What we read at Russia Online

Books are what we do and love. It is true. Russia Online staff reads all the time: for fun, self-education, to learn more about the world and how it works, to learn about current events, or to become familiar with the world classics. We read in Russian, English, and German, and have very different tastes in literature. Love for books and reading makes being in book business even more interesting. Having constant access to books, we try not to miss anything noteworthy; however, the books we read do not often come from the shelves of our store..

We decided to start a new rubric in this blog and talk about books that we currently read:
A Dangerous Liaison (by Carole Seymour-Jones) is a biography of Simone DeBeauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre.

"Seymour-Jones's narrative crackles and pops with engrossing anecdotes." - The Observer.

"Filled with delicious detail... eminently readable. Seymour-Jones's book is as page-turning as it is scholarly. The end result is quite dazzling." -The Guardian.

"Extremely detailed, well researched, and completely absorbing." - Booklist.

"Appearing in what might be called a 'sexography,' Sartre, the Nobel-winning existentialist philosopher, and Beauvoir, existentialist and pioneering feminist, cavort with a dizzying panoply of partners...A spiraling double-helix of a relationship whose sordid beauty fascinates even as it repels." - Kirkus

"An important contribution to the study of De Beauvoir and Sartre that will be appreciated both by general readers and by scholars of French literature and culture and women's studies." - Library Journal 

 Griftopia: Bubble Machines, Vampire Squids, and the Long Con That Is Breaking America (by Matt Taibbi). 

Words escape me at this time.  Having read Michael Lewis' Big Short and being familiar with the technical and dense Wall Street jargon for the craziness of CDOs/derivatives and the insanity of CDS, Taibbi's use of colorful language and straightforward explanations was a breath of fresh air. But really how fresh is that air coming over a moral/fiscal equivalent of a rendering plant/feed lot on a hot August day?  Griftopia is not a rehash of Taibbi's article on Goldman Sachs, but it is wider look at the depth and breadth of the problem. Released on Nov 2nd - Election Day - Taibbi in his epilogue predicts with Cassandra like clarity the idiocy of the electorate "The Tea Party and its ilk will have found a way to push the national conversation in the desired idiotic direction.  Instead of talking about what to do about the fact that, after all the mergers in the crisis, just four banks now account for half of the country's mortgages and two-thirds of its credit card accounts, we'll be debating whether or not we should still automatically grant citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants, or should let Arizona institute a pass-law regime, or some such thing." No Hollywood happy end to this book..."The ability of
its citizens to lose focus so quickly and to be distracted by everything from Lebronomania to the immigration debate is part of what makes America so ripe for this particular type of corporate crime."  So rest easy out there, buy your gold from Glenn Beck, pass anti-sharia laws do whatever the **** you want - in the meantime Wall Street is selling you out - from your roads, bridges and parking meters to squeezing everything it can out of your assets in government sanctioned rigged casino.


The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (by Paul Krugman)

Another piece in the puzzle - Krugman's revised edition of his
1999 book examining the Asian/Russian meltdowns of the late 1990s give a good historical/economic comparison point for the current situation we find
ourselves in.   Unfortunately, financial reforms and regulations, already
sabotaged by Wall Street interests in Congress, face even larger challenges with the new incoming Congress in January.