Rating: 
Summary: Cheerleading for Capitalism
Review: "Most of us are more successful than we ever dreamed we could be."
This quote pretty accurately sums up the disillusion rampant throughout D'Souza's book. The truth behind the "unprecedented prosperity" he speaks of is that the majority of Americans' incomes have dropped in the last 10 years. Only the extremely wealthy have gained. For D'Souza and his millionaire fans, "all is right with the world," the same kind of blind optimism that Voltaire lambasted in Pangloss. Poverty is growing (already at 40 million people), unemployment is high, and things are getting worse. All the while, the greatest challenge for D'Souza is for the rich to learn how to "be happy with our success", rich-speak for drowning ourselves in our own wealth, thereby ignoring all the ills of the world. Avoid this book if you can, it's a supreme waste of time (although it can be redeemed in a warm fireplace). However, if you must read the book, under whatever sick compulsion, then do so quickly, and afterwards pick up some common sense by reading Candide. It's a quick read and still relevant against fools like D'Souza and our generation's hollow men.
Rating:
Summary: Cheerleading for Capitalism
Review: "Most of us are more successful than we ever dreamed we could be."
This quote pretty accurately sums up the disillusion rampant throughout D'Souza's book. The truth behind the "unprecedented prosperity" he speaks of is that the average American's income has dropped in the last 10 years. Only the extremely wealthy have gained. For D'Souza and his millionaire fans, "all is right with the world," the same kind of blind optimism that Voltaire lambasted in Pangloss. Poverty is growing (already at 40 million people), unemployment is high, and things are getting worse. All the while, the greatest challenge for D'Souza is how to learn to "be happy with our success", rich-speak for drowning in one's own opulence, thereby ignoring all the ills of the world.
If you're fabulously wealthy and want to soothe your conscience ("Behind every great fortune, there lies a crime" -Balzac), then go ahead and read the book. Otherwise, avoid it if you can, it's a supreme waste of time (although it can be redeemed in a warm fireplace).
Rating: 
Summary: Capitalism Vindicated
Review: Business people rank among the biggest victims of unfair criticism. Blamed for greed, exploitation and selfishness, business people generally fail to defend themselves or assert their positive status. Instead, they continue holding the country together through productive activity that generates tax revenues and high standards of living. Thanks to a book by Dinesh D'Souza, they have a well-articulated defense of their status that extends beyond moneymaking. As D'Souza points out in The Virtue of Prosperity-Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence (The Free Press, 2000, $26), business is about more than earning dollars. It is about realizing dreams through sacrifice, work, vision and an ability to satisfy society's needs. The pursuit of business not only is an economic endeavor but a noble endeavor, D'Souza believes. An enthusiastic free market advocate who immigrated from India and was graduated from Dartmouth College, D'Souza focuses his attention on the boom of the high tech industry, which turned many ordinary people into millionaires almost overnight. The growth of capitalism, he notes, has led to unprecedented general prosperity. An annual survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and reported by Alex P. Kellogg in the Jan. 26 Chronicle of Higher Education reveals that nearly three quarters of first-year college students say they want to be very well off. Only 28.1 percent report an interest in keeping current with political affairs. D'Souza acknowledges that capitalism unleashes vast social and economic changes that alienate people and create an intensive need for spiritual fulfillment. He realizes that for many people, capitalism will not solve a search for meaning. Also, social hierarchies are an inevitable outcome of the scramble for success in capitalist societies. However, these inequalities are not arbitrary accidents of birth. "The rich are today the hardest working people in society, and they refuse to...work less or stop working, even if they can easily afford to." The ability to turn an area of enthusiastic interest and energetic resolve into prosperity for oneself and others drives the successful business person and also explains the hostility to the capitalist by those who look behind a haze of envy for not receiving the same rewards. Despite economic gaps between rich and poor, one does not find instability or conflict as in other cultures because "technological capitalism is a powerful catalyst of enduring equality among citizens," he says. Indeed, higher standards of living make life better for all, with those at the bottom in America society considered privileged by the poverty-stricken in non-capitalist Third World countries. This result, D'Souza believes, elevates capitalism to a moral good so long as it retains the goal not of "I win, you lose," but "I win and therefore you win, too."
Rating:
Summary: Capitalism Vindicated
Review: Business people rank among the biggest victims of unfair criticism. Blamed for greed, exploitation and selfishness, business people generally fail to defend themselves or assert their positive status. Instead, they continue holding the country together through productive activity that generates tax revenues and high standards of living. Thanks to a book by Dinesh D'Souza, they have a well-articulated defense of their status that extends beyond moneymaking. As D'Souza points out in The Virtue of Prosperity-Finding Values in an Age of Techno-Affluence (The Free Press, 2000, $26), business is about more than earning dollars. It is about realizing dreams through sacrifice, work, vision and an ability to satisfy society's needs. The pursuit of business not only is an economic endeavor but a noble endeavor, D'Souza believes. An enthusiastic free market advocate who immigrated from India and was graduated from Dartmouth College, D'Souza focuses his attention on the boom of the high tech industry, which turned many ordinary people into millionaires almost overnight. The growth of capitalism, he notes, has led to unprecedented general prosperity. An annual survey of freshmen conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA and reported by Alex P. Kellogg in the Jan. 26 Chronicle of Higher Education reveals that nearly three quarters of first-year college students say they want to be very well off. Only 28.1 percent report an interest in keeping current with political affairs. D'Souza acknowledges that capitalism unleashes vast social and economic changes that alienate people and create an intensive need for spiritual fulfillment. He realizes that for many people, capitalism will not solve a search for meaning. Also, social hierarchies are an inevitable outcome of the scramble for success in capitalist societies. However, these inequalities are not arbitrary accidents of birth. "The rich are today the hardest working people in society, and they refuse to...work less or stop working, even if they can easily afford to." The ability to turn an area of enthusiastic interest and energetic resolve into prosperity for oneself and others drives the successful business person and also explains the hostility to the capitalist by those who look behind a haze of envy for not receiving the same rewards. Despite economic gaps between rich and poor, one does not find instability or conflict as in other cultures because "technological capitalism is a powerful catalyst of enduring equality among citizens," he says. Indeed, higher standards of living make life better for all, with those at the bottom in America society considered privileged by the poverty-stricken in non-capitalist Third World countries. This result, D'Souza believes, elevates capitalism to a moral good so long as it retains the goal not of "I win, you lose," but "I win and therefore you win, too."
Rating: 
Summary: Good read, want to pick up his other works
Review: D'Souza's book takes a look at our present (American) economy and socioeconomic system from a specific, distinct perspective or question in each chapter. For each, he describes the present, attempts to find historical reasons for each or philosophical basis, and then comes to a conclusion. Toward the end, he switches tack to the future. He describes a simultaneously nightmarish and wonderful world of biogenetics, how the current economy has lead to it, and tries to treat this subject as he does the present. An interesting read in a conversational (but not to the point of being annoying) style. I learned a lot. Would recommend, regardless if you are from the left or right or center.
Rating:
Summary: Second Thoughts About the New Economy
Review: Dinesh D'Souza has written a very significant book in which he endeavors to find the deep, true meaning behind the euphoria, the hype, the madness that is the new economy. After a sober and methodical reassesment of the profound changes left behind in the wake of our recent prosperity, D'Souza ultimately comes down on the side of the optimists, the Party of Yeah he calls them, who embrace transformational technologies even as critics (whom he dubs the Party of Nah) charge that they threaten to uproot the old bonds of community, replacing spiritual values with purely materialist passions. D'Souza is scrupulously balanced in forthrightly presenting both sides of the argument. The arguments themselves aren't new; the rigor with which D'Souza analyzes them quite possibly is. Does technological capitalism ultimately degrade the soul? We have all heard the liberal economic critique of the gap between the rich and poor. How does the emerging conservative critique of the social consequences of inequality stack up in comparison? D'Souza discusses these questions briskly and adroitly. Often while reading the book, I would find myself thinking of possible counter-arguments to the views presented on any given page and invariably found them echoed a turn or two of the page later. More than most defenders of the marketplace, D'Souza does take very seriously the notion that the new prosperity may hinder our search for spiritual meaning. The case for either sides of this often demagogued controversy is clouded by the fact that one's economic good fortunes don't seem to guarantee either frustration or inner fulfillment. For every white collar criminal, there is a young man who is moved to depravity by hunger or poverty. For every example of a person with modest means contented with the simple life, there seems to be an equal abundance of millionaires who find fulfillment and happiness in their enterprise and in the educational advancement that prosperity makes possible. Perhaps this means that techno-capitalism really has less spiritual consequence (for good or ill) than we think and at best it offers unique people an outlet for their interests, much like art, science and politics. These are the kinds of questions you will find explored in this refreshing work. D'Souza concludes his work with a life-affirming statement of the dignity of human nature as a rebuttal and a caution against those who would take technology too far in the quest for pursuits such as cloning, genetic engineering or even merging the human race with computers. Part of the beauty of techno-capitalism is that it allows for the satisfaction of human wants and desires in a decentralized environment that replicates natural processes. Naturally self-regulating, self-perpetuating price mechanisms that nobody fully understands (much less controls) have much less to do with the marketplace than command-and-control decisionmaking. Effectively, capitalism is the triumph of human nature over centralization and control. Technology is the product of pure human nature and its perpetual quest for improvement. Does the new emphasis on biotechnology, the rhetoric of "overcoming" human nature with vastly advanced, highly evolved computers, and the impetus to control nature through genetic manipulation violate the principles that have brought us such success and the Party of Yeah such satisfaction? At the very least, it is something both optimists and pessimists must think through before taking the next bold leap into the future.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: Dinesh did it again with this piece of literary genius! Well maybe it isn't genius, but it is informative and entertaining. In "The Virture of Prosperity" D'Souza makes an argument for capitalism based around the compassion that affluence had brought to this country. This book should counter every anti-globalization textbook in the classroom in order to provide a fair and balanced view of our supper-affluent society. Relatively short, easy to read, and full of stats and figures to amaze your friends with, this book would make a great paper-back to pick up asap! The only shortcoming would be that it was written before 9/11 so some of the flowery imagery of our future seem a tad bittersweet.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Read
Review: Dinesh did it again with this piece of literary genius! Well maybe it isn't genius, but it is informative and entertaining. In "The Virture of Prosperity" D'Souza makes an argument for capitalism based around the compassion that affluence had brought to this country. This book should counter every anti-globalization textbook in the classroom in order to provide a fair and balanced view of our supper-affluent society. Relatively short, easy to read, and full of stats and figures to amaze your friends with, this book would make a great paper-back to pick up asap! The only shortcoming would be that it was written before 9/11 so some of the flowery imagery of our future seem a tad bittersweet.
Rating:
Summary: Simply incredible
Review: I am absolutely amazed at the breadth of D'Souza's knowledge. This is my first Dinesh book and it certainly won't be the last. After reading that he was a policy analyst for Ronald Reagan and was a member of both the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution, I expected the book to make a much firmer stance on the issues. I am pleasantly surprised at the respect that D'Souza gives to all arguments. He really considers every viewpoint before moving on. The topic at hand I would summarize down to "the ethics and morality of capitalism and technological progress." What I found was a very intellectual (for a grass-roots type of book) work that bounced between technophile and technophobe viewpoints, liberal and conservative viewpoints, and touched upon a huge diversity of subjects such as philosophy, sociology, psychology, politics, and biology, among others. By the way, I minored in Philosophy, and D'Souza seems to have a firmer grasp of philosophical concepts than I ever had! D'Souza has a deft touch that makes his book at once highly readable, intellectually stimulating, and thought provoking.
Rating:
Summary: Reporting from the bubble - but still has much to offer
Review: I like Dinesh D'Souza. If you don't you probably won't like this book because he writes from himself with passion for his topic and point of view. While I don't agree with every point he makes, I find him worth reading and enjoyable to read.
This book had the misfortune to come out just after the Internet Bubble burst. He had to go around trying to sell the idea that it didn't matter and that his views would come about anyway. At the time, no one wanted to listen because they were too worried about their 401ks evaporating.
Do his points make much sense in 2004? I would say that they do in many ways. However, it is clear from the writing that the author was firmly in the grip of the New Economy hoopla. So, if you can filter out some of the excesses, there is still quite a bit here worth considering.
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