THE 2nd THOM HARTMANN PAGE: The Hidden History of Big Brother in America; The Hidden History of Monopolies

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BIG BROTHER IN AMERICA: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.00 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: America's most popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann reveals how the government and corporate America misuse our personal data and shows how we can reclaim our privacy.

Most Americans are worried about how companies like Facebook invade their privacy and harvest their data, but many people don't fully understand the details of how their information is being adapted and misused. In this thought-provoking and accessible book, New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals exactly how the government and corporations are tracking our every online move and using our data to buy elections, employ social control, and score and monetize our lives.

Hartmann uses extensive, vivid examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on all aspects of our lives. Along with tracing the history of surveillance, he shows how we got to where we are today, how China—with its new Social Credit System—serves as a warning, and how we can and must avoid a similarly dystopian future.

By delving into the Constitutional right to privacy, Hartmann reminds us of our civil right and shows how we can restore it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not updated yet, I'll be very interested to see what Hartmann has to say about the extreme, upsetting effects of AI on the Body Politic.

While we are indeed starting to engage with the most important factor in this outdated screed against the Felonious Yam and his tech bro scum support/enablers, ie who's doing what with our deepest darkest secrets, it could really be much too late to do anything effective about it. Look at the *massive* data theft done by DOGE on behalf of Edolph Twitler. Why is no one in Congress screeching their fool lungs out about this?

Because, like Hartmann, they do not understand what the problem really is: Us. The userbase wants Big Data to store credit card numbers, passwords...16 billion of which were compromised on 18 June 2025 alone...so we don't have to think. Big Data will use its enormous database, its stunningly effective analytic software, and all the cash we've allowed it to pile up, to defeat any attempts to meaningfully deny it more and more and more data.

This is not to say we should not try. We should, starting right now.

Getting mad is the first stop on this train, so read this book and steam your way to Congress's inbox.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF MONOPOLIES: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream
THOM HARTMANN (foreword by Ralph Nader)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “This is the most important, dynamic book on the cancers of monopoly by giant corporations written in our generation.”—from the foreword by Ralph Nader

American monopolies dominate, control, and consume most of the energy of our entire economic system; they function the same as cancer does in a body, and, like cancer, they weaken our systems while threatening to crash the entire body economic. American monopolies have also seized massive political power and use it to maintain their obscene profits and CEO salaries while crushing small competitors.

But Thom Hartmann, America's #1 progressive radio host, shows we've broken the control of behemoths like these before, and we can do it again.

Hartmann takes us from the birth of America as a revolt against monopoly (remember the Boston Tea Party?), to the largely successful efforts of both Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and other like-minded leaders to restrain corporations' monopolistic urges, to the massive changes in the rules of business starting during the “Reagan Revolution” that have brought us to the cancer stage of capitalism.

He shows the damage monopolies have done to so many industries: agriculture, healthcare, the media, and more. Individuals have taken a hit as well: the average American family pays a $5,000 a year “monopoly tax” in the form of higher prices for everything from pharmaceuticals to airfare to household goods and food. But Hartmann also describes commonsense, historically rooted measures we can take—such as revitalizing antitrust regulation, taxing great wealth, and getting money out of politics—to pry control of our country from the tentacles of the monopolists.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: More finger-pointing and right-wing-bashing than even I, for whom those activities are recreations I savor, found excessive. Nonetheless, as a way to get at the root of a problem not at all new, not uniquely American, and not quickly resolvable, this little ammo pile is good.

I think most of y'all know much of this history but quite likely haven't put it into this context before. That makes it a good, if tendentious (by design!), read for anyone who has a single qualm about greed.

I hope you'll try to get your head around why your wallet is always flat, why politicians say we can never "afford" things other countries have had for decades, and what to do about it.