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Pity the Billionaire: The Hard-Times Swindle and the Unlikely Comeback of the Right Paperback – 12 Jan 2012

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Thomas Frank (Author)
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Thomas Frank (Author)
4.2 out of 5 stars 26 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Harvill Secker (12 Jan. 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1846556023
  • ISBN-13: 978-1846556029
  • Product Dimensions: 15.3 x 1.8 x 23.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 643,890 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

"No one fools Thomas Frank, who is the sharpest, funniest, most intellectually voracious political commentator on the scene. In Pity the Billionaire he has written a brilliant expose of the most breath-taking ruse in American political history: how the right turned the biggest capitalist breakdown since 1929 into an opportunity for themselves." (Barbara Ehrenreich)

"Brisk and searing and deeply informed by the lessons of history (shocking notion!), Frank's latest guide for the perplexed is nothing less than a precious gift to us. Read it, and finally--You. Will. Understand." (Rick Perlstein)

"Frank is one of the best leftwing writers America has produced" (Nick Cohen Observer)

"Trenchant and witty" (Alexandra Frean The Times)

Book Description

Insightful, infectiously furious and funny: why the worst collapse since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism.

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsI don't know whether to laugh or cry.
By Andrew Dalby VINE VOICE on 25 Jan. 2012
Format: Paperback Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
This is an easy access alternative to "The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism". It is written from a US perspective and so many of the cast of character will be unfamiliar to British readers but the way the New Right has seized the agenda from the liberal/social movements during the current economic crisis is very much the same both sides of the Atlantic. In that we do share a special relationship.

The crisis was the fault of unregulated capitalism, it was the banks and the financial services industry that took the world economy to the brink and that continues to do so. But the swing of public opinion has been to elect governments of the right and this is not just the Tea Party and GOP resurgence in the 2010 mid-term elections, but also in the UK and Spain governments have been elected that want small government, less intervention and who support business.

Frank explains how all this can happen, how the Right have used rhetoric to turn the story to paint themselves and capitalism as the victim and not the cause. Mostly it is blistering attack on that rhetoric and the lack of facts to support it. His particular targets are Glenn Beck and the Tea Party whose continuous stream of lies and mis-direction he tries to unravel. Last of all he shows why the liberal/socialist response has failed and how the Democrats have become mumbo-jumbo speaking technocrats helpless in front of a populist movement. The spreadsheet and flow-chart pushing intellectuals who have forgotten how to fight.

I think it is a great book and I wish more people would read it. Then perhaps we might get a real movement for change.
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5.0 out of 5 starsKnee Jerk Politics
By ᅟ on 2 Feb. 2012
Format: Paperback Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
It is hard for us in the UK to comprehend what has happened to US politics in the past few years, but this book goes a large way towards teaching us. Obama took office amid a feeling of hope, spreading not only across the USA but round the world. How that could go so wrong, how he could find himself now, vilified by the Right, is an interesting tale.

A great wrong had been done to the country, through the downturn. The Right had to make sure they didn't take the blame for it, and they did this by playing mind games with the US electorate. They devised a "them" and "us" model, where the bankers who fraudulently traded worthless securities suddenly became the victims, hampered by too much government intervention. The "free market" had been tampered with by "them." "They" were trying to take away "our" freedom to choose our health plan by introducing a state-run scheme. That was anti-competitive, and that meant it was anti-capitalist and so anti-democratic, so the logic went. (In the competitive market, you get sick, you don't pay, you die, by the way.)

We have had little exposure over here to the Tea Party movement, apart from the gaffes of Sarah Palin. We have not been told how this movement has been funded and manipulated by big business and the right wing media of the Murdochs, but if you read this book you will get a better understanding of what has been happening over there. Not that it is easy to understand, because the arguments the Right have used are shot through with contradictions: do they hate big business, the banks, or love them? It all depends what day it is.

An image that struck me recently was a Republican primary, where an elderly woman was baying at the camera that she wanted government to "get out of her face.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 stars"Never let a serious crisis go to waste "
By russell clarke VINE VOICE on 12 Feb. 2012
Format: Paperback Vine Customer Review of Free Product ( What's this? )
How about this an explanation for the 2008 financial crash. The reason it occurred is that the banks and financial systems were not free enough . That government regulation and intervention stymied the markets and prevented them operating to their full potential.
Economic catastrophe usually, you would suspect would bring forth mass social protest and demands for change. But when Thomas Frank set out in 2009 to look for signs of blue collar American discontent, all he could find were loud demands that the economic system be made even harsher on the recession's victims and that society's traditional winners receive even grander prizes and be given even more freedom to carry out their capitalist economic miracle.
The American Right, which had seemed moribund after the election of 2008, was bizarrely reinvigorated by the arrival of recession and the following austerity measures . The Tea Party movement demanded not that Americans question the system that had collapsed with such disastrous consequences but that they reaffirm their unwavering commitment to it. Republicans in Congress embarked on a bold strategy of total opposition to the liberal state, while on TV ranting right-wing huckster Glenn Beck demonstrated the commercial potential of epic paranoia and the purest libertarian economics, decrying the interference of the state and using that horrible word socialism......ughh!!.No wonder millions of Americans were dragged round to that way of thinking . After all if everything you rely on for your information -the TV, the papers and your most vocal and exposed politicians all say the same thing , then well.....it must be true. Thank the lord for Fox TV.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 starsThree Stars

Three stars is enough for this lively but not otherwise special review of its subject.

Published 10 months ago by Mr. Bernard A. O'sullivan
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Thank you

Published 13 months ago by Lu
5.0 out of 5 starsNeo liberals gone mad.

A real and much needed look at the greed that is rampant in neo-liberal states in the west. How the cronies in the media skew and distort the political elites and corporate America... Read more

Published on 14 April 2014 by assfromelbow.
5.0 out of 5 starsYour mortgage is not my problem....

...so reads the placard of a Tea Party protestor in full flow. It sums up the brazen, in your face attitude of the resurgent right, of which Mr Frank writes in this splendid but... Read more

Published on 13 Oct. 2013 by Adam
4.0 out of 5 starsComeback over with

It is interesting to read this book from the perspective of mid-2013 since Frank finished writing this book sometime in 2011 before Obama was reelected in 2012. Read more

Published on 14 May 2013 by Dennis Littrell
4.0 out of 5 starsvery informative insight into tea party America

I enjoyed reading this book. Even though Obama has won the 2012 election, which Thomas Frank didn't know when he wrote the book, the insight into the resurgent right of... Read more

Published on 15 Dec. 2012 by Al James
2.0 out of 5 starsNot all it seems

Let's get one thing straight. Despite the implications of the blurb, this is not an analysis of a global political phenonomenon. Read more

Published on 9 Jun. 2012 by El Loro
5.0 out of 5 starsOrgasmaclysm

In this mind-boggling book, Thomas Frank explains how the Right could sell `the free market God' at the moment when free market theory had proven itself to be a philosophy of... Read more

Published on 7 May 2012 by Luc REYNAERT
5.0 out of 5 starsHow the fundamentalists rose from the dead

Like Colin Crouch's The Strange Non-Death of Neo-Liberalism Thomas Frank examines how the wealthy elite have managed to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by convincing the 99%... Read more

Published on 29 April 2012 by Chuck E
4.0 out of 5 starsPolemic but good polemic, worth a read

This is perhaps an example of polemical publishing at its best, with a target audience perhaps of those likely to already agree with the conclusions of the author, either... Read more

Published on 23 Mar. 2012 by Lark

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