Ralph Nader's Getting Steamed will make you repeat that phrase from the movie Network: "I'm as mad as Hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!" His compendium of corporate crime, greed, and exploitation of honest people everywhere will raise your temperature—to the boiling point.
Among Nader's stories:
- Health insurance companies working to stop doctors from delivering care
- Nuclear power companies demanding loan guarantees out of your wallet
- Pharmaceutical companies putting your life on the line
- Bank bailouts galore
- Corporate profits soaring on the backs of Wal-Mart wages
Nader knows from his own experience that getting you steamed will work. As he writes:
"Our democracy is in decay, with no end in sight unless there is a sustained response from an aroused citizenry to stop the corporatists from blocking so many proven solutions for our country's problems. First, we need to raise our expectations to realistically attainable levels so we can believe that a better country is possible soon. Back in the 1950s I, like many others in that era, lost several friends and classmates to motor vehicle crashes—horrific fatalities and injuries. I learned the truth about the auto industry bosses, who, in favor of styling priorities, restrained their safety engineers and scientists from installing long-known safety devices like seat belts, better brakes and tires, collapsible steering columns and interior padding. And, I got steamed."
As Jim Hightower put it, you won't read and weep; you'll read and leap.
The most powerful political force on the planet is the P.O. Factor: people getting so pissed off that they decide to do something about it. In this engaging book, Ralph Nader―long the F-5 tornado of effective pissed-offness―rallies all of us to focus our P.O. Power directly on the arrogant and avaricious corporate bullies who're running roughshod over us and stifling America's potential for greatness. Don't “read and weep”―read and leap... into action.
--Jim Hightower
In Getting Steamed, Ralph Nader tells stories of corporate malfeasance that outrage, enlighten and compel action. Nader brings to this book the inside knowledge that has made him our most important critic of the corporate-political matrix. This book will make you mad as hell.
--Charles Derber, author of Greed to Green and Marx's Ghost
Nader's chronological selection of annotated reports on healthcare fraud, defective products, workplace injuries and environmental destruction makes it clear that we are like proverbial frogs steeped in a boiling cauldron of corporate crime. The question is whether we will choose to withdraw into our isolated despair and moral cowardice―becoming ever more inured to the ongoing epidemic as it cooks our cynical society dry―or, inspired by this book's specific suggestions to find ways to organize and fight back.
--Charles Cray, co-author of The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy
...a terrifying cornucopia of corporate crimes that not only continue unabated, but constantly pummel us financially, socially, physically, and mentally. Nader's commentary on this astonishing array of corporate transgressions (during just one year) is imbued with the passion and experience of decades as a crusader for justice. Take his challenge. Read this book in one sitting. Get steamed. Get active. Get going.
--Nomi Prins, Author of It Takes a Pillage: An Epic Tale of Power, Deceit and Untold Trillions
