Crisis in Industry

School Library Journal

Gr 11 Up-- For students with a solid grasp of the basics of economics, this is a good summary of the problems facing American industry today. Beginning with the problems mentioned frequently in the news, increasing debt held by other countries and huge foreign trade deficits, Davis progresses to a discussion of ``deindustrialization'': the loss of American manufacturing capacity to other countries. In line with most current analysts, Davis shows how our foreign competitors rebuilt their shattered economies after World War II with modern equipment while we continued to rely on our older equipment. She gives effective examples of failures and successes in the automobile, machine tool, and electronics industries, and presents an even-handed picture of the status of labor in the newly competitive marketplace. The one area Davis omits is the merger-mania that has sucked up a good deal of American capital. The book is clear in organization and style, but Davis uses too much jargon for the uninitiated. The photographs and diagrams, well-chosen and intelligently captioned, are well keyed to the text. The index and glossary are reasonably complete, although ``jargon'' terms are left out: Silicon Valley is defined only as ``California's symbol of high-tech,'' and Rust Bowl is not defined at all. Economics in America (Greenhaven, 1986) by Terry O'Neill includes a chapter on free trade, and William B. Hart's The United States and World Trade (Watts, 1985) concentrates more on the foreign trade aspects. --Jonathan Betz-Zall, Sno-Isle Regional Library System, Marysville, WA