Books : Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media...
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Type of bind: Hardcover
Format: Bargain Price
Label: HarperCollins
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: February 01, 2004
Publishing house: HarperCollins
Release Date: January 20, 2004
Sale Popularity Level: 601578
Studio: HarperCollins
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Ballooning government?
Millionaire welfare queens?
Tort lawyers run amok?
A $330,000 outhouse, paid for with your tax dollars?
John Stossel says, 'Give me a break.'
When he hit the airwaves thirty years ago, Stossel helped create a whole new category of news, dedicated to protecting and informing consumers. As a crusading reporter, he chased snake-oil peddlers, rip-off artists, and corporate thieves, winning the applause of his peers.
But along the way, he noticed that there was something far more troublesome going on: While the networks screamed about the dangers of exploding BIC lighters and coffeepots, worse risks were ignored. And while reporters were teaming up with lawyers and legislators to stick it to big business, they seldom reported the ways the free market made life better.
In Give Me a Break, Stossel explains how ambitious bureaucrats, intellectually lazy reporters, and greedy lawyers make your life worse even as they claim to protect your interests. Taking on such sacred cows as the FDA, the War on Drugs, and scaremongering environmental activists -- and backing up his trademark irreverence with careful reasoning and research -- he shows how the problems that government tries and fails to fix can be solved better by the extraordinary power of the free market.
He traces his journey from cub reporter to 20/20 co-anchor, revealing his battles to get his ideas to the public, his struggle to overcome stuttering, and his eventual realization that, for years, much of his reporting missed the point.
Stossel concludes the book with a provocative blueprint for change: a simple plan in the spirit of the Founding Fathers to ensure that America remains a place 'where free minds -- and free markets -- make good things happen.'
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
A quick and enjoyable read. Liberals, and I don't consider myself one, will most certainly dislike the section on why government in general tends to mess things up. However, Mr. Stossel does criticize the private sector as well, and this gives the book a certain balance.
Rated by buyers 
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Most Americans are what I call "default liberals". John was too, and he shows how most people, including me, have an epiphany of the faulty logic involved in modern liberlism, and make the slow, painfull transformation away from these feel-good yet harmful policies. This isn't a difficult or very acedemic book on libertarianism, but it is the best "starter" for anybody getting into politics I have ever read.
Rated by buyers -
Best book I've read in a long time. I went into it with no expectations, and came out of it agreeing with almost everything the guy said. Absolutely worth the purchase price, or even check it out from a library if you're not sure you'll like it. I can't remember a book where I had this kind of a reaction. I'd say maybe 10% of the things John Stossel wrote I disagreed with strongly (which is fine, it still gives you something to think about) and another 10% I was very much torn between two viewpoints on, but the remaining 80% of the book I found myself unconsciously shaking my head yes and steadfastly agreeing with his viewpoints completely. His ideas and observaions are just so logical and plain-sense, it's amazing no one else writes like this. Recommended times a thousand!
Rated by buyers -
Many do not understand the phenomenon that is Libertarianism, a political philosophy which is greatly like that that of the Democratic-Republicans of our nation's Founding Fathers, the thought of John Stuart Mill, and - to a lesser and slightly more conservative degree - that of Edmund Burke. Too infrequently do Americans even breach the subject of political philosophy with any depth, primarily thanks to our general tendency for pragmatism (if we are being positive) and superficiality (in a more negative sense). Stossel's light-hearted text does not aim to be a treatise on Libertarian thought but does function - in a wholly American style - to broach the subject of this political philosophy through concrete examples in his exodus from "social liberalism" (which is often just called liberalism today) to classical liberalism, that of the Libertarian.
Stossel begins with his common, gut-level misperceptions of what the direction and aim of consumer reporting is. Though a series of stories, he came to realize that much of the sensationalizing which the media was doing (and the people were consuming) was nothing more than fear-mongering which actually diverted a great deal of attention from more important matters. In addition, this fear-mongering takes on a character of duplicity by both excoriating large entities (business and government) while calling for the same entities to take action (particularly government). From a series of such realizations, he came to realize that much common sense is found in the political philosophy of Libertarianism, in its dual pillars of laissez-faire capitalism and individual liberty. He proceeds in a non-comprehensive way to show that such freedom has been beneficial, particularly in the elimination of material poverty.
Peppered with other light considerations of the meaning of liberty, Stossel's book serves as an excellent, albeit very, very light, introduction into Libertarian thought for American readers. It is engaging and enjoyable, therefore coming with my high recommendations in an age which has lost much zeal for liberty.
Rated by buyers -
I bought this book in this election year as a gamble. I'm pretty tired of the mud-slinging that replaces argument in most "popular" books about the current state of American society - it always seems to come down to Democrat vs. Republican - no in-between or alternate stances. Stossel, however, has done an honest and thoughtful job of it, from a unique, long-standing, and privileged position (privileged in the sense of being an eye-witness). This is not a political treatise favoring one party over another. It is altogether something different. I highly recommend it. It will make you think and look around.
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