Michael Moore, Downsize This Review

Overall Rating

Michael Moore, Downsize This - Moore wrote this book before he was world famous for Stupid White Men and Bowling for Columbine, and I was lucky enough to have read it as an introduction to his work. It is genuinely funny and provocative, an invective against the methods and ethics of big business in America. Moore manages to take a rather dull subject and make easy reading of it, through interspersing the fact with his trademark sarcasm and wit. He discusses the problems of corporations moving jobs away from the U.S., showing the effects of these actions by American businesses on welfare, taxes, unemployment, etc. He also takes the usual potshots at the right wing. The bit about the Germans, however, was unnecessary. Basically, if you realise that Michael Moore has good ideas and is capable of presenting them in an easily digestible format, but that his opinions are only that, and that you should not take what he says as gospel, then you're in for an amusing and disturbing read.