Reviews for Bank strategies and challenges in the new Europe

The average rating for Bank strategies and challenges in the new Europe based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-03-08 00:00:00 Carol Ace Beatty's book is certainly combative enough and "passionate" enough to warrant some of the praise showered on it by media reviewers. But "passion" is too often a codeword for "bias," and congenial though Beattty's view of the Gilded Age may be, there is no denying its lopsidedness. In his opening sentence Beatty throws down the gauntlet: "This book tells the saddest story,"he writes. "How, having redeemed democracy in the Civil War, America betrayed it in the Gilded Age." This is certainly high-minded, but is it accurate? Was the United Staes "democratic" prior to the Civil War? How did the War "redeem" "democracy"? Wouldn't it be more accurate simply to state that Reconstruction was the betrayal, and not the Gilded Age per se? Professional historians generally strive for some semblance of balance in dealing with the past, especially with a past as contentious as that of post Civil War America. Beatty's book, while interesting and at times engaging, is written with both eyes on America's more recent Gilded Age, the one that lasted through the 1990s. Lack of balance doesn't make for a bad read, but a poor prose style does; and Beatty's writing is at times grating to the point where it disconnects the reader from the tale and leaves him in a fog of confusion. Whole chunks have to be re-read and re-assembled by the reader, in order to escape the Yodaesque nightmare of inverted clauses and convoluted sentences. An easy read it is not.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-06 00:00:00 Michael Burwell History repeats itself, and the history the United States is repeating here in the early 21st Century is the period from 1865 to 1900 that historians often refer to as the Gilded Age. All the rights and freedoms promised by Abraham Lincoln were thrown into the dustbin of history by the alleged losers of the Civil War. Corporations became the beneficiaries of the war's only victories (the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments) and the reaper of America's new industrial fortunes at the expense of the people who fought, suffered and died in the war. It was an Age of Betrayal and Jack Beatty goes into great historical detail in describing how it unfolded and how it set the stage for the New Deal era. The Gilded Age has always been a mystery to me, so this book was the missing puzzle piece between the Civil War and the New Deal. It is a terribly depressing tale, but one that every American should know if they wish to understand what happened after Lincoln died and what's going on now here in 2013. The only reason it doesn't get five stars is because it is an intense book, written with an academic level that sometimes lost me in its diction and paragraph structure. Beatty is a very accomplished writer, and his command of the subject is absolute within the pages, but sometimes I felt lost amid the details and names. But the book is filled with too much historical knowledge to put down. It's a fascinating read. His humanitarian perspective is refreshing in a world dominated by corporate propaganda, and after reading this book, you know where the roots of corporate oligarchy in America begin.