Rating: 
Summary: Not good to the last page...good 'till the last few pages
Review: This book is a very interesting read if taken with a grain of salt and an understanding of the point of view. It's filled with facts and figures and really made me think about situations and issues in our society as they relate to the changing role of work and the disparity between the economic classes. The chapter on women entering the workforce was very interesting as well.The major fault in this is the skew with which it was written. Robert Reich worked in the Clinton administration and it shows. The facts and figures, while impressive, rarely present the whole truth, or both sides of the issue. His writing style is clear and generally entertaining, but he overstates almost everything and beats all of the topics to death. This book could have been written in about 2/3 the size by simply condensing the ideas. The closing chapter of the book makes a sudden shift from pseudo-factual and not-too-opinion based to promoting a 100% left-ist, almost communist, tax and spend, entitlement-supporting government economic style. He recommends a new tax and new bureaucracy in order to fix every problem, under the guise of "a small tax on X will hardly be noticed in comparison to the benefits". All that said, I cannot not recommend this book. It was cheap, educational, and thought provoking. Hopefully, for the sake of myself and my children, no one will base a government economic system on the content of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book with a slant towards a college crowd
Review: This is one of few books that show in a clear, concise, and convincing way the human costs involved in the New Economy. Other, more optimistic books, such as Kevin Kelly's New Rules for the New Economy, see the increasing rate of churn (creation and destruction of jobs and businesses) as beneficial to the economy at large, and it certainly is, but they overlook the implications for individuals: being constantly worried about losing a job, being forced to sell oneself at every opportunity, working long hours while work is available to make up for future unemployment, uncertainty about how the bills will get paid next month, etc. On the other hand, like many intellectual works with a bent on theory, a drawback of this book is that it's much longer on criticism than it is on solutions, and the author is much better at the former than the latter. The sweeping income and capital tax hikes that he proposes would never make it through Congress, Republican or Democrat, and even if they did, they wouln't prosper on a worldwide scale. Developing countries would face devastating capital flights at the slightest attempt to raise taxes on investments, and this inability to have uniform worker protection policies would discourage any nation to try to implement them on their own if they want to remain competitive. In spite of this limitation this is an excellent work that will raise consciousness on a previously overlooked issue, stimulate debate, and eventually lead others to more practical, workable solutions.
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