It's been a rocky start for the year in terms of reading, but I think here are two noteworthy books I've read this month:
Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
First off, the tone is not as sensationalist as the title suggests. Second, the subject here is the "right" exclusively(the Koch brothers, their network, and predecessors specifically) so if you instantly recoil to that sort of thing, it's going to be a problem. It very rarely reaches to paint a narrative or character smear, but there are a few instances where a seemingly tenuous connection(a relatively tiny amount of funding) is portrayed as definitive, or a figure is shown to be a hypocrite for the morality they preach or endorse via personal anecdote. It's mostly very well researched and reported is what I'm trying to get at.
Anyway, what this book is actually about is a history of wealthy political donors(on the right) from about the Second World War to today. As income inequality rose drastically over that period of time very wealthy individuals have gained influence in the political system, Dark Money takes the reader through the process. The money flowing to universities to promote libertarian ideology, to various elections on all levels of government, synthetic or "astroturf" grass roots movements, influence in courts etc. Besides the infrastructure, it goes over some of the various victories and defeats during that time with the onus being on the Koch brothers. So, the changes to tax law, Citizens United, the Tea Party, a shift in climate change debate, but also the 2012 election.
Really good book, especially for someone like me who doesn't really follow politics. Not quite on the top tier, The Big Short level of non fiction but that's ok. Quotes:
"It all started when I was a little boy. One day, my father gave me an apple. I soon sold it for five dollars and bought two apples and sold them for ten. Then I bought four apples and sold them for twenty. Well, this went on day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, until my father died and left me three hundred million dollars!" David Koch
But the spectacle of the Speaker of the House, who was among the most powerful elected officials in the country, third in line in the order of presidential succession, traveling to the Manhattan office of a billionaire businessman to ask for his help in an internecine congressional fight captures just how far the Republican Party’s fulcrum of power had shifted toward the outside donors by 2011.
This time, the Koch network aimed to spend $889 million in the 2016 election cycle. The sum was more than twice what the network had spent in 2012. It rivaled the record $1 billion that each of the two major political parties was expected to spend, securing their unique status as a rival center of gravity.
Also, I just finished
Never Let Me Go. Generally, I don't like delving into childhood or a narrator reminiscing about childhood in detail in "serious"(this is my way of excluding stuff like Harry Potter essentially) literature, so I had to struggle through the first half of this one. But it made up for it in the latter portion. The premise is not novel now and I don't think it was back in 2005 either, but the relationship between the three main characters really carries. There were a couple of scenes towards the end especially when the feels were really hitting home. Four stars!
