Donald L. Barlett (1936–2024)

This book was published in the early nineties right before the dotcom boom. It is an excellent explanation of what happened in the eighties and the problems we created because of tax cuts and corporations offshoring jobs and investments. It focuses on the excess of the super rich, income inequality, and corporations offshoring money. Nothing this book has talked about has been fixed. I find it fascinating that the arguments used by Trump on his base are here--your jobs are going off shore! show more Other countries aren't paying their share! The little guy is getting hurt! But somehow the argument in the book and its reasons have been twisted and now we have this disaster of a President telling the screwed over what they want to hear while Paul Ryan guts our tax system even further. The President and his cronies laundering money and peddling influence while raking in cash and the poor are only going to get poorer. Oh, and healthcare still hasn't been fixed. Do not read unless you want to feel very pessimistic. show less

This book was fascinating, but at times so detailed that it was tedious to read. I would say the detail is simultaneously the book's greatest asset and it's greatest liability.

The thing that struck me most about Hughes, who died well before I was born, is that his persona still lives on as a great, eccentric, rich aviator. He was actually a horrible person whose stubbornness and indecision ran nearly every company that he started into the ground and bankrupted businesses that he purchased. show more He also manipulated the government nearly to the extent that Republicans do today, all so that he could avoid paying taxes and appear to be a "good guy." He wasn't that great of a pilot, he was a horrible businessperson, and he was a terrible human.

I read the 1979 version of this book. I was left curious if the Hughes estate had been settled... apparently in 2010 it finally finished going through rounds and rounds of litigation. His death seemed to bring about the worst in the people who could have had a piece of the pie. show less

This is a thoroughly engrossing biography by two newspapermen who know their craft and the art of succinct reportage. It is especially to be admired because the coverage of this sad case extends so widely to include the machinations of the U.S. government to its highest levels, in tandem with the frenzy of the American legal system.
Howard Hughes life was morbidly fascinating because it reveals the crippled personality of an obsessive compulsive victim. That one so rich and gifted could fall show more and fail so completely is hard to fathom. show less

This book is quite aggravating and rage inducing. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but it shows how powerless the "Middle Class" of America is to define it's own fate. With most of Congress in the palm of the rich and other interests what hope does the little guy have for anything? With many jobs going over to China and India where they can pay a fraction of what they do over here so they can cut costs and rake in massive profits... it just sickened me. Especially with the conditions over in China show more and India being so terrible. How do the rich expect to stay wealthy if the United States isn't able to buy any of the products set out by companies? I don't know, but I certainly can't afford a lot of the things offered nowadays, and I don't care to if they are produced in sweatshops and other terrible places.

Like take the manufacturer of iPhones over in China. Those guys pay their workers fractions of pennies per hour and force them to live in terrible conditions. The conditions were so bad and demoralizing that many committed suicide. Then the powers that be were horrified, pleaded with workers to "value their own lives" and erected nets so they couldn't even feel the sweet embrace of death. Tim Cook himself went over and confirmed many of these things while raking in profits of millions of dollars.

So a lot of jobs go overseas or are outsourced. Some arguments for this was that taking away the livelihood of one person to bring up four Chinese or Indian people was a "fair trade to make." I'm sorry, but when you start to play around with peoples' lives like that, you lose credibility with me.

In any case, this book is a true masterly work that deserves to be read by the dwindling middle class of The United States of America. show less