feels the voting populus have been duped or brainwashed by MarketWorld, which sounds pretty close to the elite view he criticises.  I would have liked it if the author addressed the issue of populism, and how it relates to his ideas, more explicitly.  He writes a lot in praise of democracy and democratic institutions but doesn’t talk about a situation where democracy is voting to dismantle its institutions and cede more and more ground to the private sector.


Personally, I think it is because most people have a far more positive view of capitalism than Giriharadas does and a far less positive view of government.  I’m not able to comment on if this is right or wrong but it seems a majority of voters in America feel this way.  Most people would probably link their job, the success of America and much human progress to capitalism and an idea like Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand.’  At one point, the book quotes the founder of B corporations as saying, “we’re not going to change everybody. We’re not changing human greed. Businesses act badly.” (p251).  But individuals also act ‘badly’ when they buy the cheapest product rather than the most ethical one and half of Americans have no choice in that because they are so poor. People see government as bureaucratic and nepotistic while capitalism is seen as meritocratic, lowering costs through competition and giving people the freedom of choice.  These ideas might not be entirely true and may only be in vogue because of elites manipulating politics and the narrative around capitalism.  Nevertheless, it seemed odd to me that the author can endorse big government and regulation so uncritically when he’s written a book about the Indian economy where big government seems to largely result in big corruption.


It’s probably unfair to ask this book to be too specific on details when its scope is broad ideas.  However, I do think that it should have addressed the question of why people think capitalism is great even though it excludes them from economic progress (the legacy of Cold War propaganda?) and offered a more even-handed view of the strengths and weaknesses of both capitalism and big government.  The book uses an Upton Sinclair quote - “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it” (p87) - to illustrate how elites don’t want to change the inequalities they benefit from.  Could it also be that many poor people think the same way?  That they feel their salary depends on capitalism and free markets?  Giridharadas would probably think this is foolish, and I would agree, but isn’t this what Americans are doing when they choose Trump over Bernie Sanders?


The author is very well-read and, on the basis of the interviewees, very well connected. The book adopts what I would call a Michael Lewis-esque approach where potentially dry topics are made more accessible and appealing via the introduction of individual’s stories.  Each chapter introduces us to a character or two and through their experiences and lives we examine a general concept in more depth. S ome of these work better than others.  The chapters about how academic Amy Cuddy has to tone down her research on sexism to get acceptance from MarketWorld or how Darren Walker has to adjust his message to his audience were fascinating and instructive.  The chapter about a lady who started Portfolios With Purpose seemed unfairly critical of her for not focussing on investment bank bond trading practices instead and felt like a bit of a stretch.  I suspect Giridharadas will not be on her Christmas card list and she’s probably not the only interviewee upset with their presentation in the book.  This is no bad thing.  The writing is generally good and I enjoyed reading it, although the author has an unusual propensity to hyphenate anything that moves (cruise-ship, high-level, net-positive).


The book can be a bit sanctimonious at times.  Giridharadas likes to cast his role as “to speak truth to power” (p266), which is pretty grandiose in itself.  Sometimes these truths seem to be of a particular, liberal, elite brand that not everyone would necessarily concur with.  A career woman at Hooters is looked down upon by Giriharadas because the business she works for commodifies women’s breasts; sugary drinks and snack makers are pushing addictive substances to children and the whole women’s beauty industry is criticised for perpetuating sexism (p230-231).  These ideas probably wouldn’t meet much resistance in academic, liberal circles.  However, just like disadvantaged people voting for Trump, it’s not clear that everyone believes in the same truths as this book. Given that he often appeals to the strength of democratic institutions, I felt there was too little analysis of how the current situation is a product of democracy.


I also felt there may be an inherent contradiction in the book's advice. Is it an example of exactly what it is criticising? If what the world needs is less plans from elites to make the world better, isn’t this just another plan from a member of the elite to make the world better? If you look at Anand Giridharadas’s CV, he is undoubtedly a member of the elite he is criticising. Harvard, McKinsey, The Aspen Institute, the list goes on.


One of the major themes of the book is “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” a quote attributed to Audre Lorde (p129).  But Giridharadas never thinks to apply it to himself.  It is referred to several times and used as the opening quotation for a chapter entitled ‘Arsonists Make The Best Firefighters’.  Alongside it is a Donald Trump quote, “no one knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it’ (p129).  The Trump quote is used ironically to show the absurdity of someone who has profited so much from an unjust system purporting to help fix it.  Given it is being used as an example of how current problems should not be fixed by insiders, I was amazed to find Giridharadas writing in the acknowledgements, seemingly without any hint of irony, that his status as an elite didn’t represent a problem because “the best way to know about a problem is to be part of it” (p267)!  Isn’t this more or less what Trump is saying?  It’s fair to point out that the ideas in this book are anti-elite, but they are also indisputably coming from a member of the elite, which is exactly what he is telling readers to reject!  I don’t think it’s fatal to everything he says that there is some contradiction.  His ideas aren’t invalid just because he happens to be privileged and being an insider does help to elucidate the inner workings of the problem.  I just thought it was a bit glib of him to mock Trump for saying it and then say it himself. It hints at a tendency to play to the crowd much like a politician or a fundraiser. At the end of the book, I still felt the niggling gripe of:  If the world needs fewer ideas on how to improve it from privileged elites, why are his privileged ideas an exception to his own rule?

In a similar vein, Giridharadas describes a distinction between “public intellectuals”, who pose a genuine threat to winners, and “thought leaders”, who promote the winners’ values.  The author seems to place himself in the public intellectuals category and I would agree that the contents of his book seem unappealing to global elites.  Except that they all seem to love it!  Presumably the book has been mainly read by elites, so what does all this praise from elites mean?  I was reminded of the famous Orwell declaration that ‘“journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.”  The closer you look, the more it seems that Giridharadas also has at least some of the attributes of a thought leader, as defined by himself.  The book is praised in gushing terms by Bill Gates on the back cover, even though he could be seen as the personification of everything that is criticised in the book.  It is a Financial Times book of the year.  An Economist book of the year.  It is recommended by the NY Times.  He gives TED talks, Google talks, has more than 650k Twitter followers and is an editor at large of Time magazine.  It made me wonder about his status in MarketWorld.  Is Giridharadas like a MarketWorld sanctioned court jester?  Is he permitted to criticise, within limits, because he’s seen to be amusing or helpful in some other way?  The juxtaposition of a book criticizing elite billionaires while they praise it for doing so is weird.  I suspect it is a situation, mentioned in Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, where everyone thinks they are an exception to the general rule.  Giridharadas thinks he’s an exception to his own rule about ideas from elites being unhelpful.  Bill Gates probably thinks the book is about other philanthropists, not him.


Leaving aside the internal contradiction I am struggling with, this was a good book.  The author is well informed and has worked hard to pull together lots of great material in a readable format accessible to the layperson like me.  It posed lots of interesting questions and made me think about all sorts of new ideas.  I would definitely recommend it but wished it was a little bit more self-aware!