Book Bits: 1 June 2024

The Capital Spectator

● The Hamilton Scheme: An Epic Tale of Money and Power in the American Founding
William Hogeland
Summary via publisher (Macmillan)
Forgotten founder” no more, Alexander Hamilton has become a global celebrity. Millions know his name. Millions imagine knowing the man. But what did he really want for the country? What risks did he run in pursuing those vaulting ambitions? Who tried to stop him? How did they fight? It’s ironic that the Hamilton revival has obscured the man’s most dramatic battles and hardest-won achievements—as well as downplaying unsettling aspects of his legacy. Thrilling to the romance of becoming the one-man inventor of a modern nation, our first Treasury secretary fostered growth by engineering an ingenious dynamo—banking, public debt, manufacturing—for concentrating national wealth in the hands of a government-connected elite. Seeking American prosperity, he built American oligarchy. Hence his animus and mutual sense of betrayal with Jefferson and Madison—and his career-long fight to suppress a rowdy egalitarian movement little remembered today: the eighteenth-century white working class.

● Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War
Tom Steyer
Interview with author via Salon.com
It may be unusual to hear the ultra-rich argue for increasing government regulation of the economy, but billionaire Tom Steyer believes such a thing is necessary to stop the onslaught from climate change. Steyer may be best known for his longtime investment in climate solutions, as well as his decision in 2012 to step away from a highly successful investment fund he had founded.
Like many people who pay attention to the overwhelming scientific evidence that humans are causing climate change by burning fossil fuels, as explored in his new book “Cheaper, Faster, Better: How We’ll Win the Climate War,” which was released this month. He sees climate changes as a multi-pronged menace, one that causes hardships from mass migration to extreme weather events like hurricanes, wildfires and droughts.

● Poverty for Profit: How Corporations Get Rich off America’s Poor
Anne Kim
Review via Publishers Weekly
Corporations are taking advantage of sclerotic government to skim money off anti-poverty initiatives, according to this stinging exposé. Lawyer and journalist Kim (Abandoned) probes a raft of ill-designed and poorly supervised federal and state programs that are run or mediated by private businesses that jack up prices and deliver substandard services. They include tax preparers that charge low-income taxpayers exorbitant fees to calculate the tax credits they are due, private prisons that charge inmates hundreds of dollars per day for their

The full article is available here. This article was published at The Capital Spectator.