Rating: 
Summary: Shrill left-wing edu-tainers trying to be funny
Review: The proliferation of shrill, left-wing books, trying to be funny while telling us the nation has been hijacked by rich white frat boys is getting tiresome. What's getting more tiresome is how few Americans are getting the point.
This book has some good information mixed in with a lot of cliched and not-particularly-funny jokes. He lost a lot of points from me for not providing footnotes. Much of his information is verifiable elsewhere, but I have no way to check his credibility when he doesn't cite his sources. I'm also getting tired of the "patriotic liberal". Not that I assume these guys don't have some affinity for their home country, but Hightower (like Michael Moore) seems to feel they can only sell their idea if they convince the reader they are MORE patriotic than their opponents. When I see the stuff they're talking about, I don't feel love for my country, I feel shame. They also seem intent on convincing me that the vast majority of Americans are certifiable geniuses. Whereas, when I watch the suburbanites flock in droves to Walmart, driving their SUV's while stopping off afterwards at McDonalds, I have to wonder how the average American is still walking upright.
I give Hightower credit for making the corporte scandals less confusing and more accessible, but I just found the book neither intellectual nor entertaining.
Rating: 
Summary: The Texas Low Down
Review: This was my first book by this author and it will probably be my last. It was not that he does that bad of a job or that his ideas are all that bad, it is just that I have a certain amount of capacity for the liberal folksy Texas populists and I tend to like Molly Ivins to fill it. With that being said I did enjoy parts of the book. This author is his best when he is in full anti Bush rant. He just has some way of making, what amounts to a 50 page complaint session, into a mildly humorous and not very threatening commentary. It must be his Texan down home way of speaking because you know he is mad, it is just that it does not come across and a vain popping, red faced tirade. If you have read more then a few anti Bush books then there is not going to be anything new in this one. The authors hits at Bush on all the standbys, his military service, business life and public service in Texas. He also takes a rather dim view of the political appointments Bush has made and what this group has done during the first two years. Again its the basic Bush detractor play book.
What the author adds in addition to this is attacks on big business, Wal Mart, environment items and overall Liberal agenda items. Where this author lost me was on many of his attacks on business. I agreed with him when he was giving big CEO's grief about looting their companies and the massive excesses that seem to hit the news. I even gave half an ear to the arguments about outsourcing jobs and the effect that has on the middle class. But the author spent a good deal of time complaining about Wal Mart and its negative effect on communities and their employees. All the author does is complain and I guess try to make some point that the world would be much better if all the chain stores were gone and it was all mom and pop shopping. It sure seamed like the author was flying in the face of reality to think that because Wal Mart might not be a great place to work that they should not be allowed to operate. The author talks about the harsh conditions at Wal Mart and the high turn over, maybe the high turn over is because it is not that great of a place to work and the employees find different and possibly better jobs? Anyway, these type of protectionist retail trade talks do more to drive people away from the Democratic party then anything, how many people want to pay more for basic items just to keep an inefficient store open?
I guess the last area that I want to comment on is the rather dull and sappy section of the book that I can only relate to as the love everybody and everything section. The author dug into the 1960's feel good liberalism that died a long time ago and does not seem to get much traction now. No matter how much he is going to hope that we all take into consideration the environment and everybody else's feelings with each of our actions, it is not going to happen. What I guess I would have liked a little more of is some insight to W from a fellow Texan and maybe more background when Bush was the Governor of Texas. Overall the book was average. The humor is ok but a little of it goes a long way. There is only so many west Texas analogies involving farm animals that one can take. The political commentary is not overly original and in the very crowded field of anti Bush books you need to shine to really standout. If you are a big fan of the author then you will probably not care what I have to say.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting and Funny; the Best of the Best Sellers?
Review: Well, this is the internet, isn't it. Unfortunately, that means a lot of people have the opportunity to say dumb stuff about a book that they probably haven't read. Anti-American? I'd like a definition of what it means to be "American" please.I digress... In any event, I've read Michael Moore, but he is a bit too smug and self-promoting for me. I've glanced through Ann Coulter but she just hangs herself left and right. I heard Jim Hightower talk recently and liked his good 'ol boy hell raising spirit (and, more so, the fact that he looks you in the eye and is fairly methodical in answering questions down to the detail). I work for a large corporation and see first hand a lot of what he talks about, so a lot of his discussion of big business (especially as tied to government) rang true with me (and by my research is mostly spot on). In general though, I don't find many of the "Top Sellers" to be all that eye opening and prefer to try to do my own research apart from these books. So I guess my final review is: its a humerous book, seemingly more meaty than others in its class, and serves as a one of the better introductions of topics that are in the spotlight today (in that it doesn't insult you with idiotic humor, like Coulter, or the smugness of Mike Moore).
Rating: 
Summary: A Michael Moore wannabe
Review: When I first came across this book I thought this might be a liberal point-of-view that would be humorous and enlightening in the same vein of Al Franken. Sadly, it is the complete opposite. Hightower perhaps tries TOO hard to be funny. About 60% of this book must either be in upper case or with exclamation marks, and there are way too many sarcastic or cynical comments. Ranting? It was more like rambling!
His main shtick seems to be one of the oldest complaints of the left: big daddy capitalist owns the world. He wants to prove that Bush is more corrupt than any other president, but this boils down to simply finding capitalist conspiracies any where he can. For example, he uses an isolated incident and a source of "some disgruntled high officers" (whatever those are) that soldiers had to buy flashlights to go into an Afghan cave. First, most soldiers in Afghanistan are in fact well armed, and if we do indeed buy from corporations it is because we have done so for years, going back to WWII. He later on goes on to rant about NAFTA and the WTO, calling them "twin sledgehammers giving global corporations the power to crush the strength of workers and environmentalists around the world." (pg. 99) Strong words, but then again the WTO also opens up trade to third-world or developing nations (which make up of 3/4 of WTO's member nations) and sends technicians to train foreign governments to improve their quality-of-life. NAFTA has also helped improve Mexico's economy and increase jobs for the "workers" the WTO apparently oppresses, not to mention the organization has been accredited to the improvement of many South American nations from their 1980's recessions. It then seems odd to almost compare the World Trade Organization to toxic waste as Hightower does on page 92.
I find it ironic that Hightower continually tries to claim the Bush presidency insults American intellegence, but I found my own intellegence insulted reading this book. On page 33 he attempts to claim that the Bush administration, in creating a government similar to George Orwell's "1984," talks to America in newspeak with such words as streamline, archaic, flexibility, and balance. Mr. Hightower, I hate to tell you but...those are real words. George Orwell's newspeak was the combination of words to shorten phrases, and was inspired by such Soviet models as AgitProp or ComIntern. In fact...the only newspeak we find in this book is by Mr. Hightower himself: on page 3 he describes the Bush's connections to Corporations as "BushCo"; on page 98 he calls Democrats who wobble between sides "wobblycrats"...there are others scattered through out the chapters. Another moment that insulted me was on page 81 when he says "the annual Pentagon nut is now at $400 billion. That's almost $4 trillion over the next decade." As you can see, he simply multiplied 400 by 10. In actuality, depending on circumstances, that might either be lower or higher, but showing he knows simple multiplicity is simply ridiculous and reminds me of when the news said the total number of AIDS victims is "the same as the population of Australia" - it doesn't make sense, it just sounds smart.
His understanding of American history or politics seems odd. He fails to realize, for example, that even if Bush got 24% of eligible voters in the 2000 elections, as he claims, Gore got the same amount. Let me explain: both Bush and Gore got 48% of the total votes (source: CNN's website) so if we're only counting eligible voters (ie, people who could vote who did) Gore would only come in around 24% as well (wow, and Hightower accuses Bush of spinning the truth!). On censorship, Hightower uses the example of a girl who got a bad grade on a paper that questioned the American flag's meaning; the paper included the words: "School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge justice and equality." I think the girl might have gotten a bad grade for her failure of understanding some basic things: first, the pledge starts out as "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and TO THE REPUBLIC FOR WHICH IT STANDS." It also includes later on: "with LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL." Apparently even Hightower can't remember the full Pledge of Allegiance, because he goes on to say that the girl is "but one example of the phenomenal strength that we can draw on from young folks today." (pg. 139) On a final note, a most humorous bit was when he tried to compare the WTO protests to the Boston Tea Party, which Hightower claims "rallied the colonies' rebels to the democratic cause." (pg. 143) Hightower must have missed the lesson in history class, because few colonists joined the revolutionary cause after the Party. Even when the Revolutionary War broke out, only 1/3 of Americans supported it.
Since Hightower seems to have quarrels with a lot about our nation's current situation, you're probably wondering if he has figured out a way to solve it. I will give you a sampling of how he thinks we can solve our energy dependance problems, the first one being to take a group of scientists and have them work to make cheap energy resources. Of course...they have already been doing this for the past two decades, but Hightower has a solution to the slow results: "lock them in a room, and don't let them out until they make the advances needed." (pg. 128) What he has just told us is this: take a bunch of scientists, and put them really hard at work finding cheap resources! This is like saying, "We will end war by getting rid of all our weapons" - it is a very simple solution to a much more complicated problem. The second snippet of Mr. Hightower's solutions is "building a high-speed, energy-effecient, 21st century train system to criss-cross the nation, linking all cities with fast, reliable service." (pg. 129) Once again, Mr. Hightower looks at the situation with rose-colored glasses. He has just told us to make the greatest train system ever, not only with modern-day technology but also with the best service possible. To do this, you need money and time. The government cannot possible afford this, as even grants to the airlines fail to stimulate flight-based economies. The only option for this would to allow the re-emergence of several train companies like that of the 19th century...and I seriously doubt Mr. Hightower, looking at his previous record regarding corporations, wants that.
All in all, this was a remarkably fun book to read - as in I had fun nitpicking the fine details. I could write a longer review of the piece, but I've already written too much.
Rating: 
Summary: Finally something i can give my parents!
Review: Yes there are a lot of books like this around. Many are really good. The problem I have had is that many of them have sections that my parents would find as distasteful or anti-religous. This makes them counter productive. This book on the other hand is respectful, funny, and VERY pointed as well as being filled with good common sense. VERY good!
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