How The World Really Works [Paperback]

Alan B. Jones (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1997

More and more Americans are coming to feel that something has gone fundamentally wrong in our society. We have suffered repetitive wars, big and small, some won and some lost, but with the peace always lost. Our society has been drained of around $5 trillion in welfare costs since LBJ's War on Poverty was declared, but with no diminution in the incidence of "poverty". Our "War on Drugs" has also been lost, with its societal costs running around $500 billion per year. The cost of fixes for runaway environmentalism has reached about $1 trillion since the birth of the EPA in 1970. Our national debt is over $5 trillion and still going up. Two breadwinners per family has become normal, just to keep bread on the table. Americans feel put upon, and they are right, but they don't know who's doing it to them or why. Such issues have been pondered by researchers for many years, but the historical facts are finally bringing the pieces of the puzzle together. This book paints a picture of that largely completed puzzle, and lays out who the culprits are, why they are doing what they are doing, and how they are managing to pull off what is probably the biggest mass robbery of wealth and individual freedom in human history. Your reading this book will help to expose and stop the destruction, and help to guarantee a future of freedom rather than slavery for your children.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A powerful digest of commentary that unveils the sorry state of today's American condition. And it smarts! A searing 320 pages that Jones produced by reviewing other books of common complaint and sewing them together with his own observations . It "will convince you that our problems are interconnected in a way that you probably never guessed." Names names, pulls no punches. -- The Spotlight, June 16, 1997

From the Author

We present in this book overwhelming evidence that the many misfortunes our country has suffered during this last century have not just happened by chance. We have researched the works of many writers seeking to find out WHO is impoverishing us, and WHY and HOW they are doing it. Our findings are presented via a series of in-depth reviews of a carefully selected set of books, mostly little-known but a few famous, written by others. Taken together, a coherent picture emerges which precious few among even our political activists understand. We finish by laying out a legislative program which will finally get at our real problems, instead of wasting our efforts on the minutia which the media and the present Congress are concerning themselves with.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: ABJ Press (January 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964084813
• ISBN-13: 978-0964084810
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #234,432 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

395 of 412 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Insight into Organized Crime-Vatican-Wall Street Collaboration, January 29, 2007

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How The World Really Works (Paperback)

I am going to put my reputation on the line, and the 850+ non-fiction books I have read that make me the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction (and to my great surprise, today #49 over all fiction, movies, music, and software as well as non-fiction) for the simple reason that too many people discuss books such as this by labeling it "conspiracy theory."

It's not a conspiracy theory if it is true. I will try to be brief as well as illuminative.

First off, the author has culled a handful of books that support his case against a global financial elite, and these tend, with the exception of the Quigley book, to be left of left of center. I am however happy to add a number of books that support his essential theses that a handful of banking families control the central banks which are NOT government banks, and through loans, control governments, impoverish the middle class, and harvest profit without conscience from the "working poor."

Try these on for size:

1) Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins. 85% rock solid, 15% flakey, but in my view, a perfectly reasonable slam on the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund as instruments for impoverishing lesser developed countries, not empowering them.

2) The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time by Jeffrey Sachs, another slam on the WTO/IMF, which he relegates to third rate out-dated economist ranks, not at all focused or able to achieve what he calls "developmental economics."

3) The Global Class War: How America's Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future - and What It Will Take to Win It Back by Jeff Faux, a fine discussion of how our elites bribe the elites in other countries, and the both screw the public by looting the commonwealths of gold, oil, etcetera, without returns to the people whose families have lived on top of these resources for centuries.

4) Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It, by Paul Peterson of the Council of Foreign Relations (which the author hates, in my view it has two types of members--one manipulative like Henry Kissinger, another honest, like Paul Peterson), in which both the Republican and the Democratic parties are lambasted for being the ignorant slaves of the ultra-rich elites, and hopeless out of touch with reality and unable to represent We the People.

5) War Is a Racket: The Anti-War Classic by America's Most Decorated General, Two Other Anti=Interventionist Tracts, and Photographs from the Horror of It by General Smedley Butler, the highest decorated Marine of his time, who complained about being an enforcer for banks and businesses that lent money to the Third World then sent the Marines to get it back for them.

There are many other books that support this author's book reviews in great detail and from many varied perspectives. I refer you to my various lists, including the list on "Screwing the 90% that do the work."

The author has some pretensions and some slop, his arguments are not always consistent, but then neither are mine. On balance I regard this book as a first rate personal effort that should be read by every middle class person wondering, as Lou Dobbs on CNN has wondered, why we are exporting middle class jobs and importing poverty in the form of illegal aliens.

The author wraps up his varied reviews with a focus on the relationship between organized crime and the super-elite as well as their political elite (e.g. the Bush family, the best of the servant class), and on the relationship between drugs, covert operations, and Wall Street. Here again the author draws on a very tiny sub-set of books while not listing many others that support his thesis so I will mention a few here.

Having been through both Viet-Nam as a youth and the Central American Wars as an adult, I am quite certain that there are at least four different slices of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where I served for ten years as a clandestine case officer:

A small slice does what the White House wants, including black bag jobs.

A small but more important slice does what Wall Street wants, and helps Wall Street with access to financially relevant information that the public which pays for the CIA does not get. Buzzy Krongard, until recently Executive Director of the CIA, comes to mind as the most recent leader of this section.

A larger slice, that does covert action off the books with funding from Saudi Arabia and others, sometimes called the Safari Club, sometimes having off-shoots like Ted Shackley's Southern Air Transport, and so on. This slice can provide the intersection between criminal activities, white collar crime profits, illegal White House activities, and plain profiteering.

Finally, 90% of the CIA, folks like me that did not realize they were simply going through the motions and giving the local counterintelligence service a full-time rabbit to follow while the commercial clandestine boys and girls looted the bank in bright daylight.

I have two intelligence lists that can be helpful here, but I have not focused on creating crime lists. I'll just say that between the books on the The Working Poor: Invisible in America and on being Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in Americaand books on immoral predatory capitalism and unilateral militarism of the Dick Cheney variety (I have compiled a list of 25 specific impeachable actions by Dick Cheney based on three books:

The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil

There is a very clear-cut and direct relationship between dictators, transnational organized crime and terrorism, and Wall Street as well as the Republican and Democratic National Committees (see Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It)

That reminds me: there is an entire literature on petroleum, peak oil, petrodollars, and so on. Americans have been betrayed by their government since at least 1975, and more likely, back to the 1950's when naiveté about international affairs was replaced by active complicity.

Good news. 1) Internet leveled playing field. 2) Not enough guns to kill us all. 3) A few of the really rich have realized they need to help us create infinite wealth for ourselves, or lose all they have to locusts. Read, be vocal, be active, we're going to get a grip on our commonwealth soon.

Tip of the Hat to Jere for the following added links:
When Corporations Rule the World
The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents--The Definitive Edition (The Collected Works of F. a. Hayek)
Money Masters of Our Time

203 of 224 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An accurate 320 page "book report", January 6, 2004

By 

Abe Vigoda "part-time inventor" (Vermont, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: How The World Really Works (Paperback)

The best way to describe this type of book is to show you it's table of contents. I have taken the time to do this for you because I feel that after seeing the titles of the books that the author reviews in each chapter you WILL make the decision to buy this book.

1-A Century of War
2-Tragedy and Hope
3-The Naked Capitalist
4-The Tax-Exempt Foundations
5-The Creature from Jekyll Island
6-1984
7-Report from Iron Mountain
8-The Greening
9-The Politics of Heroin
10-Final Judgment

11-Dope Inc.
12-Let's fix America!

The author has researched the works of writers who are seeking to find out WHO is impoverishing us, and WHY and HOW they are doing it. The findings are presented via a series of in-depth reviews of a carefully selected set of books, mostly little-known but a few famous. Taken together, a coherent picture emerges which precious few among even our political activists understand or care to admit to knowing.

117 of 128 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Oligarchic Collectivism and its Discontents, July 17, 2005

By 

Joanneva12a (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: How The World Really Works (Paperback)

The main purpose of this book is to give the reader a trail to follow. Like breadcrumbs in the shape of an arrow, Alan B. Jones has selected and reviewed 12 books that will further lead to the details of the well oiled machine running the state of world affairs into the ground.

These books collectively establish common threads that point to the powers behind what has been happening in slow motion for the last 100 years, robbing individuals worldwide of their liberty and livelihood as the wealth of nations slowly spirals into economic decline and the hard earned money of the middle class disappears into the void.

The formats of the reviews are straight book reporting, which frankly diminishes the reading enjoyment, but is necessary for the amount of information covered. After reading the often shocking contents, an overwhelming need arises to investigate further by reading one or more of the titles reviewed. The importance of the material covered in this book cannot be overstated, and are of topics that the imbecile TV news `experts' you see prattling away just in time for your morning coffee wouldn't have a clue about.

I must advise however, that you will not read this book and come away believing everything. The means for this would be in the details of the 12 books themselves. Jones does an admirable job in trying to sum up almost 6000 pages of information into just over 300, but the pace is often overwhelming. However, he gets the point across and makes the connections that in all these books, whenever certain stones were overturned, the same manipulators came skittering out from underneath.