Barlett, Donald L. and Steele, James B. America: What Went Wrong? Kansas City MO: Andrews and McMeel, 1992. 235 pages.

Barlett and Steele are Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporters for the "Philadelphia Inquirer." Backed by an "Inquirer" team, they spent two years researching the changes that rocked the U.S. economy in the 80s -- a murky subject that the rich would prefer stayed murky. When their nine-part series ran in 1991, it drew 20,000 letters and calls, and later became both a Bill Moyers TV series and the basis for this book.

The authors have the numbers to verify what one can sense all over Middle America. During the 80s, a self-confident American working class ("the middle class," Barlett and Steele call it, bowing to usage) was dismantled as a result of deliberate economic policy. Tax "cuts" transferred money to the rich, jobs were shipped overseas, deregulation gutted healthy industries, pensions disappeared while health costs sky-rocketed, and our political system was sold to corporate bidders. Barlett and Steele make this process intelligible, partly by attaching faces to it. They interview bankruptcy lawyers, who bill for the hours they spend flying coast-to-coast -- but also the hard-working Joes and Sallies shut out of factories the bankruptcy lawyers closed. An angry book that's difficult to brush off.

-- Steve Badrich
ISBN 0-8362-7001-0

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