10 Essential Dave Brubeck Albums

The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Brubeck on piano, Paul Desmond on alto sax, Joe Morello on drums, and Eugene Wright on bass.

A wonderful photo of Dave Brubeck at the piano.

Collage of the album covers for 9 of the 10 Essential Dave Brubeck albums. I left off Their Last Time Out, which has a nice cover, but someone had to be the odd album out. The cover for Jazz Impressions of Eurasia always makes me smile. I love the cover for 1975: The Duets, which looks like a wine bottle.

The jazz pianist Dave Brubeck was a remarkable artist. Brubeck was the rare jazz artist who was fortunate enough to become popular without compromising his ideas about jazz. He expanded the palette of jazz, as he let rhythms and melodies from cultures around the world influence his music, and he brought jazz out of strict 4/4 rhythm and into other time signatures. Brubeck was also a remarkable composer who wrote many memorable songs, as well as classical pieces like cantatas and oratorios. To cap it all off, Dave Brubeck was by all accounts the nicest person you’d ever want to meet. 

I had the good fortune of meeting Dave Brubeck twice. When I was in college I interned for the journalist Hedrick Smith, who at the time was working on his 2001 documentary “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.” I had the chance to go backstage with Smith after a Brubeck concert and meet Dave, and he was very nice, a true gentleman. I wrote a longer piece about my memories of Dave Brubeck, and I was lucky enough to see him in concert 5 times. 

Dave Brubeck’s recording career spanned nearly sixty years, and he left behind many superb recordings. But where do you start with such a formidable discography? To help you get introduced to a great jazz artist, I compiled a list of the 10 Essential Dave Brubeck albums. Of course there are many more excellent recordings that Brubeck made, but these would be a great entry point into his music. Albums are listed in the order they were recorded.

Jazz at Oberlin, 1953. This album was a live recording made on the campus of Oberlin College. Brubeck was hugely popular among college kids in the 1950’s and 1960’s, and he made several live recordings on college campuses. After suffering a neck and back injury in a diving accident in 1951, Brubeck, then the leader of a jazz trio was looking for someone else to join his group so he wouldn’t have to be the only soloist. Fortunately, he reconnected with the alto saxophonist Paul Desmond. Brubeck and Desmond had met during their military service in World War II. Desmond’s light and airy tone was reminiscent of Stan Getz’s sound on the tenor saxophone, and it contrasted well with Brubeck’ pounding approach to the piano keyboard. Brubeck and Desmond’s musical partnership lasted for more than a quarter of a century, until Desmond’s death from lung cancer in 1977. Jazz at Oberlin shows the close musical connection that Brubeck and Desmond had on songs like “These Foolish Things” and “Just the Way You Look Tonight.”

Brubeck Time, recorded 1954. Dave Brubeck was so popular in 1954 that he made the cover of Time magazine. He was the second jazz musician to be on the cover of Time, and Brubeck himself said that the honor should have gone to Duke Ellington. The title of Brubeck Time was meant to play off of this connection, and the album cover even featured the painting of Brubeck that adorned the cover of Time. The album included the classic song “Audrey,” a beautiful ballad that was Desmond and Brubeck’s ode to Audrey Hepburn. There were also swingers like “Jeepers Creepers” and “Stompin’ for Mili” that highlighted Brubeck and Desmond’s facility with uptempo songs.

Jazz Impressions of Eurasia, recorded 1958. By 1958, drummer Joe Morello had joined Brubeck’s quartet, and now Brubeck had a drummer capable of playing the complex rhythms and time signatures that he wanted to experiment with. Paul Desmond and Morello didn’t get along at first, as Desmond found Morello’s style too loud and flashy for his tastes. Eventually though, Desmond realized what Morello could bring to the group. Brubeck was also coming into his own as a composer, and he wrote all of the songs on Jazz Impressions of Eurasia. The music was inspired by the sounds that Brubeck heard on a long world tour sponsored by the U.S. State Department. The album covers a lot of ground, from the stately serenity of “Brandenburg Gate,” to the tense and exciting rhythms of “The Golden Horn.” 

Time Out, 1959. This was Dave Brubeck’s most famous album, and his best-selling. It included the catchy hit “Take Five,” which was written by Paul Desmond. All of the songs on Time Out were in unique time signatures, ranging from the 5/4 meter of “Take Five” to the 9/8 of “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” Columbia Records, Brubeck’s label, was nervous about Time Out for three reasons: All of the songs were originals, with no “standards” that the record-buying public was already familiar with, the songs were in weird time signatures, which meant that people couldn’t dance to the record, and the cover featured an abstract painting by S. Neil Fujita. Of course, all those objections proved to be foolish, as Time Out went on to sell a million copies and peaked at number two on the Billboard pop album charts. Bassist Eugene Wright had joined the Brubeck Quartet in late 1958, and now the classic lineup of the Dave Brubeck Quartet was complete. Time Out is a classic album that was one of the first jazz albums I ever heard, and it remains fresh and vibrant more than 50 years after it was recorded. 

Time Further Out, 1961. A sequel of sorts to Time Out, Time Further Out was another exploration of unique time signatures, and featured classic Brubeck songs like “It’s a Raggy Waltz,” and the supremely catchy 7/4 song “Unsquare Dance.” The album was a superb showcase for drummer Joe Morello, who demonstrated his ability to master any time signature thrown at him. Brubeck went on to record further albums of unique time signatures, Countdown-Time in Outer Space, Time Changes, and Time In, which are all excellent.

The Dave Brubeck Quartet at Carnegie Hall, 1963. Before this live performance in February 1963, Joe Morello was recovering from the flu, and didn’t feel like playing. Eugene Wright, Paul Desmond, and bandleader Dave Brubeck all felt a little uptight. But you can’t tell any of that on this amazing two-disc set of an unforgettable concert. From the opening of “St. Louis Blues,” you can tell that this band is cooking, swinging their absolute hardest. Brubeck’s solo finds him charging aggressively ahead like a locomotive. Morello has a wonderful solo on “Castilian Drums.” All of the music is outstanding, but the highlight has to be the super fast version of “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” When Brubeck starts the song you think there’s no way the group will be able to keep it going at that pace, but they do. This concert showcases the Dave Brubeck Quartet at the peak of their powers.

 Jazz Impressions of Japan, 1964. A superb album full of the sounds and textures that Brubeck absorbed during the Quartet’s tour of Japan in 1964. It includes the catchy “Toki’s Theme,” which is close as Brubeck ever came to rock and roll, as well as the moving “Koto Song,” which was a highlight of Brubeck live performances for decades to come. 

Their Last Time Out, recorded in 1967. Unreleased until 2011, this two-disc set features the very last concert of the classic lineup of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, comprising Paul Desmond on alto sax, Eugene Wright on bass, and Joe Morello on drums. Brubeck wanted a break from touring so he could focus on writing longer pieces of music. Within a year Brubeck was back on the road with a new group. The classic lineup would reform for a brief 25^th anniversary tour in 1976. Their Last Time Out is not only a historic concert; it’s also full of great music, as these four men were all at the top of their games. There are songs that were staples of Brubeck’s concerts, like “St. Louis Blues,” “Take the A Train,” and of course “Take Five,” but also “Cielito Lindo” and “La Paloma Azul” that the Quartet had recently recorded for the Bravo! Brubeck! LP.

 1975: The Duets, 1975. This album of duets between Brubeck and Paul Desmond shows off their deep musical connection. The music is made more poignant by the fact that Desmond died of lung cancer less than two years after this album was recorded. Highlights include a moving version of “Koto Song.”

Indian Summer, 2007. This album of piano solos was the last recording released by Dave Brubeck in his lifetime. As befitting the title, the songs are mainly ones from Brubeck’s youth, as he looked back over a lifetime of music. Indian Summer proved that Brubeck was still a vital jazz artist in his 80’s. 

Dave Brubeck left behind many wonderful recordings, and he will continue to be remembered as one of the key American jazz artists of the 20^th century.

October 23, 2018: I've written a sequel to this post, "10 More Essential Dave Brubeck Albums."

The Best Books I Read in 2014

Big Hair and Plastic Grass, by Dan Epstein, 2010. That's Oscar Gamble with the amazing Afro.

Stars and Strikes, by Dan Epstein, 2014. Featuring Ralph Garr in shorts, and Mike Schmidt without a mustache.

The Russians, by Hedrick Smith, 1976.

Little Green Men, by Christopher Buckley, 1999.

How to Fight Presidents, by Daniel O'Brien, 2014.

Kirk Douglas promoting The Ragman's Son, 1988.

Ike's Bluff, by Evan Thomas, 2012.

Hustle, by Michael Sokolove, originally published in 1990, updated in 2005.

I had a very productive reading year, and I managed to read 27 books in 2014. Since it’s almost the end of 2014, and the end of the year is the prime time for best-of lists, here’s my list of the best books I read this year. (The links will take you to the full review of the book.)

Big Hair and Plastic Grass and Stars and Strikes, by Dan Epstein. Epstein is a great writer who has a big heart for both baseball and the 1970’s. I read both of his books about 1970’s baseball this year, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. Big Hair and Plastic Grass is a season-by-season account of the 1970’s, and Epstein makes the larger-than-life personalities of the time come to life. Epstein writes that the decade of the 1970’s saw more changes in baseball than all the other decades before, and I have to agree with him. Stars and Strikes is an in-depth look at the 1976 season, and it’s a great portrait of a game on the edge of some huge changes, like free agency. Epstein’s enthusiasm for baseball and 1970’s pop culture comes through in both books, and I like that he clearly enjoys what he’s writing about. Reading Epstein’s books will make you want to buy a Pontiac Firebird with a t-roof, throw on some Eagles 8-tracks, and grow a mustache. You should follow his Facebook pages, in which he wittily wishes 1970’s baseball players a funky birthday.

The Russians, by Hedrick Smith. I read The Russians during this year’s Sochi Olympics, and the book helped me understand the contradictions of Russia much better. Even though Smith’s book was published in 1976, his insights into the Russian culture and character are still very relevant. Smith was the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times from 1971-74, and in 1974 he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his articles about life in the Soviet Union. I was lucky enough to intern for Hedrick Smith during college in the fall of 2001, as he was finishing up the excellent documentary “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.” In The Russians, Smith deftly exposes one of the many contradictions in Soviet society: that the supposedly classless society was actually just as stratified between the haves and have-nots as the West was, if not more so.

Little Green Men, by Christopher Buckley. Little Green Men is a tremendously funny satire. Christopher Buckley can make me laugh like few other authors can. When I read this book I really needed some laughs, and Little Green Men more than delivered. I wish there were a movie version with Stephen Colbert playing the book’s hero, the blowhard political commentator John Oliver Banion, who gets abducted by aliens and heads up the “Millennium Man March” on Washington.

How to Fight Presidents, by Daniel O’Brien. O’Brien mixes humor with historical fact in this book, which is a guide on how to fight former U.S. Presidents. The book assumes that you have to go back in time and engage them in hand to hand combat. This would be a daunting task, since most of our Presidents have been pretty badass. The chapter headings are hilarious. Two of my favorites are: “Thomas Jefferson just invented six different devices that can kill you,” and “Franklin Pierce is the Franklin Pierce of fighting, which is to say, he is a bad fighter.” If you’re a history buff, this book will make you laugh, and you’ll also learn something along the way. Like the one time when James Monroe threatened his secretary of the treasury with a set of fireplace tongs. 

The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas. An excellent Hollywood autobiography, Douglas pulls no punches as he tells the story of how he rose from abject poverty to become one of the biggest movie stars of the 1950’s and beyond. The Ragman’s Son is written with honesty, and Douglas isn’t afraid to show the reader his faults, which makes it a great autobiography. Douglas is a complex man, and The Ragman’s Son is a fascinating look at the life and mind of one of the greatest film actors of the last 60 years. Douglas just turned 98 in December, and old movie fans like me can be glad that he’s still with us.

Ike’s Bluff, by Evan Thomas. Evan Thomas’s 2012 book Ike’s Bluff: President Eisenhower’s Secret Battle to Save the World, completely refutes the stereotype of Dwight Eisenhower as a caretaker president who only cared about his golf handicap. Thomas focuses his book exclusively on Eisenhower’s foreign policy, and he paints a portrait of an engaged leader who was extremely skilled at using psychology to get what he wanted. Thomas is incisive about Eisenhower’s complex personality, using excerpts from the medical diary of Howard Snyder, Eisenhower’s doctor, to shed light on Ike’s mood swings. Despite his seemingly endless patience at the bridge table, Ike had a terrible temper which he struggled to keep under control, and he once hurled a golf club at Dr. Snyder. I learned a lot about Eisenhower from Ike’s Bluff, and he comes off as a canny man who did his best to keep the Cold War from turning hot. The book is an excellent study of presidential leadership.

Hustle: The Myth, Life, and Lies of Pete Rose, by Michael Sokolove. Sokolove examines many different parts of Pete Rose’s life and career in this excellent book. One chapter deals with Rose’s close friendships with many sportswriters, which probably kept the media off of his back until his gambling scandal exploded in 1989. Sokolove understands the contradiction of Pete Rose, and other athletes: that a man can be a great baseball player and at the same time be a terrible human being. Hustle is essential reading for any baseball fan.

Book Review: "The Russians," by Hedrick Smith (1976)

Paperback cover of "The Russians," by Hedrick Smith, 1976.

Publicity photo of Hedrick Smith for "The Russians." Photo by Jill Krementz.

When Hedrick Smith’s book “The Russians” was published in 1976, it gave American readers a taste of what life was like inside the Soviet Union. In “The Russians” Smith paints a vivid portrait of the culture of the Soviet Union under Leonid Brezhnev’s rule. Smith was the Moscow bureau chief for The New York Times from 1971-74, and in 1974 he won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his articles about life in the Soviet Union. I was lucky enough to intern for Hedrick Smith during college in the fall of 2001, as he was finishing up the excellent documentary “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck.” Smith’s most recent book is 2012’s “Who Stole the American Dream?” a very important book that I reviewed here.  

 “The Russians” is a large book, 680 pages in the original paperback edition, and Smith covers just about every imaginable aspect of Soviet society. I learned something new on every page of this book. I can’t accurately summarize all of the different parts of the book in this review, so I’ll focus on the sections that I enjoyed reading the most. 

While reading “The Russians” I was very struck by how completely the Soviet government controlled society and everyday life. Smith chronicled how the government censored the information that citizens had access to, which ranged from not informing citizens about wildfires raging only 15-20 miles outside of Moscow, to the heartbreaking story of a man whose daughter died in a plane crash, which he only learned of by going to the airport police-who only told him about the crash on the condition that he keep the news confidential. Because people had so little access through the state-run media to any kind of meaningful information, either about their own country or any others, the government was able to better control the population. This total control over information even extended to seemingly mundane things. For example, while Smith was in Moscow in 1973, the government published the first telephone directory in 15 years. Smith writes, “The problem with this phone book, as with so many desirable items in the Soviet Union, is that supply made not even the barest pretense of satisfying demand. For a city of eight million people, the printers published 50,000 phone books.” (p.472) 

I knew that Soviet citizens had very little political freedom, but I didn’t realize how many perks the elite members of the Communist Party enjoyed. Smith deftly exposes one of the many contradictions in Soviet society: that the supposedly classless society was actually just as stratified between the haves and have-nots as the West was, if not more so. Members of the elite were granted access to special stores where they could buy goods not available to other citizens. Elites also had opportunities to travel abroad, which meant that they had access to foreign goods, and work abroad was often paid in special “certificate rubles” which could be used in special stores and had more purchasing power than ordinary rubles. There was also little chance of upward mobility in the Soviet system-if you weren’t a Party member you didn’t have much of a chance of making a decent living. 

Political dissent in the Soviet Union was given very little chance to exist. As Smith shows, the temporary “thaw” in Soviet culture under Khrushchev in the 1950’s and 60’s was quickly replaced by the cold chilliness of the Brezhnev era. Under Brezhnev dissenters were rather quickly neutered by being sent to the labor camps of Siberia or exiled to the West. The methods of dealing with dissenters were not as cruel as they had been under Stalin, but the Soviet government was extremely effective at shutting down any dissenting points of view. 

Smith wrote about how it was not the KGB that most ordinary Soviet citizens feared. “For the quiet erosion of the spirit that takes place daily is caused more by the petty tyrants of Soviet life-the rigid little bureaucrats and the self-appointed busybodies who use infinite regulations and documents to harass, humble and hound the man in the street.” (p.352)

One of the most memorable parts of “The Russians” details Smith’s “interview” with the famed dissident writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. It was forbidden for foreign journalists to meet with Solzhenitsyn, as the Soviet government was very angry about his anti-Communist novels that explored the terrors of the Stalin regime. Smith and Bob Kaiser of The Washington Post went to Solzhenitsyn’s apartment to interview him, but when they arrived they found that Solzhenitsyn had already written the interview, both question and answers, for them. Smith writes, “I was stunned. What an irony, I thought. This is the way it is done at Pravda and here is Solzhenitsyn, whose entire being reverberates with his furious battle against censorship, a man who in the great tradition of Pushkin and Dostoyevsky had dared to assert the writer’s independence, producing a prepackaged interview. How could he be so blind or so vain? I thought of walking out.” (p.562) But Kaiser convinced Smith to read the hefty 25-page “interview” that Solzhenitsyn had written, which proved difficult because Solzhenitsyn was such a Slavophile that he wrote in an archaic style of Russian that used only “pure” Russian words, and not words that were derived from other languages. Solzhenitsyn also insisted that both papers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, print all of his 7,500 word “interview,” which had lengthy sections defending his ancestors from slander that Pravda was printing at the time. Smith explained that not even the U.S. President was guaranteed that his every word would be published in newspapers. Eventually a compromise was reached with Solzhenitsyn, and he agreed to answer some questions. Solzhenitsyn was eventually exiled by the Soviet government in 1974, and he settled in Vermont, despite his dislike of the West and material culture. Oddly enough, when Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia in 1994, he briefly hosted a TV talk show. 

Although parts of “The Russians” are inevitably dated, Smith’s deep insights into Russia and the Russian character make the book still very relevant today. It’s a shame that it’s out of print, it really deserves to be re-issued and enjoy wider circulation. Hedrick Smith is a great writer, and he crafts many memorable sentences throughout “The Russians.” One of my favorite passages is his spot-on comments about Soviet architecture:

“The newer subdivisions are a forest of massive prefab apartment blocks, numbing in their monotony (and duplicated in cities all across the country), pockmarked and graying with the instant aging that afflicts all Soviet architecture. They are left naked without grass or shrubbery or shutters or flower boxes, like fleets of dowdy ocean liners gone aground on some barren shore and dwarfing their passengers with their inhuman scale.” (p.140) 

Smith also uses as an epigraph for one of his chapters a very apt quote, which still does a good job of summing up Russia in the 21^st century:

“Russians have gloried in the very thing foreigners criticized them for-blind and boundless devotion to the will of the monarch, even when in his most insane flights he trampled underfoot all the laws of justice and humanity.” Nikolai Karamzin, Russian historian, 1766-1826. (p.320)

If you’re interested in Soviet history, or in Russian culture, Hedrick Smith’s “The Russians” is an excellent book that I would highly recommend.

Book Review: "Who Stole the American Dream?" by Hedrick Smith (2012)

"Who Stole the American Dream?" by Hedrick Smith, 2012.

Hedrick Smith

Hedrick Smith’s 2012 book “Who Stole the American Dream?” is a powerful look at the way things have shifted against the middle class over the last 40 years in America. It’s an important book that everyone interested in American politics or economics should read. 

Hedrick Smith is a veteran journalist who worked for The New York Times for 26 years. While he was with the Times Smith was a part of the team that broke the Pentagon Papers story and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1971. In 1974 Smith won the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his stories reporting from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. His work in the Soviet Union was the basis for his 1976 best-seller “The Russians.” Smith’s other books include “The Power Game,” his seminal study of political power in Washington, D.C., “The New Russians,” and “Rethinking America.” Since retiring from The New York Times, Smith has produced many documentaries for PBS. 

I was an intern in Hedrick Smith’s office during the fall of 2001. While I was there I helped work on Smith’s documentary “Rediscovering Dave Brubeck,” which I would highly recommend to any jazz fan. While I interned at Hedrick Smith Productions, I saw first-hand Smith’s tireless work ethic and his dedication to journalism. He’s won two Pulitzer Prizes, but he’s not just resting on his laurels.

Smith’s reporting for “Who Stole the American Dream?” is deep and incisive. He weaves the threads of his story together very well, writing in clear prose that is easy to understand. The book covers a lot of ground, but Smith excels in presenting the reader with the most relevant points in each chapter. The book is separated into short sections that make for quick reading.

Smith does a great job of showing how many government policies over the last 40 years have favored the rich at the expense of the middle class and the poor. As Smith writes in the Prologue:

“This book sets out to describe how, over the past four decades, we came to this point-how we became two such polarized and dissimilar Americas, how the great economic and political divide affects the lives of individual Americans, and how we might, through changed policies and a revival of citizen action, restore our unity and reclaim the American Dream for average people.” (Prologue, p. xix) 

In the first chapter, Smith stresses the influence of the Powell Memorandum, which was a call by lawyer Lewis Powell in 1971 for increased activism of business to strength their position and influence within government. At the time, Powell was a corporate lawyer, but a few months later he would be named to the Supreme Court by President Richard Nixon. The Powell Memorandum was written to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and it was not meant for public consumption at the time. The memorandum said, in part, “Business must learn the lesson…that political power is necessary.” (P.7) During the 1970’s business interests would take Powell’s message to heart as they began to lobby Congress in much greater numbers than ever before. 

Smith then chronicles how the middle class grew and flourished in the decades following World War II, and how the middle class’s earnings have stagnated over the last 30 years. As he writes, “…while productivity was rising close to 3 percent a year, hourly wages of the average worker, adjusted for inflation, were essentially flat, the same in 2011 as in 1978. Three decades of getting nowhere.” (P.73)

But while the middle class has been treading water for 30 years, the wealthy have been getting richer and richer, as compensation for CEOs of companies has skyrocketed over the last 40 years. Smith writes, “In the 1970s, the Federal Reserve reported that chief executives at 102 major companies were paid $1.2 million on average, adjusted for inflation, or roughly 40 times an average full-time worker’s pay. But by the early 2000s, CEOs at big companies had enjoyed such a meteoric rise that their average compensation topped $9 million a year, or 367 times the pay of the average worker.” (P.59) CEOs certainly have a right to be well compensated for their work, but the way their pay has skyrocketed is outrageous. CEO stock options have also skyrocketed in the last few decades. The thought is that CEOs will do a better job of leading the company if they have more of a stake in that company. Which is rather ridiculous, as pure self-interest will keep a CEO doing their job as best they can. The suggestion that CEOs need the extra incentive provided by stock options to do the best for their company is absurd. 

Smith also writes about Congress, and how politicians are more beholden to special interests than actual voters. The reality of politics today is that money buys you access to a politician, and access gets you influence. And since special interests are contributing more to PACs than middle class and lower class voters, the special interests have more influence than ordinary voters. Gun control is a recent example of an issue where the majority of people want action, but Congress was unable and unwilling to do anything substantive on the issue. The will of a majority was thwarted by a powerful minority. 

Smith details how Congress used to work in the 1950’s and 1960’s, as politicians from both parties would frequently work together to craft legislation. Compromise was essential, and there were more moderate politicians in both parties. In contrast, Congress now is extremely dysfunctional, and is barely able to pass any kind of legislation. Compromise has become a dirty word. Filibusters, and the threat of them, have become much more common. Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution says of the Senate: “In the 1960s, about 8 percent of significant legislation was subject to delaying tactics like filibusters or holds. It is now about 70 percent. Obstructionism is now the hallmark of the Senate.” (P. 322) 

 While it’s true that Democrats have become slightly more liberal, it’s also very true that the Republican Party has shifted steadily to the right since the 1960’s. Moderate Republicans are now an endangered species. One of the key moments in the Republican Party’s shift to the right was the 1964 nomination of Barry Goldwater as the Republican candidate for President. Smith and other authors have highlighted this turning point as the moment when the right wing started to take over the party. Even though Goldwater lost to Lyndon Johnson in a landslide, it was the moment when the right wing first asserted itself. When moderate Republican Nelson Rockefeller was booed by Goldwater supporters at the 1964 convention, it marked the beginning of a huge change in the Republican Party. 

In Part 4 of the book, Smith discusses many of the things that have caused the middle class to lose their wealth, from the subprime mortgage crisis, to Wal-Mart and other companies moving good jobs overseas. There was a time when companies were actually concerned about the welfare of their employees. Now the focus is often only on the bottom line of the balance sheet.

“Who Stole the American Dream?” is a book that should make you angry. It should make you think about what’s happened in the country over the last 40 years, and how the wealth disparity in this country is growing larger and larger. You should get indignant about the status quo as you read this book. My high school Social Studies teacher Mr. Anderson would always say to us “Be indignant!” He wanted us to have a reaction to current events, and Hedrick Smith wants us to have a similar reaction to his book.

In the final section of “Who Stole the American Dream?” Smith focuses on possible solutions to the problem and how we can rebuild the middle class. None of the solutions he proposes are easy, and none of them will be a quick fix. Some of them require direct citizen action. It might not be easy, but there are ways that we can change things in this country and take action to help rebuild the middle class. 

Personally, I think that Hedrick Smith hit the nail on the head with “Who Stole the American Dream?” He accurately diagnoses many of the maladies that plague our country today. He describes how we’ve gotten there over the last 40 years, and what can be done to change it. We would all do well to listen to him.