problems with some explanations in MGMAT SC guide

[mbakiller]

I got confused with some of the explanations given in the manhattan sentence correction guide in Chapter 5:Parallelism.

Here is the wrong sentence:

Wrong: She argues that the agency acts with disregard for human life AND property AND reckless abandon.

Here is the explanation given in the book:
The three underlined items, which are all connected by and right now, are not all at the same logical level. The agency acts with disregard for human life and the agency acts with disregard for property. It does not, however, act with disregard for reckless abandon; this is illogical. Presumably, the author wants to say that the agency acts with reckless abandon.

I got some doubts about this explanation.

if human life & property & reckless abandon were to be parallel as the explanation described above,
then and should appear only before "reckless abandon".


Here is some of my thoughts about the originally wrong sentence:
Wrong: She argues that the agency acts with disregard for human life AND property AND reckless abandon.

The first and is used to connect two nouns: namely, human life and property ( because "and" appear before the last parallel elements)

The second and is used to connect another two nouns in different levels from "human life and property" ：namely (acts with) disregard and (acts with) reckless abandon

Though I think the originally wrong sentence is a little bit hard to understand, it cannot be construed in the way given by the explanation in the book.

please shed some lights on this issue~ Thanks~

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

I agree with you, I think the original sentence would be clearer if it said:
"She argues that the agency acts with disregard for human life, property, and reckless abandon."
This shows a clear x, y, and z list with a parallelism mistake. Adding an extra "and" (as it's written in the book) makes the sentence better, in the way that you explain. But the correction given - "She argues that the agency acts with reckless abandon and with disregard for human life and property." - shows the meaning more clearly by repeating the with.