Sunday, September 27, 2009

"Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America" by Kurt Andersen

Just finished "Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America" by Kurt Andersen and found it to be pretty good... not great, but pretty good.



I first heard of Andersen as his his work of historical fiction "Heyday" was on the bestseller list and then later came across two excellent pieces he wrote for Time Magazine.

The first was an Apr 2009 cover story "The End of Excess: Is This Crisis Good for America?" that I described in this blog post as "a compelling read that looks at America in each of the last few decades and how things led up to the economic collapse of the past six months."

The second was an essay titled "The Avenging Amateur" Andersen wrote for an Aug 2009 issue issue of Time and which served as the basis or jumping off point for "Reset". I linked to the article in this blog post and truth be told... probably enjoyed this essay a bit more than the book Andersen wrote out of it in that it was more focused.

That said, "Reset" is a mere 70 pages and an extremely quick and fairly interesting read.

The amateur spirit referenced in both the Time article and book is a hearkening back to the founding fathers of America... who helped create the country while at the same time running farms and businesses. Some of the other points Andersen makes are around getting control of health care costs and oil dependency, while at the same time using the economic crisis as a trigger to both control spending and foster innovation.

Good concepts all and more information on Andersen can be found on his website.