Credit Card Nation: Amazon.ca: Robert Manning: Books

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No interest for one year! No annual fee! No minimum payments for six months! And, if you want to believe Robert Manning, there's no way out of the debt that we find ourselves in, as individuals and as a country. Credit Card Nation combines debt of every kind--consumer, corporate, and governmental--and creates a vast landscape of profit-spewing lenders and struggling debtors present at every level of economics. Appalling statistics set readers off on a depressing journey: the years between 1980 and 1994 saw annual consumer charges skyrocket from $170 billion to $581 billion, with the average household carrying over $4,000 in revolving debt. Accompanied by the erasure of nearly $100 billion in corporate debt and tremendous tax cuts for ever-merging conglomerates, the end of the 20th century seems to be just the beginning of an overwhelming cycle. While Manning's book is extensively researched, it is also extremely readable. Individual stories of junk bondsmen, corporate raiders, and middle-class consumers are threaded throughout the pages of charts and statistics, with a few surprises. While most media would have us believe that students who rack up charge accounts are totally irresponsible, the reality is that some of these students are helping their families with cash-advance loans to make mortgage or insurance payments. Emphasis is also placed on the tremendous advertising budgets of credit card companies: Manning comments on "how quickly the cultural norms have changed in the Credit Card Nation," we see a poster insisting "money can't buy you love, but a credit card can get you started." This is not a self-help book, and Manning has no 12-step program for debtors at any level. Credit Card Nation simply tells it as it is. --Jill Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

A sociology professor whose specialty is the effect of credit card debt on college students, Manning expands his focus here to encompass social attitudes toward all types of debt. Suggesting that debt leads not only to financial ruin but also to moral and social degradation, this dense, technical work is filled with jargon (chapter four, for example, is subtitled "Convenience Users and the Ideological Construction of the Moral Divide"). In the first-person interviews with college students, the subjects are rarely allowed to complete a sentence. Instead, Manning embeds phrases from the interviews into his own argument. Since we never learn more than a few facts about each interviewee (not even a last name or college affiliation), they serve as chorus to the monologue rather than adding weight or complexity to Manning's thesis. When relating facts, Manning puts quotation marks around the many terms he disagrees with, conveying his opinion without supporting evidence for his views. Loaded words substitute for exposition: people do not choose to borrow, they are "addicted to credit"; he does not deem them "borrowers," but "users"; no one simply owes money--instead, everyone is "burdened," "oppressed" or "overwhelmed" by debt, even when the debt seems small relative to their assets and income. (Feb. 2)Forecast: Manning's book may interest professional sociologists, but general readers will find it difficult to understand in some places, dogmatic and unsubstantiated elsewhere. However, given its timely topic, the book is likely to receive serious review attention, and will pick up some sales due to Manning's media appearances (he's been featured on ABC World News Tonight, CNN and elsewhere. But the book's academic gloss will keep sales from rising high, despite the millions of Americans suffering from debt overload.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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17 Reviews

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3.9 out of 5 stars (17 customer reviews)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Had this professor when he was researching this book, Dec 3 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Credit Card Nation The Consequences Of America's Addiction To Credit (Hardcover)

I know Professor Manning from his days teaching class at Georgetown and American universities in DC. He was a fairly nice guy and a decent professor, with some fun arguments. My problem with this book was how selectively he researched some of the information. Not that he ignores importent sociological and economic trends, but for example I remember him polling me about my credit card spending as a college student. When I responded that I got the card as part of a through-the-mail low-interest offer when I was 18 and had successfully managed the debt and payments, he seemed uninterested, largely because my response did not fall within the paradigm supporting his book.

All in all an interesting book, with some important facts, but skewed.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive Study of Consumer Debt, Aug 27 2002

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Dr. J.D. Stelwagen (Anderson, SC United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Credit Card Nation (Paperback)

A striking and keen assessment of the credit card industry and damning expose'of corporate tactics to lure the unsuspecting and inexperienced into a life of consumerism. This comprehensive text outlines many of the megabanking tactics to increase their bottom line at the expense of the American consumer. The predatory marketing strategies and extensive profits of the credit card industry are exposed and provide the reader with information the banks do not want you to know.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Yawn., April 21 2002

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Kyralessa (St Louis, MO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Credit Card Nation The Consequences Of America's Addiction To Credit (Hardcover)

Having just finished Eric Schlosser's "Fast Food Nation," I had high expectations for this book as well. I suppose if I were drowning in debt myself I might appreciate it more.

Here are the problems: While Schlosser's book explores many issues surrounding the fast food industry, each of them has clear relevance to the central theme. Not so, alas, with Manning's book.

For instance, chapter 2 seems to be mostly about corporate mergers. Chapter 3 appears to have as its central theme the fact that banks decided they wanted to make more money off credit cards. But while the fact that banks want more credit card money is relevant to the book, the reasons why they want this money, and the statistics that relate to this, are profoundly uninteresting. (Honestly, is is that hard to figure out that everybody wants more money than they have?)

Fortunately, later in the book we get some personal interest material. But the people profiled in these chapters can be hard to identify with. Were those college students really too dumb to know that credit cards have interest rates? Many of them seem to insist, for instance, that credit card companies shouldn't issue twenty thousand in credit to a student who makes nine thousand a year. Perhaps they're right; but then, would they similarly insist that McDonald's shouldn't serve its high-fat food to a person who weighs four hundred pounds? Chalk up one more for the American culture of self-victimization; God forbid I should take responsibility myself for my finances.

Manning's book fails where Schlosser's succeeds brilliantly: showing the human side of things. Manning does give us some anecdotes that help to show the human consequences of credit card debt; but these have to be sought out between the droning statistics. I think that with some heavy editing this could be a great book. Right now, though, much of it is simply a cure for insomnia.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Just a question of free will? NOT!
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Published on Mar 2 2002 by Kerry Walters

5.0 out of 5 stars Victims of credit cards or just irresponsible?
Well, the chicken and egg question: Are we victims of credit cards infiltrating every aspect of our lives, or merely not taking responsibility? Read more

Published on Sep 27 2001 by Edward Crawford