The Cosimo book Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal, by Danny Schechter, has earned another great review, this one by Norm Goldman at BookPleasures. A brief excerpt:

Quite interesting, Schechter demonstrates how few media outlets investigated the predatory behavior of many lenders that deliberately and intentionally seduced people into taking loans they couldn’t afford. In fact, when more people became aware of the “subprime” debacle, very few in the media or on The Street suspected that there might have been more to it than just market mistakes. It was only when the banks began writing down billions of dollars in liens and no real assets backing them that the media began to wake up, however, by then it was too late, the damage had been done and the bubble burst.  Schechter even compares the disastrous California fires to the economic catastrophe where, “when you scratch the scorched surface of the newsy inferno you get deeper causes, a lack of planning and monitoring, not to mention the inattention by government. Sound familiar?”

Plunder: Investigating Our Economic Calamity and the Subprime Scandal is an impassioned wake-up call that is very accessible to the layperson with its clear-headed prose, although it is one that will probably move and shock as well as it informs. Some of us may have a smattering of knowledge of what is going on through our daily news, however, what Schechter does with this book is to delve into the details, delivering informative insights that will help us understand the fear, panic and uncertainty that has engulfed our economy as well as those around the world.

The entire review is available at BookPleasures.

Read the introduction to Plunder here. (Alert: PDF.)

Plunder is available at Amazon.com and from other online booksellers.