The Healthcare Cure: How Sharing Information Can Make the System Work Better

By Jeff Margolis
Prometheus Books, $21.00, 226 pages

Jeff Margolis’ The Healthcare Cure: How Sharing Information Can Make the System Work Better, is a close look at the deficiencies in American healthcare from a systems perspective, exploring the ways in which health information technology and evidence-based medicine can help control costs by helping to align incentives among the many stakeholders in what Margolis refers to as a “zero-sum game.” As CEO of healthcare technology company TriZetto Group, Margolis is an industry “insider”, offering a firsthand look at the ways information technology can bridge the growing gap between cost and quality of care through a system called “Integrated Healthcare Management” (IHM).  In IHM, consumers are part of a tailored health plan that provides financial incentives for following evidence-based medical practices, which reduce overall costs in the healthcare system by eliminating unnecessary and redundant tests and generally call for less invasive procedures to help with common ailments.

While Margolis’ utopian world of IHM seems unlikely to come to fruition in the exact manifestation proposed in this book, the current national focus on healthcare reform makes the timing perfect for an informed dialogue about the role healthcare information technology and information-sharing can play in keeping costs under control. In addition to offering a thought-provoking solution in which major stakeholders collaborate and work together to make care more affordable instead of fostering an unsustainable environment that drives costs continually upward with little improvement in quality, The Healthcare Cure is an excellent primer on healthcare basics for non-insiders looking to become better educated on the complex workings of such a massive system. Particularly during a time of such polarization on a critical issue like healthcare, it’s important that intelligent and well-formed ideas like Margolis garner consideration as we make our way toward a re-imagined system of American healthcare.

Reviewed by Alexandra Walford

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23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism

By Ha-Joon Chang
Bloomsbury Press, $25.00, 304 pages

“In the history of human thought, science has often come out of superstition. Astronomy came out of astrology. Chemistry came out of alchemy. What will come out of economics?” Bernard Lewis.

Nothing illustrates that better than the situation we’re in today according to Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. Mr. Chang is an economist of Korean extraction who now teaches at Cambridge University. He has chosen 23 aspects of free market economics that he believes have brought us close to ruin. He presents a fresh view that mixes theory, statistics and history in an understandable and easy-to-read way. He believes that even though we don’t understand all of the technical details, we can still understand enough to make us what he calls ‘active economic citizens,’ just as we don’t need to be experts in diseases to know there should be hygiene standards in food factories, butcher shops and restaurants.

Some examples of his 23 Things include: Thing 1: There is no such thing as a free market, only variations in the strength of regulation. Thing 2: Companies should not be run in the interests of their owners because if the owners are stockholders, they have the least interest in the long-term health of the company. Thing 12: Government can pick winners through cooperative ventures, research, and development assistance. Thing 13: Making rich people richer doesn’t make the rest of us richer. There are 19 other thought provoking Things that will permanently change the way you look at the news and our government. This is a must-read if you believe something’s wrong but don’t know what.

Reviewed by Norman West

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The World America Made

By Robert Kagan
Alfred A. Knopf, $21.00, 141 pages

It is without a doubt that the United States has had a major impact on the world since the end of World War II. We helped rebuild Europe and Japan, we countered the threat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War; we founded the United Nations with a mandate to help keep the peace around the world. We built the modern financial system. In The World America Made, Robert Kagan explores how the United States got to this point, and how the country looked before it became a super-power. Kagan argues that the reason we have long-term peace is because the United States is the only dominant power. He also explores what might change if the United States was no longer the dominant force it is today. Would the current economic system still be the same? Would the United Nations still exist, would stability and peace be maintainable?

This book will appease those on the “right” side of American politics, as Kagan is a noted conservative author. His writing style is approachable, but at times, his analysis is a bit weak.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter

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Clean Energy Nation: Freeing America from the Tyranny of Fossil Fuels

By Jerry McNerney, PhD & Martin Cheek
Amacom, $27.95, 310 pages

The future of energy is in flux.  Many people agree that we are near, or close to approaching, the world of peak oil.  Many more people are starting to see the affects of climate change from more extreme weather events and not just in warming temperatures.  In this book Congressman Jerry McNerney and Martin Cheek take on the task of helping Americans kick the habit of fossil fuels and moving to cleaner burning fuels.  Not only to save our economy, but to save our health and the planet.  They split the book into three parts, the first covers the history of the fossil fuels, the second discusses how energy effects different parts of the economy and people’s lives and the third covers what our energy future will look like.

There are many books like this one on the market.  Unfortunately there is little to distinguish this book from the rest.  Al Gore did an excellent job in his book, and this feels like they are just trying to follow in his footsteps.  Also the writing repeats itself and by the end of the book you will have read the same sentence many times.  It is a brave attempt, sloppy execution.

Reviewed by Kevin Winter

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Finding Fernanda: Two Mothers, One Child, and a Cross-Border Search for Truth

By Erin Siegal
Cathexis Press, $14.95, 280 pages

 Finding Fernanda began as Erin Siegal’s graduate thesis at the Stabile Center for Investigative Reporting.  What emerged from her rigorous research is a horrifyingly real account of a Guatemalan mother’s search for her kidnapped daughters, Maria Fernanda and Ana Cristina, and an American mother’s roller coaster attempt to adopt them. Through the stories of these women, Siegal exposes the corruption that can be hidden beneath the charitable veneer of adoption. The gross misconduct used to deceive both women, the commercialization of children, and the inaction of authorities prompt readers to question their own moral and cultural values.

Though less stylistically seamless than Tracy Kidder or Benjamin Skinner’s writing, Finding Fernanda nonetheless establishes Siegal as an inspired non-fiction author. Her ruthless search for truth unfolds a riveting story that incorporates all stakeholders’ points of view. At times, her thorough presentation of facts becomes cumbersome, particularly in the last third of the uncorrected proof. In stark contrast to the rest of the book, the scarcity of details surrounding the adoption of a third child, Emily Belle, also raises questions. Despite these flaws, the book remains a compelling narrative. Siegal’s account inspires trust in intuition and the championing of truth and justice.

Reviewed by Halley Greene

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Once Upon a Car: The Fall and Resurrection of America’s Big Three Auto Makers–GM, Ford, and Chrysler

By Bill Vlasic
William Morrow, $26.99, 400 pages

In 2008, the U.S. auto industry was sick enough to land in the Intensive Care Unit. Neither the economic experts nor the auto industry executives knew then if The Big 3 would survive. This is Bill Vlasic’s detailed, engrossing account of what went on behind closed corporate doors in the Motor City.  It is, to a great extent, a true morality play with good and evil in the form of Alan Mulally and Rick Wagoner.  Mulally’s forward thinking ensured that the Ford Motor Company would survive without bail-out funds, while Wagoner was the CEO who lost $45 billion for General Motors (GM) in just 15 months.  Once Upon a Car also covers the failed 9-year marriage between Daimler-Benz and Chrysler, which started out as a mad romance and ended in tears and acrimony.

“In its time of need, GM was missing the one attribute that could save it: credibility.”

In this account, Vlasic strongly and convincingly argues that the Obama administration’s decision to give taxpayer dollars to GM and Chrysler was essential. The disposal of Wagoner was one positive outcome. After reading Car, you’ll understand why Detroit’s back in the game after crashing and burning. The Motor City’s now producing cars like the Ford Focus instead of Hummers, which in the end is a very good result.

Reviewed by Joseph Arellano

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Puritan Islam: The Geoexpansion of the Muslim World

By Barry A. Vann
Prometheus Books, $26.00, 228 pages

This novel describes how the spread of Islam will end Western civilization, as we know it. In this short, straight to the point novel about Islam, it is clear the author does not have faith in religions he does not understand, or the growing Muslim population. Attempting to prove his point, Vann includes maps and charts to show the ever-evolving world of religion. Changing not for the better, Vann writes.

He implicates that the most violent Muslims will overpower the peaceful Muslims, in an act of malevolence that is truly against the laws of Islam. Muslims are traditionally a peaceful people, and his theory of newfound violence is not supported with hard evidence or a debatable thesis. This is an inflammatory, alarmist novel that is trying to instill fear in Americans gullible enough to believe it. It would clearly offend Islamists for his characterization of the religion. This is a colorful read for those willing to see an interesting point of view on Islam.

Reviewed by Liz Friedman

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Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative

By Lawrence Weschler
Counterpoint, $26.00, 306 pages

Notice the subtitle: adventures in “the” narrative.  Not “a” narrative or even just “narrative.”  For author Lawrence Weschler, we can conclude, form matters. His new book cobbles together recent examples of this form, in essays and long journalism on topics ranging from social commentary, cinema studies and travel writing. In each, he brings to voice the role that narrative play: the shaping of expectations, the discovery of evidence for experience, the particular art of sharpening human meaning in search of an unfolding world. For Weschler, the narrative is a device worthy of its own space on the craft table.

While the book offers an expected eclecticism of selection, certain narratives stand out as exemplars of his purpose. I am particularly drawn to the two whole sections, “Some probes into the terrain of human rights” and “Four walkabouts.”  Each contains a group of essays that demonstrate best the writer’s struggle to make sense of a strange place, while not always fully aware of how to do so. That just means that the best narratives are often those that find a way to speak to a reader’s own needs through an author’s gift for self-discovery.

Neil Liss

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Against Thrift

By James Livingston
Basic Books, $27.95, 242 pages

Livingston, an academic with a bent for sharp argumentation, diagnoses the current economic crisis as a product of “superfluous profit”. A massive shift of wealth away from labor and into corporate returns has fueled a cascading loss of consumption, leading to ever tighter margins on wages and again more intensive removal of profit from the real economy. As with the Great Depression, he argues, the way out of stagnation is through the pocketbooks of labor. Consumption as economic patriotism.

The writing is swift, but in service to an overconfident point of view. Livingston sacrifices complexity of analysis for ingenuity of idea, zipping the reader along with an efficiency common to polemicists. The reader is treated to a full-bore progressivism presented as common sense.   This style gets tiresome, as the professor opts for preaching over teaching but fans of his prescriptions will eagerly plunge on.  Those in need of more nuance will start leafing ahead.  The more novel and counter-intuitive part of his thinking, that social ends rather than profit motives should guide public policy, get washed out by the zeal to argue the morality of his vision.

Neil Liss

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Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care

By Stuart Altman and David Shactman
Prometheus Books, $26.00, 430 pages

I was really miffed at Obama for throwing us under the bus by giving away first Single Payer and then the Public Option, and finally passing a good, but way less than perfect, health care reform law. That was before reading Power, Politics and Universal Health Care. The authors have thoroughly disabused me of the notion that Obama could have produced perfect health care legislation.

The sub title is: The inside story of a century long battle. The inside part comes from Stuart Altman, one of the authors, who has been involved in many administrations either as an official or as an advisor and was involved in the Obama effort as well. Each of the attempts for expanded health care is chronicled in a way that exposes the barriers to progress, which are many.

The upshot is, that it takes an almost perfect storm of power, leadership, and perseverance to pass anything through the U.S. Congress, let alone something as complicated as health care reform.

This is an important book. It explains the multitude of details, trade offs and out and out bribery required to understand the struggle involved in the fight for universal healthcare.

Norman West

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