Looking For Hugh (BOOK REVIEW)

[bijou]

One of the best thing about having a blog that gets a fairly high amount of traffic is that I quite often get asked to review the odd book, and, as luck would have it, I always seem to get asked to do this just before I hop onto a plane for an evil carbon-producing flight to Spain - and no, I don't offset.

More often than not, the books I get asked to read are dry political ones. Factual tracts about this or that aspect of current affairs. Don't get me wrong, I like that sort of book, but sometimes you do need a bit of escapism, and its even better if you get a bit of escapism with an important purpose like I did this time around.

The book in question is written by a gentleman called Leon Weinstein, a man born in St Petersburg in 1949 who escaped the Soviet Union in 1974. The book is an adventure tale (for both adults and teenagers) about two teenagers visiting a number of fictional islands which each have different social and political systems and its end game is to show how capitalism, for all it's supposed ills, produces the results where other systems fail - the book is called "Looking for Hugh: The Capitalist Guideobook".

By all accounts the book has caused some reaction in the US from quarters of the Left, no doubt because some of the political andsocial systems of the fictional islands hit a little close to home with the point they make. The book itself has a feel about it that reminded me of how I felt as Orwell introduced Winston Smith to me through the pages of 1984. This may seem like exceptionally high praise and comparison, but the accesibility of the ideas the book brought forward had a really Orwellian style to them.

Whether it was the Island of Peace - where pacifists lived convinced they could talk and negotiate with anyone - or the People's Island of Justice and Equality where I imagine our Euqalities Minister, Harriet Harman would feel right at home, it highlighted the absurdity of much of the Left's desire to mould and engineer society in their utopian vision, whilst simulatneously showing why such things fail. ...

 read the rest here: http://dizzythinks.net/2009/10/looking-for-hugh.html

Some extracts here: http://thecapitalistguidebook.com/excerpts.html

One day Miki asked us to step outside for a serious talk. “You both are great Vocal Minorities,” he said with a big smile. “It’s about time you move to the next level. Community Organizers. Together we will change life on this Island, and make it even better. The crazies on Shark Island want to make poor people richer. Not a very smart task, if you ask me. It can take years. Now, where’s the money, after all? Rich people have plenty, right? So why look for it elsewhere? We’ll take money from the rich – they don’t need that much anyhow – and give it to the poor, saving a bit for ourselves.Which way is quicker and easier, in your humble opinion?”

Looks like this may be worth buying, I'll put it on my list.