Coming up short A memoir of my America

Review by Booklist Review

What Reich self-deprecatingly claims he lacks in physical stature, he more than makes up for in moral standing and civic pride. While the title is meant to be interpreted in many ways, Reich's memoir is both economic treatise and political reckoning, stemming from a deep love of country and commitment to progress, in pursuit of doing what's right as opposed to what is popular or expedient. Viewing his vaunted career in education and public service through the lens of arguments won and lost, of political successes and legislative failures, of change in the midst of chaos, Reich looks back 30 years to his tenure as secretary of labor in the Clinton administration to pinpoint the political period that launched the partisanship and tribalism that currently vex the U.S. He follows the pendulum swing of conflicting policies and practices that have allowed the American economy to perilously whipsaw from one presidential administration to the next for more than 100 years, thus helping readers understand the nation's present fiscal status. As conscientious and concerned citizens ask, "How did we get here?," Reich has many answers. Clear-eyed and critical, Reich's assessment of where America is headed is both sobering and, characteristically, hopeful.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In this passionate political memoir, Reich (The Common Good), former U.S. secretary of labor under Bill Clinton, calls on Democrats to refocus on the working class. As a boy, Reich was bullied for his dwarfism by schoolmates who tried to dunk his head in a toilet; he frames his progressive politics as a stand against such tormenters. The worst bullies, Reich contends, are Wall Street financiers and the politicians who cater to them, and he castigates Democrats for aligning with wealthy donors at the expense of ordinary workers. He paints the Clinton administration as a milestone in that betrayal: despite the president's advocacy for unions and social spending, Reich argues, Clinton opted to appease Wall Street with spending cuts and trade deals like NAFTA. What follows is as much manifesto as memoir, with Reich's personal anecdotes setting up wonky digressions on CEO stock options and family leave. Along the way, he works in piquant sketches of political figures (Hillary Clinton's "hand was always the first in the air" at Yale, while "Bill was never in class"). Reich's arguments are convincing, though they're blinkered somewhat by his hand-waving invocation of "cultural populism" to explain critiques of the Democrats on immigration and other noneconomic issues. Still, this is a perceptive insider's account of Democratic disarray. Photos. Agent: Rafe Sagalyn, CAA. (Aug.)

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

The former labor secretary examines the failure of his generation to fulfill the promise of building a better world. Reich, an economist and UC Berkeley professor--and anti-Trump commentator--jokes toward the end of his book that if it's true that you lose half an inch of height every five years after 60, then, at his tallest not-quite-five-feet, "if I live as long as my father did, I may vanish." His title refers instead to the fact that his peers did not respond adequately to what Reich considers the perennial human challenge: standing up to bullies. Remembering his boyhood, Reich links his bullied early years to the bullying that goes on all around us today, thanks in good part to a demagogue, himself a bully, "who'd exploit the powerlessness and rage of Americans who felt economically bullied." It might have been any bully--Reich prophesied that long ago in the generic--but we all know who came along in the void left by a generation that, whether self-absorbed or because of some other fault, didn't continue to work toward "the decent, sustainable, and just society that was within our grasp." Indeed, he continues, many of his age-mates and younger contemporaries worked toward the opposite goal, evidenced by the Roberts Supreme Court's apparent commitment to undoing voting rights laws and the marked rise in economic inequality since the 1960s, the last decade in which blue-collar workers could buy a home on one income. Other harms that Reich enumerates are Donald Trump's refusal to commit to the peaceful transfer of presidential power, the mania on the part of corporate heads to maximize shareholder profit at any cost, the vast expansion of the national debt, "rendering it impossible for the government to invest in things average Americans desperately need," and much more. A sharply pointed chronicle of a society that, Reich laments, gladly tolerates the strong brutalizing the weak. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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