2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America

I connected with the younger generation of this book.

I'm in my early 30's and have an above average job. I still send a check out every month for my student loans. I have paid thousands of dollars to medical loans because of the ridiculous cost of health care in this country. I don't own a home nor have any children. I don't feel like America is stable enough for my generation to really feel comfortable with settling down in one spot. I sat at the same desk and worked for 3 different companies from 2004 to 2011. I know there will be no retirement for my generation. I know nobody is going to start making the rich pay their fair share. I know corporations will continue to monopolize the market place. I know there are almost no outlets for true journalism (Amy Goodman and Democracy Now does the best she can). I know as long as the elected leaders put before me are a multiple choice test of preselected candidates nothing will change. Great book though.

11 out of 21 people found this review helpful.

It certainly makes you think and quite possibly lose sleep!

2030 is science fiction but alarmingly plausible, entertaining and thought provoking. Brooks' story of what the U.S. will be like in the year 2030 is more terrifying than any monster movie, sociopath psycho murderer or doomsday portrayal out there. The major issues of the book are of the issues we face today, what ever-increasing life-spans and ever-increasing government deficits will inevitably do to our children and grandchildren in the next twenty years and bringing hopeful solutions. Good things too, cancer is a thing of the past, and no on gets fat. Most of the plot revolves around the growing stresses between generations, a tension that is intensified when the long-predicted major earthquake devastates Los Angeles, and the government realizes it could no longer borrow its way out of disaster. This is somewhat comical, but, sarcasm, political humor, and doom and gloom also present themselves. All told, I really enjoyed it! It certainly makes you think and quite possibly lose a little sleep.

9 out of 9 people found this review helpful.

Ho-Hum

This is not a work of literature. The author (whose main credits are screenplays) writes with the economy of words one expects in a screenplay, and this work reads more like a book-length treatment than anything else. I expect to see fairly soon that it will be made into a film.

Brooks' dystopian future is filled with gadgetry he describes in detail but which has little use in the story. Excepting the video-phones and the concept of retirement communities on cruise ships, there's entirely too much attention given to things. Had the author spend more time developing characters and locations, we might actually have a nice work of fiction here.

Instead, we have an overloaded cast of characters, some of whom are invested with an entire story line and many of whom are ignored when the author no longer knows what to do with them.

The basic story is this: The man who cured cancer gets into a shouting match with a young man (Max) who wants the older generation to understand how badly they're taxing their children. The failed encounter spurs Max to lead a small gang which briefly takes over a retirement community. Max and his gang are killed by a SEAL team, but not before about 15 retirees die in the process.

The other story lines -- the Los Angeles earthquake, the rebuilding of LA by China and the ensuing partnership, the plans to put a foreign-born man into the White House as president, the current president's need for emotional intimacy that alienates his wife, etc., etc. -- aren't needed in their current, bloated form, to advance the basic story. Even the story of Kathy (who is saddled with debt after her father dies and who is briefly considered an accomplice of Max) would have been interesting had it been treated as something other than padding.

Is it comic in places? Darkly so, and that wears thin in short order. Does it present a cautionary tale of the high price (financially and emotionally) of the USA taking on more debt? Perhaps, but it gets lost in the author's fascination with technological advances.

Don't waste your time. This book isn't worth all of the hype that has gone into it.

5 out of 12 people found this review helpful.

Very Highly Recommended

I was not familiar with this author but I love stories that take place in the future and simply fell in love with this book. The characters are great as are the ideas. What a pleasant surprise to find a new author that I like so much.

4 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

GREAT FICTION

If you like fiction with a great imagination and great characters I can't think of a better read in the last few months. Really enjoyable. Thanks to Lori at Barnes and Noble for the recommendation.

3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

Couldnt put it down

Read it at the gym, plane, at night... funny yet serious and thought provoking

3 out of 6 people found this review helpful.

Not very entertaining.

Not very entertaining.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

WOW! Right out of the gate Mr. Brooks writes a winner!

I may have a significant bias for Mr. Brooks' works (I love every single film of his, and can only wait until Blu-Ray versions are released someday), so when I bought 2030 I fully expected to see some standard Brooksian takes on society. Does he deliver, and more! A prescient take on what America could be like in less than two decades, Albert Brooks takes the lives of about a dozen characters through their trials and tribulations of life - whether it's survivors of a world-changing earthquake in LA, a parent's death, an aspiring Bill Gates cum politician, or our first Jewish President. Each storyline is interesting in its own right, but how they tie together (and are tied together so well by the writer) is magnificent. I know we'll probably never see the book turned into a movie (as the writer as noted in an interview or two - especially when you consider the costs of producing a film with so much to tell), and I'm fine with that. Mr. Brooks has done such a great job in writing a thought-provoking, if not slightly scary, book that I am satisfied with the visuals I've created in my own mind. I'm just a little torn, though, regarding what could be next from Mr. Brooks. I would wish we'd see more films (in the line of Defending Your Life or Mother, his two best in my view) written/directed by the artist, but at the same time I would love another novel or two. For now, though, I can live in the satisfaction of using all waking moments in a single weekend to plow through 2030, coming away fully satisfied in my choice of reading material.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

See what the future holds...

Surprisingly good! What a great imagination. But I can really see a lot of that happening in the near future.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Funny And Scary

If you like anything about Albert Brooks you will love love this book. He has always had one of the great imaginations and it is all here on the page. A MUST read.

2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

good. Should have been longer.

I hope there is a second book.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Disappointing read

Unrealalistic plot and pretty boring

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A great read

America has sold it soul, and we didn't get much for it. This story tells us what happens when we look at the money instead of the people. The sad thing is that all of this has already happened.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Interesting concept

Albert Brooks brought up ideas that are not too far off the radar. Good read.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

excellent read

excellent projection of future based on current events

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Idiocracy in print

Sardonic

AN IMAGINATIVE TALE.

“And he resented that whatever he wound up doing, a portion of his earnings was always going to his grandfather and all the rest of them. 'He never even sent me a birthday present,’ Brian would say, ‘and now I have to pay for his wheelchair’.”—page 30

Not half as dystopian as I’d anticipated, ‘2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America,’ by Albert Brooks, still does, because of its believable feasibility, add a pinch of despondency and despair to the mix of being old (or being young) in America. I remember a time when our mantra was: Never trust anyone over thirty. Since then that mantra has been turned on its head, and the generation gap has only grown wider.

Perhaps there’s a young and bright hero on the horizon who might be able to at least loosen, if not untie, the Gordian knot of entitlements the past few generations has tied us in. Can we hope?

Recommendation: Worth reading and thinking about.

“If we don’t improve our youth’s chances for a better life, we will one day hand this country over to a generation that does not want it.”—page 282

NOOKbook edition, 365 pages

wanted to love it but...

I got to page 40 expecting it to get better but it didn't. I give up.

Interesting but not great

This book is casually written, easy to read, and raises some interesting questions. Some of these potential social problems are not entirely out of the realm of likely possibilities, so it would be interesting to read after 2030 has come and gone in real time. That said, the author discredits himself with his portrayal of the female protagonist. He seems to have gotten all of his information about how women think from the Penthouse forum or cheap bodice-ripper romance novels. To portray women as sex objects in every situation of their lives gives the impression that this author has never actually talked to one. Maybe his closest interactions with women have been nothing more than spying on them with hidden web-cam devices in public restrooms. The way this author unconsciously gives himself away as a lecherous creep should have been edited out somewhere along the way because it hurts the book. It's like when you see a miss-spelled word in a national commercial or TV show, and you wonder how many people saw this before publication and somehow didn't notice. It is subtle, but it is there.

Recommended

Came as described if a little more worn than expected.

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.