This book by Jack Cashill turned out to be a disappointment to me in some ways and in other ways quite fascinating. I give this book a 1 star in terms of readability and ability to keep my interest. However, in terms of research and information, I give it a 5 star.
The best way I can describe this book is the tone of the book, for me, was similar to "This American Life" on NPR. I could imagine Ira Glass reading this book. Maybe then it would be more interesting to me.
This book is comprised of lots of politics, religion, philosophy, banking, business, murder, intrigue, ethnic groups, and more. There are all sorts of twists, turns, plots of not good things happening. There are lots of dates, statistics.
Frankly, though I'm a numbers person and deal in the area of finance such as in the area of the stock market -- that part was interesting, to learn how things came about, I did have a challenging time following. Maybe it was because I read this book in over a month's timeframe in 10-20 page intervals.
I kept hoping that as I read, that I would get excited about what I was reading only to be disappointed that characters were not further developed. But, that was not the point of the book to develop its characters, rather to introduce a plethora of characters in history who helped shaped our American financial situation, notably many of the not good things happening in America currently.
Maybe when in a different mindset, I'll reread this book. This was not a book that I could zip through, gain a handful of ideas that I could logically implement into my life. This is not the type of book I am accustomed to reading either, but thought it would be good for me to have.
It was quite interesting, however, to understand where a term or something that is happening or has happened was derived from. Money, money, money.
What I gather from all that I read, as Americans financially, we seem to keep repeating the same mistakes again and again -- it just gets bigger and more out of control. We seem to forget. The tools just become more sophisticated. It's a lack of accountability & responsibility.
It probably makes for less interesting material to have more like a flowchart in timeline format of this book, but that would've interested me more. It was not easy to read and grasp for me.
Would I recommend this book? I think if you like to read historical things and are not overwhelmed by all the data, go for it. If you want an easy read like in a weekend or so, this is not the book.
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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze.com
