By Jessica Schneider Aug 22, 2008, 12:14 GMT
Thomas Frank’s new book, called The Wrecking Crew, is attempting to answer the question of How Conservatives Rule.
Known for his earlier work, What’s the Matter With Kansas?, the NYT reviewer notes that this new book: “quickly devolves into a highly partisan, Manichaean-minded screed against conservatives and private-sector economics.”
The NYT reviewer also states: As a result, Mr. Frank comes across in these pages as a sort of parody of the liberal right-wingers love to hate — as someone in love with big government for the sake of big government and opposed to all manner of capitalism and entrepreneurial initiative.”
Yet the product description notes:
“A keenly intelligent, delightfully mordant novel that blends fact and fiction with the same deft hand that was at work in John Darnton’s best-selling Neanderthal.
Bad news is brewing in the inner sanctum of the New York Globe, the city’s long-standing newspaper of note, whose back is to the wall. Readership, advertising, and circulation are plummeting—along with the paper’s vaunted standards—and the cost cutters have their knives out.
But trouble of a wholly different kind begins one rainy September morning when a powerful editor is found murdered in the newsroom, with the spike that he’d wielded to kill stories hammered into his chest.
The problem for Priscilla Bollingsworth, the young, ambitious female NYPD detective assigned to the case—besides the fact that the mayor is breathing down her neck—is that there are too many suspects to choose from.”
Read the NYT review here. Metropolitan Books is the publisher.
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