Mike Shea on the month’s new releases
Melissa Joulwan
Touchstone
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ROLLERGIRL: TOTALLY TRUE TALES FROM THE TRACK, the memoir from Austin roller derby star MELISSA “MELICIOUS” JOULWAN, proves the cliché: You really can’t judge a book by its cover. In this case, a photo of two leggy skaters in the miniest of skirts (and is that a flash of panty?) screams sexploitation without a hint at the author’s smarts and keen sense of irony. Sure, there’s sass and sex—shapely bosoms are winkingly referred to as “tickets”—but Joulwan also sincerely wants the world to know that “the girls” who skate bouts under noms de gear like Reyna Terror and Cat Tastrophe are solid citizens just like you (though clearly with more-colorful avocations) who drop their kids off at day care on the way to regular jobs. Joulwan’s up-close-and-personal accounts will thrill fans of the campy sport; for the rest of us, there is the surprisingly inspirational story of four teams of do-it-yourself women who started up a league of their own and survived to tell the tale.
Joe R. Lansdale
Vintage
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In his newest genre-bending thriller, LOST ECHOES, six-time Bram Stoker Award winner JOE R. LANSDALE writes, as always, with the ease of a man born to the task. Meet young Harry Wilkes, of Mud Creek, who hears “dark sounds” from violent events of the past in the places they occurred. The creepy cacophony drives him to alcoholic reclusion until he meets fellow drunk Tad, a Shen Chuan sensei who proposes they partner up to practice martial arts as a path to sobriety and to banish their respective demons. Harry makes the pact but unwisely lets a cop (his girlfriend-to-be) lead him to the scene of an unsolved, decades-old murder. Mayhem ensues. Lost Echoes coasts a bit—you can almost picture the author scratching his chin as he ponders where to steer the plot—and old-school fans will continue to wax nostalgic about the raucous and much-beloved Hap and Leonard series that Lansdale abandoned several years back. But in the long run, this is probably just where he pauses to catch his breath.
Kerry Max Cook
William Morrow
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As a Texas death row in-mate trying to prove himself innocent of a rape and murder in Tyler, KERRY MAX COOK was reminded of his fate every time another con made the death walk. CHASING JUSTICE is a hellish tour of a criminal justice system whose officers allegedly railroaded Cook for personal and political gain. The litany of professional malfeasance was sufficiently egregious to inspire the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to write, with unprecedented frankness, that “prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this entire matter” and that the “conviction was obtained through fraud and in violation of the law.” But the Kafka-esque courtroom episodes are small beer compared with the nightmarish conditions of Cook’s twenty-year incarceration; he was left naked in solitary confinement and victimized by prison predators. That he survived is astounding; the circumstances that finally freed him by means of DNA evidence are nearly miraculous.
Ravi Batra
In The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos, the best-selling author and Southern Methodist University professor of economics expounds on corruption and the keys to global prosperity.
Your new book identifies a laundry list of global economic problems. Can you single out the most worrisome?
Ravi Batra: The single most worrisome global economic problem is the housing bubble that now exists not just in the United States but also in many other countries including the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Australia, and others. By itself the bubble need not be catastrophic even if it bursts, because housing is very different from other investments, but unfortunately the U.S. bubble has been primarily financed by foreign money. When the American bubble starts to burst around mid-2007 and beyond, foreign investors will head for the exits; while it is in the self-interest of foreign governments to finance our trade deficit, private groups have no such interest or obligation. I am afraid the bursting of the U.S. bubble will result in loan defaults and could start a foreign stampede out of American assets, leading to a collapse of the dollar, which in turn will cause our stock, bond, and real estate markets to crash. That will then have a ripple effect around the world.
How would this compare in scale with the Internet bubble’s burst?
RB: The Internet bubble had many years in the making and it created the largest share-market euphoria in history. When it burst in 2001, it led to a lot of pain around the world. Its collapse was sudden and swift. The housing bubble is also the biggest ever in history, but house prices usually are more stable and less volatile. In that respect, the housing crash need not be as disruptive and painful as the Internet bursting.
Still, the housing collapse has the potential to be more destructive than the Internet bubble’s crash. Whenever there is a financial crisis today, the government responds by increasing the budget deficit and cutting interest rates to lure more people into debt. This recipe has been working for more than two decades, and I am sure it will be tried again to counter the coming housing debacle. It was certainly tried in the wake of the Internet bubble burst, and it worked mainly because of the relatively new craze of home equity financing. The public simply borrowed money on appreciating homes at low interest rates and used it to boost consumer spending. Such a stimulant to the economy is no longer available, or has a limited scope. It could even have a negative impact on consumer spending with housing price depreciation.
Thus, the housing bubble crash could be more disruptive than the Internet counterpart, simply because the debt-creating ability of the economic system is now constrained.
The Iraq war also matters in this regard, because it limits the government’s ability to raise deficit spending on American goods. Unless spending goes up from some source to neutralize the negative impact of a financial crisis, a durable recession is the inevitable result.
Can the political corruption you cite really affect entire economies?
RB: The global economic system is wobbly precisely because of political corruption all over the world. Its cumulative effect is strong enough to disrupt entire economies. In the United States, corruption takes the form of biased economic policies that raise profits of corporate donors who finance elections.
You call for a “voters’ revolution” to combat poverty.
RB: Revolutions, voters’ or militaristic, occur rarely, but they do occur. I successfully predicted both the 1979 Iranian revolution and the downfall of Soviet Communism; using similar methods, I have concluded that a voters’ revolution is very likely in the United States in the next decade. This revolution will put an end to the rule of money; corruption will decline, and reforms to reduce the wage gap—and hence poverty—will be instituted. That will then bring about a golden age.
Would the revolution arise out of traditional parties or new sociopolitical alliances?
RB: Most likely from new alliances. The way the Republicans’ rule ended in Congress in November, and the way Barack Obama’s star has risen, you can see there is a great hunger for leadership and reforms.
The conflict between Islam and the West is rooted in ideology. Does it also have an economic basis?
RB: While ideology plays a significant role in the conflict between fundamentalist Islam and the materialist West, the economic basis is also important. At the heart of the Arab-Israeli feud, for instance, is the right to land. The Palestinians demand a return of their domains they lost in 1948; they seek to come back to Israel to reclaim their property. So this is the economic basis of their feud. Without the Arab-Israeli conflict there won’t be as much friction between jihadists and the West.
Ideology is also important in the sectarian conflict between the Shias and Sunnis. While sectarian differences exist in every religion, the Shia-Sunni feud in Islam is increasingly violent.
The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos: Ravi Batra, published by Palgrave Macmillan.
