Here’s a very kind review I’d like to share with you.
A confession: I don’t just like books. I love books, spending more time in reading than I normally would admit. In my earlier years, books provided the escape from the responsibilities of family that seems so essential. I know you know what I mean.
But now I ask more from a book, wanting to come away with more than a good read. I often want to learn, to grow, to expand my knowledge of aspects of the world that were just names not that long ago. Curiosity - asking questions and finding answers - at times consumes me.
When I discover an author who piques my interest, I usually write him/her and a correspondence often ensues. Yes, “exciting” just doesn’t cover it. And so it happened with my love of biography that I came across author-columnist John Wasik’s The Merchant of Power: Sam Insull, Thomas Edison, and the Creation of the Modern Metropolis. Studs Terkel called Insull “one of the most magnetic and powerful con artists of the Great Depression.” A 5-star book combining stunning photographs of the past and history, Wasik kept me reading into the late night hours.
Following that success, John Wasik asked if some of my thoughts, my words, could be a portion of his upcoming book on the worst housing bust in generations - the hows and whys of it told in language we all can easily understand (even those of us, like me, who are not wizards in economics). And so, Wasik’s latest and just out, The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome, not only explains in layman’s language what has happened to our Dream House bubble, but comes up with some working solutions to keep our dream alive. It’s good - I wouldn’t kid you. Did I learn a lot? Oh, yes. And now I can now talk intelligently about the traumas in the housing market and in our own lives. But if you want to see Joan Larsen in print in a book, you WoWers, well, this is your chance.
By joan larsen