| THE GOOD FIGHT: Declare Your Independence & Close the Democracy Gap Ralph Nader New York: ReganBooks, 2004 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-06-075604-8 | ||||
| ISBN 0-06-075604-7 | 294p. | HC | $25.95 | |
| Page 70: | "By the late 1960s, the non-smoking movement was underway." |
| S/B "under way". |
| Page 84: | "General Electric bought RCA, which owned NBC in the mid-1980s, with the billions from an outrageous tax loophole that Reagan demanded and Congress passed in 1981." |
| Missing comma: S/B "which owned NBC, in the mid-1980s". |
| Page 101: | "The old days of occasional bubble gum, ice cream cones, and a Saturday afternoon movie at the BiJou theatre have been replaced by 24/7 entertainment and product placements and logos that pepper the brains of children two-years-old on up." |
| S/B "Bijou" and "from two years old on up". |
| Page 101: | "Advocates of holistic medicine weighing the mind-body connection would not imagine the advanced Pavlovian states of conditioned responses coming out of these marketed to children." |
| Confusing sentence: Probably S/B "coming out of these techniques being marketed to children". An alternative reading suggests: S/B "coming out of these marketed-to children". |
| Page 104: | "Over the years, the tobacco and alcoholic industries have slyly and not so slyly been reaching youngsters." |
| S/B "tobacco and alcoholic-beverage industries". |
| Page 115: | "Down at the local school level, the idiotic complexions of LNCB are working their corrosive will on teachers and students." |
| Probably S/B "the idiotic complexities". |
| Page 120: | "As a result, despite a continuing increase in size and a a steady decrease in price, increased refrigerator and freezer efficiency now save 200 billion kilowatt hours over 1974 efficiency levels every year." |
| Error of number: S/B "increased refrigerator and freezer efficiency now saves". |
| Page 120: | "Passive solar design is even less sophisticated." |
| I disagree. It may be less costly; but technical sophistication does not necessarily require moving parts. |
| Page 125: | "In the town of Riviera Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida, environmental violence threatens residents' through their water pipes." |
| Possessive word with no object: probably S/B "threatens residents' health". (Or simply remove the apostrophe.) |
| Page 129: | "It is axiomatic that as we lose wilderness, protecting what remains becomes evermore urgent." |
| Missing space: S/B "ever more". |
| Page 153: | "...if only employers were forced to take preventive action—to follow the basic nostrum, 'Better Safe Than Sorry'." |
| Word choice: probably S/B "dictum". A nostrum is a quack remedy. |
| Page 164: | "The numbers of restatements, complied by the Huron Consulting Group..." |
| S/B "number of restatements, compiled by". |
| Page 203: | "I called my friend ... to come down from Massachusetts and ask the questions, which by then had lengthened to twelve." |
| S/B "had increased in number to twelve". |
| Page 206: | "With big money, ruthless organization, and lobbying, they prevail over superior non-profit health care services that are non-profit." |
| Redundant phrase — eliminate it. |
| Page 207: | "Jamie Court, whose book Making a Killing: HMOs and the Threat to your Health, was not just about data, and the aggregate statistics." |
| This is not a sentence. Probably S/B prefixed with "There was". |
| Page 210: | "Visitors from these and other countries like France, Italy and Holland can scarcely believe how American workers (who work longer hours than they do) have to endure what they in their countries take for granted." |
| This makes no sense, or at best is contradictory to the point Nader is trying to make. |
| Page 212: | "...oligarchy, with a corporate-dominated government demands the future expenditure of trillions of dollars against projected stateless terrorism." |
| Two mistakes: S/B "corporation-dominated government, demands". |
| Page 213: | "But, then, even in the realm of stateless terrorism, sanity is in short supply." |
| S/B "the realm of combatting stateless terrorism". |
| Page 226: | "Foreign policy amounts to more than national defense, and national defense amounts to more than a mega-business opportunity for weapons and other contractors." |
| S/B "for weapons makers". |
| Page 226: | "On top of that is the chemical, biological, surveillance, detection, intelligence budgets to deal with the al Qaeda menace." |
| Number error: S/B "is...budget". |
| Page 241: | "U.S. manufacturers are closing factories, in large part either because they can't compete with low-wage competitors in China or elsewhere." |
| An "either" with no "or". Simply remove it. |
| Page 241: | "The factory employed 1,600 in good-paying jobs, and provided jobs to one-in-twelve adults in the local workforce..." |
| Hyphens unneeded. |
| Page 241: | "More than half-a-million U.S. workers have been certified..." |
| Hyphens unneeded. |
| Page 247: | "It executed the Ogonis eloquent leader, Ken Saro-Wiwa, and other Ogoni leaders." |
| Apostrophe needed: S/B "the Ogonis' eloquent leader". |
| Page 255: | "Half of democracy is about people just showing up—showing up to vote, to rallies, marches, demonstrations, to give testimony, attend action meetings for schools, to partake in community protection, advance civil rights, improve health care, and work for peace." |
| As my technical writing teacher would have said, this is not parallel. She meant that each of a series of phrases should be of similar pattern. The pattern is set by the first phrase in the sequence: in this case, "showing up to [do something]". But there is no verb in "to rallies, marches, demonstrations" — thus breaking the parallelism. |
| Page 258: | "In return, they deny you solar energy and an energy efficient economy..." |
| Hyphen needed: S/B "energy-efficient". |
| Page 259: | "...Clean Money Campaign Reform with free access to television and radio time for those ballot qualified candidates who agree to receive public monies..." |
| Hyphen needed: S/B "ballot-qualified". |
| Page 264: | "Have you heard of ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, www.acorn.org)?" |
| ACORN was mentioned before, but the acronym was not expanded. Also, ACORN is not indexed as a separate term, and the only index entry for the Association is for page 264. |
| Page 264: | "The world of predatory lending among lower income minorities and poor Whites is little known to the rest of America." |
| Since it's not naming a particular family, capitalization is not indicated: S/B "whites". |
| Page 264: | "Although the variety of gouging and deception takes different forms..." |
| Clumsy construction: S/B "Although the gouging and deception take a variety of forms..." |
| Page 265: | "While President Bush focused on the television airwaves toward Afghanistan..." |
| Clumsy construction: S/B "While President Bush focused on Afghanistan in his television appearances..." or something similar. |
| Page 267: | "With one of the largest rotations of troops to and from Iraq underway ..." |
| S/B "under way". |
| Page 268: | "It takes some doing to turn a world that was demonstrating support for America after 9/11 into a world that is aghast and hostile to the messianic unilateral militarism of George W. Bush and his chronically prevaricating vice president, Dick Cheney..." |
| S/B "aghast at". |
| Page 271: | "What would he say about the world's $3 billion a day on military budgets..." |
| Missing word: S/B "$3 billion a day spent". |
| Page 273: | "Rowland's approval rating dropped to record lows, and impeachment initiatives are now underway..." |
| S/B "under way". |
| Page 286: | "A variety of worthwhile information can be found on the following web site:" |
| Since more than one is listed, S/B "Web sites". (And note capitalization.) |
| Pages 287-294: | The book's indexing, while good, is not as thorough or accurate as it might be. For example, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is indexed as page 264, but ACORN is mentioned (without expansion) earlier in the book. The American Society of Civil Engineers' Report Card for America's Infrastructure is described on page 214, yet there is no index entry for "American Society of Civil Engineers" — nor for "ASCE", for "infrastructure", or for "Report Card". |
| I can only request that Nader and his editor be more careful next time. |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.