The crisis of U.S. capitalism, loan sharks, trends, idiosyncrasies, hurricanes, alien parasites, exploding suns, and Osama bin Laden - here's the Lowedown on this month's batch of audio books from Kevin Phillips, Charles Osgood, Morgan Spurlock, and more.
Economic commentator Kevin Phillips spills the Navy beans on the true cost of our reliance on oil in BAD MONEY: RECKLESS FINANCE, FAILED POLITICS, AND THE GLOBAL CRISIS OF AMERICAN CAPITALISM. If you're looking for an explanation as to why the dollar is falling today, and how the housing crisis escaped notice until the bubble burst in August of 2007, this is the audio book to hear. Essentially, you can thank our deeply flawed financial services industry, underpinned by a deluded public addicted to debt and unlimited oil reserves, for what may be the end of America as a Superpower. Phillips outlines how we've stumbled into this nightmare scenario, in which foreign oil producers have strategically substituted the Euro for the Dollar in an era of falling supply and increasing demand. Add a war of occupation, and our resulting loss of respect has us paying full price even to fuel the military vehicles used to "liberate" the Iraqis. Meanwhile, says Phillips, "moving money around" became our biggest industry at home, with real estate speculators encouraging a casino mentality (the delusion of getting something for nothing). When the house of cards finally fell, the loan sharks, wielding their exotic financial instruments, then moved in to break some knees. As though to add insult to injury, the Fed is now stepping in to bail out those banks whose feeding frenzy was most horrific, while letting manufacturers continue to go belly up. The result? China is set to take our place on the world stage, and to pollute the air more than we did in the American Century (which was the 20th.) Scary? As narrated with provocative urgency by Scott Brick, it's clear that Stephen King and James Patterson have nothing on this. (Penguin Audio; 9 1/2 hours unabridged)
Charles Osgood, host of CBS News' Sunday Morning, has a new audio book highlight collection titled SEE YOU ON THE RADIO, in which he profiles the eccentric habits of Americans as a means to showcase societal trends. As an example, he cites a study showing that Americans try to maintain inside temperatures at extreme opposites from outside temps. So when it's 100 degrees outside, we tend to air condition down to 65 degrees, and when it's 20 degrees outside, we heat to more than 75. Those ten to fifteen degrees above or below the "ideal" temperature amounts to millions and millions of barrels of oil wasted per year. (To say nothing of the waste in heating or cooling spaces which are unoccupied or poorly insulated.) Osgood clearly enjoys disclosing such idiosyncrasies, evident by his occasional rhymes. It gets particularly unnerving when he compares psychopaths to politicians, and the listener begins to understand why the more things change, the more they stay the same. (Highbridge Audio; 3 3/4 hours unabridged)
Next, REBEL ISLAND is the new Tres Navarre mystery by Rick Riordan, about a private detective who gives up his old life to get married, but on his honeymoon stumbles onto a murder victim and gets swept back up into the old game of catch-a-killer. A hurricane is bearing down on the island, cutting everyone off from the mainland, so Tres must solve the crime while facing the tensions of both weather and romance. Riordan has a strong narrative voice, lent appeal by the kind of narrator who makes such characters his own, namely Tom Stechschulte. Riordan is one of my own favorites, along with James Lee Burke, and has won the Edgar, Shamus, and Anthony awards while being compared to Dashiell Hammett. An especially good previous outing for Tres, also narrated by Stechschulte, is The Devil Went Down to Austin. Don't miss that one. (Recorded Books; 7 3/4 hours unabridged)
In the horror novel INFECTED by Scott Sigler a bio-engineered parasite from space infects Earth's population, causing most everyone to rampage and kill each other. (Kinda like your typical Congressional Assembly.) There's just enough science here to lend the story borderline plausibility, but the actual writing is more pulp than fruit. At one point a character bleeds "like a stuck pig," while the decision to let Sigler narrate, ostensibly because he's a rabidly successful podcaster, is unfortunate. There are dozens of professional readers who could have improved the text by actually adding subtle nuances of characterization. The cover is genius, however. No doubt about that. An eyeball with a triangular iris, that in online ads is seen to move around. You can't help but click, and to consider buying. But for my money, Bad Money is still scarier, because no one can seem to hit the Stop button there. (Random House Audio; 12 hours unabridged)
Now, the universe is a big place, and if that's isn't an understatement, I don't know what is. In the new award-winning science fiction novel SPIN, author Robert Wilson postulates a civilization so advanced that, not only don't they need to invade us or infect us somehow, their purposes seem totally alien and unknown. These beings may not even inhabit bodies as we know them, and are here called merely "the Hypotheticals." How to explain, after all, their reasoning in encapsulating the Earth in a singularity membrane - a barrier similar to the event horizon of a black hole, in which time slows to a near stop, while the outside ages as usual? We don't notice the slowing of time, since, according to Einstein, time itself is relative to the observer. So for every 24 hour day on Earth, the rest of the universe, including the Sun, is aging millions of years. Meaning the sun actually aging, month to month - getting redder, getting ready to explode. What happens next, of course, I can't tell. Suffice it to say that the novel is made believable by two factors. One, by some deeply realized characters (Tyler, Jason, Diane) who are not given second billing to the action. Two, by a narrator (Scott Brick) whose interpretation breaths life into them, and keeps the story spinning like a top until the end. There's nothing pulp about this story, either, so while it may not sell as many copies as a media sensation with moving eyeballs, the higher road, less taken, makes all the difference. (McMillan Audio; 17 hours unabridged)
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