Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America

Reset: How This Crisis Can Restore Our Values and Renew America
by Kurt Andersen
Random House 2009
ISBN-13: 978-1400068982

Renewal is a critically important element of life. In the economic distress that has afflicted America, and the rest of the world, in the past two years, we have all wished for renewal in our financial lives.

In this insightful, succinct, and easily readable book, Kurt Andersen reviews the profligacy that infected all of us over the past twenty or so years. Whether it is the size of our homes or our bodies, we all consumed way too much (in what is described as the “casino economy”). The price of gluttony ultimately had to be paid, and payment was made in a wrenching, involuntary manner.

Mr. Andersen traces the change from pride in how much we spend to how little we consume and save more than at any time in long memory. While that saving spirit dampens consumer spending across the economy, and holds back job creation, it also poses the fuel for economic renewal in our individual and cultural lives.

We are also treated to a pragmatic assessment of the elements of our national strength that will power our renewal: (i) immigration (much of our strength as a nation comes from the addition of new, hard working Americans; (ii) new generations of technology; and (iii) the flowering of our amateur spirit (meaning the lightness of beginning anew). In other words, we are poised to reset and move on, both personally and nationally.

This is an insightful, interesting read. It will make you think about your own live in these years, concluding with the seeds of optimism – the American spirit.

Warms, Cym