Rate this book

Down The Up Escalator: American Lives In The Great (and Too Long) Recession (2013)

by Barbara Garson(Favorite Author)

3.62 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

038553275X (ISBN13: 9780385532754)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

review 1: Stupid computer ate my first review so keeping this short.On the one hand, it does a nice job of avoiding any stories that feel overly repetitive or cliched about what happened to people in the recession. This helps give a greater sense of depth about what was going on. At the same time, the focus on solidly middle class people means that the most damaging parts of the recession are not really visible. A lot of the people profiled had some degree of assets or employment before the crash, so while they end up doing things like liquidating savings and severe budget cutbacks, only one of them is actually homeless. For a lot of them you get the sense that a longer time window is probably going to make the situation look worse, as the struggles that began here will keep going f... moreor years and decades. This seems especially true for the mostly middle-aged people that Gerson interviews. Also missing are medical catastrophes, which seem like in so many cases to be the ultimate source of the greatest problems for people. Why only two stars? Some of the stories felt like she was injecting too much of herself into the story. And some just didn't come together as much as a coherent story, even without knowing the end.
review 2: Barbara Garson seems like a wonderful person. I can imagine knocking on her door to borrow a cup of sugar and leaving three hours later, after stimulating conversation punctuated with rueful laughter.This book puts a human face on the squeezing of the middle class. She talks with many different people, all of who have been deeply harmed in different ways. It's important to remember that economics is not just lines on a graph -- it's highly skilled middle aged men who have been unemployed for 18 months, students forced to move from a foreclosed house during exam week, pensioners calculating which bill not to pay. Garson hits us in our hearts. We need to be hit there.Two minor criticisms:I had a version of the "Chinese food syndrome". No portrait has much depth, so I didn't remember any of the people well. Her final summary refers to certain characters from earlier in the book. I didn't remember them. I had to review the original interview.The portraits seem lightly fictionalized. There is a lot of dialog, and it's well done. But it seems like the dialog from a screenplay, not the words you'd actually hear if you had recorded the conversation. Final comment, but not a criticism:There is not a lot of theory or explanation in this book. I'm now reading "The Great Divergence" and hope this work by an economic journalist addresses that lack. This isn't a criticism because it's not what Garson set out to do. less

Download links for: Down The Up Escalator: American Lives in the Great (and Too Long) Recession

Advertising