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Breaking Through Power: It's easier than we think By Ralph Nader; City Lights Publishers One of the many virtues of Ralph Nader's new book, Breaking Through Power, is how it enables us to move past the personalities and tweets of the day to confront the dominant political—economic forces that shape our society. We live in a time of nearly unfettered corporate prerogatives where plutocrats—individuals with tremendous private wealth generated by social policies strongly tilted in their favor—constitute the political donor class creating the conditions for oligarchy—rule by the wealthy. But Nader argues that it is relatively easy to confront and overcome corporate power by using the tools and finding the joy of participa- tory democracy. Certainly the conditions exist to stimulate engagement. From the federal giveaway of public lands to mining companies who earn bil- lions, to the stealing of the public airwaves by telecommunication corporations, from unsafe products to poisoned water, the examples of corporate crime pile up in this short book. Nader exposes the hypocrisy of police shooting unarmed black people, and the regime of mass incarceration, compared to not a single banker going to jail for fraud that cost millions their homes. Corporate crime, in the form of workplace injuries, faulty yet legal, unsafe products, and environ- mental toxicity is likely responsible for upwards of 45,000 U.S. deaths per year, as compared to approximately 17,000 homicides. So much for law and order. Or paying taxes, which corporations increas- ingly don't do. Or equal justice under the law, as Nader points out. "Unfortunately," he writes, "the pursuit of limitless profits stands in the way of justice, reason, and some might argue, sanity." Nader does not limit his critique to the economic aspects of cor- porate power; he takes aim at the "commercial culture" that pro- motes materialism over humanism and convinces people that social T his year, there were so many great books to potentially review that we could not get to all of them. So we're going to cover what we can here, and then hopefully continue reviewing in upcoming issues until we get through them all. Glancing over the towering stack, a pattern of themes emerge that likely reflect our current healthcare and larger real- ity: a number are by medical providers who are seriously questioning American medicine the way it is currently prac- ticed; a number look at the inequities experienced by patients in our healthcare system, nationally and globally; and a num- ber are about how the working class can organize themselves to fight back against not only an unjust healthcare system, but an unjust economic, political, racial, and environmental structure. It's heavy but important stuff. So grab some coffee or tea, and let's get reading. J U LY | A U G U S T | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 W W W . N A T I O N A L N U R S E S U N I T E D . O R G N A T I O N A L N U R S E 13 We won't keep you in suspense! Our annual book review special is here and will hopefully inspire you to do a deep dive into one of these titles. NO_LIMIT_PICTURES | ISTOCKPHOTO.COM