Plunder: Private Equity's Plan to Pillage America

Very readable and extremely well researched/documented.

The language used in this book is pretty accessible so even if you're not familiar with the language of private equity/finances you should be able to understand what is being talked about without issues.

Through most of the book Ballou painstakingly details how the life of people are being influenced, sometimes to a ruinous or deadly extent by private equity's effort to monetize and profit from an ever-increasing number of aspects of day-to-day life often at the expense of any form of perennity or safety. I was especially impressed with the segment regarding seemingly successful businesses (Payless Shoe Source, Toy R Us...) driven into the ground by the extraction model of profit generation.

Through the different “industries” affected we can see how many activist groups such as tenant rights groups, patients' right groups and even prisoners' rights groups) could stand to benefit in working in tandem with each other to push for better regulations of private equity firms.

This book is both an exposé and a call to action, while a lot of similar work will leave the reader with a sense of inescapable impending doom with this one we are left with a pretty defined suggested path forward which includes all level of actors from the citizen activist to the lawmaker. This part in particular was a breath of fresh air.

People who are familiar with my reviews know that I love me a book with a lot of footnotes and references and this book made me very happy on that front.

I received an eARC of this book through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.