2030, Albert Brooks
2030, Albert Brooks
6 Rating(s)
List: $21.99 | Sale: $15.39
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2030
The Real Story of What Happens to America

Author: Albert Brooks

Narrator: Dick Hill

Unabridged: 14 hr 19 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 06/01/2011

Categories: Fiction, Science Fiction


Synopsis

Is this what's in store?

June 12, 2030, started out like any other day in memory—and by then, memories were long. Since cancer had been cured fifteen years before, America's population was aging rapidly. That sounds like good news, but consider this: millions of baby boomers, with a big natural predator picked off, were sucking dry benefits and resources that were never meant to hold them into their eighties and beyond. Young people around the country simmered with resentment toward "the olds" and anger at the treadmill they could never get off of just to maintain their parents' entitlement programs.

But on that June 12th, everything changed: a massive earthquake devastated Los Angeles, and the government, always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, was unable to respond.

The fallout from the earthquake sets in motion a sweeping novel of ideas that pits national hope for the future against assurances from the past and is peopled by a memorable cast of refugees and billionaires, presidents and revolutionaries, all struggling to find their way. In 2030, the author's all-too-believable imagining of where today's challenges could lead us tomorrow makes for gripping and thought-provoking listening.

About Albert Brooks

Albert Brooks is a writer, actor, and director. He has written and directed several classic American comedies, including Lost in America, Modern Romance, and Defending Your Life. He has also acted in over twenty motion pictures, including Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, Steven Soderbergh's Out of Sight, Pixar's Finding Nemo, and James L. Brooks's Broadcast News, for which he received an Academy Award nomination. Albert lives in Los Angeles with his family.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Reid on November 20, 2012

Yet another dystopian future predicted for the United States, this one based largely on the faulty, misinformed, hysterical rantings of people like Paul Ryan. Brooks has swallowed the reigning conservative economic fallacy whole, that our indebtedness to China and other countries will somehow evolve......more

Goodreads review by David on April 25, 2011

1984 may have come and gone, but Orwell's chilling vision of the future made a lasting impact for decades. And the argument could be made that many of Orwell's visions came true: we have virtually no privacy these days, we are all slaves to our TVs, and Big Brother is most definitely watching. In the......more

Goodreads review by Sarah on September 08, 2011

The copy I read was left behind at a hotel without the jacket. I thought the author was just another guy with the same name as the actor and I guess I wasn't listening to NPR the day they reviewed 2030. So I had absolutely no preconceptions, there was only a plain black cover not even a sub-title to......more

Goodreads review by Doreen on September 21, 2011

I listened to this book. Genre: fiction, near-future, US politics I've enjoyed Albert Brooks in film, especially Broadcast News and Lost in America. I was unsure of him as a novelist. But I found 2030: The Real Story of What Happens to America to be thought-provoking, terrifyingly plausible, and laced......more

Goodreads review by Eric on November 01, 2011

There are some interesting ideas about where we are going as a society and what technological advances we will see in the next two decades, but they are lost amid uninspired prose and shallow character development, along with some of the least plausible scientific/economic/political ideas I have eve......more