{"id":1214,"date":"2011-10-22T21:54:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-23T05:54:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2011-10-22T21:54:01","modified_gmt":"2011-10-23T05:54:01","slug":"review-boomerang-travels-in-the-new-third-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=1214","title":{"rendered":"Review: Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I enjoyed Michael Lewis&#8217;s <a title=\"Review: The Big Short\" href=\"http:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/?p=932\"><em>The Big Short<\/em><\/a> so much that when I saw this bit of gonzo economics writing, I jumped in.\u00a0 <em>Boomerang<\/em> has the feel of those P. J. O&#8217;Rourke books where P.J. travels to some hell-hole where history is happening and writes about it with panache.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think Lewis is as funny as O&#8217;Rourke, but I think he can be more insightful.<\/p>\n<p>These are basically a set of well researched and well written essays about current economic hotspots.\u00a0 Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, and the US all take a turn in the hot seat.\u00a0 Lewis knows what he&#8217;s talking about and knows how to pick a telling story to support his points.\u00a0 He&#8217;s constructing an interesting view of the global mess we&#8217;re in the middle of.\u00a0 <em>Boomerang<\/em> is interesting and thought provoking.<\/p>\n<p>If there&#8217;s anything I disagree with about the book, it&#8217;s how much of the crisis he puts down to national character.\u00a0 While it is difficult to argue that nations don&#8217;t have character, those characters don&#8217;t change much over time.\u00a0 It is a fun idea that Icelanders believe they can be investment bankers because their fishing economy rewards self-assurance.\u00a0 If he&#8217;s right, though, Icelanders have been that way for a long time. I would rather know what unique opportunity presented itself to magnify the effect of those traits so much.<\/p>\n<p>Even if you don&#8217;t fully believe it, <em>Boomerang<\/em> puts many interesting facts and theories on the table in a very entertaining way.<\/p>\n<p>Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I enjoyed Michael Lewis&#8217;s The Big Short so much that when I saw this bit of gonzo economics writing, I jumped in.\u00a0 Boomerang has the feel of those P. J. O&#8217;Rourke books where P.J. travels to some hell-hole where history is happening and writes about it with panache.\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think Lewis is as funny [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1218,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions\/1218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lunabase.org\/~faber\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}