Volume 39, Number 8 · April 23, 1992
What Can Save the Economy?
By James Fallows
Head to Head: The Coming Economic Battle Among Japan, Europe, and America
by Lester Thurow
Morrow, 336 pp., $25.00
State of the Union Address and 'Highlights of the President's Growth Agenda'
by George Bush
The White House, 2 pp., free
A Call to Economic Arms: Forging a New American Mandate
by Paul E. Tsongas
The Tsongas Committee, 86 pp., free
A Plan for America's Future
by Bill Clinton
Clinton for President Committee, 15 pp., free
For a well-known writer, Lester Thurow has a peculiar prose style. His book is not exactly a heartening example of the pride in American craftsmanship he is trying to revive. Early in his book, Thurow refers to Gianni De Michelis, Italy's foreign minister, as 'the rotating head of the EEC.' You know what he means, but surely Thurow could have found a less clownish way to make the point. Twice on the next page, and in many other places in the book, Thurow makes singular terms like 'no one' or 'anyone' correspond to 'they' or 'their.' (For instance, 'No one will plant apple trees…if they do not expect to be around when the apples are harvested.') Thurow also seems indifferent to the burdens that writers normally bear in order to sustain the reader's interest. He provides surprisingly few examples or anecdotes to illustrate the contrasts that he draws among American, European, and Japanese economic behavior. He doesn't introduce previously unpublished facts, or use interviews to support his arguments. He seems to have written his book as if it were a series of lectures for his economics classes at MIT: the students have signed up, they're obliged to listen to what he says, and they will be penalized if they don't.
Review, 7318 words
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