Review by Choice Review
Ahamed, an investment banker, has written an engrossing biographical history of four central bankers who played key roles in reconstructing the gold standard after WW I: Mortagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the Federal Bank of New York. In many ways his book is a biographical companion to Barry Eichengreen's Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939 (CH, Dec'92, 30-2190), which argued that the gold standard increased the severity of the Great Depression. Ahamed also blames the gold standard for the severity of the Great Depression and presents the economics of the argument in an accessible way. But he intertwines this core argument with fascinating biographies of the key players. His writing style makes the 500 pages seem short. Summing Up: Highly recommended. General readers and all levels of undergraduate students. B. B. Andrew Juniata College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by New York Times Review
NOT many authors are equally successful at writing books for adults and children, but Carl Hiaasen seems to have made an effortless transition. His first and second books for young readers, "Hoot" (2002) and "Flush" (2005), won awards and legions of fans. His latest, "Scat," won't disappoint Hiaasenphiles of any age. What's truly amazing is how much mileage Hiaasen gets here from mining the same narrow niche. Every novel is an eco-mystery set in Florida. Every plot features a greedy businessman (with a dumb-as-bricks henchman) bent on getting rich at the expense of Florida wildlife. Each plot is energized by improbable and hilarious action sequences. In "Hoot," "Flush" and "Scat," the hero is a middle-school boy with a feisty female sidekick. Secondary characters include a delinquent bully and a mysterious, benevolent stranger. (In "Scat," the stranger has wandered in from another Hiaasen novel: he was the protagonist in "Sick Puppy.") Yet despite the similarities, the novels don't feel repetitive - especially not "Scat," which stirs some new, more ambitious elements into the formula. This time, the mystery involves Mrs. Starch, an unpopular biology teacher who disappears during a disastrous field trip to an Everglades swamp. At first, it's hard for Nick, our hero, and his friend Marta to care. After all, Mrs. Starch is a nearly six-foot-tall tyrant who wears "her dyed blond hair piled to one side of her head, like a beach dune." But before long, Nick is up to his neck in secondary mysteries. What was the tancolored, fast-moving blur on the video he took in the swamp? Who or what caused the swamp wildfire that day? Why has Smoke, the class arsonist/slacker, suddenly cleaned up his act? Why is Mrs. Starch's home filled with stuffed animals (of the taxidermy sort)? And if Mrs. Starch is missing, then who's driving around town in her blue Prius? "Scat" is by far the plottiest of Hiaasen's young-people books. The story lines involving Nick, Marta, Smoke, their parents, Mrs. Starch, local fire and police investigators, the mysterious stranger and the two hilarious bumblers who run the Red Diamond Energy Corporation's illegal drilling operation - are intertwined in ways that must have required a spreadsheet to track. Not surprisingly, all of these strands are neatly and satisfyingly resolved at the end of the story. This is also the most contemporary Hiaasen book, dropping names like Facebook, "Harry Potter," the TV show "COPS," CNN's Anderson Cooper - and the war in Iraq. And here's the most startling deviation from the Hiaasen formula. Just when the fun is hitting its stride, we learn that Nick's father has been wounded in Iraq; his right arm is blown off by a roadside explosive. The story returns periodically to monitor the stages of his recovery: his bandages, his infections, his attempts to work with his remaining hand, and so on. This is all handled unsentimentally and with a positive spirit; Nick conceals his grief, calls his dad Lefty and tapes down his own right arm in solidarity. But this subplot introduces some new, grimmer notes to the series, and not every young fan will know what to make of it. Still, the ingenious plotting makes "Scat" more engrossing than either of its predecessors. The characters are richer - two of them turn out to be not at all the caricatures they seemed at first. And even the title is a clever pun, referring both to the good guys' message to the bad guys, and to the panther droppings that hold a key to the mystery. In short, Hiaasen's novels for younger readers seem to be maturing right along with them. David Pogue writes about technology for The Times. His first children's novel will be published next year.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
Investment manager Ahamed tells the fascinating story of the Great Depression and the central bankers whose decisions were the primary cause of the economic meltdown from 1929 to 1933. They were Montagu Norman of the Bank of England, Emile Moreau of the Banque de France, Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank, and Benjamin Strong of the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Interrelated crises not unlike modern events included Germany's recession prompted by the halt of American capital to Europe in 1928 (similar to the Mexican peso crisis of 1994); the collapse of the stock market in 1929 (parallel to the market fall in 2000); the sequence of banking panics from 1930-33 (much like the credit crunch in 2007-08); and the European financial crisis of 1931 (not unlike the emerging markets crisis in 1997-98). Although not exact comparisons, they offer excellent lessons, and Ahamed concludes that the Great Depression was not an act of God, but resulted directly from a series of collective blunders in economic policy. Excellent book.--Whaley, Mary Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
If you think today's economy is scary, check out the Jazz Age horrors chronicled in this financial history of the interwar years and the central bankers who blighted them. Ahamed, an investment manager, surveys the economic upheavals of the 1920s and 1930s, when crushing war debts and reparations from WWI sparked hyperinflation in Germany and a host of lesser eruptions, all of it climaxing in the American stock market crash and the Great Depression. He tells the story through the central bank chiefs of Britain, France, Germany and the United States as they confront unprecedented crises while "shackled" by the "dead hand" of the gold standard, the era's reigning financial orthodoxy (economist John Maynard Keynes, foe of gold and apostle of economic activism, is the book's hero). The author injects unnecessary commentary about the bankers' neuroses and marital difficulties into his coverage of interest rate and currency fluctuations (New York Federal Reserve head Benjamin Strong, he notes, possessed a "large nose that spoke of ruthlessness"). Fortunately, his protagonists' high-wire efforts to stave off national bankruptcies furnish Ahamed with plenty of drama to highlight his engrossing analysis of the complexities of monetary policy. Photos. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In this historical study, Ahamed, a professional money manager, sums up the causes of the Great Depression as a series of economic policy blunders that could have been avoided. He cites as causal factors the inflationary financing of World War I by printing money, the insurmountable war debts of Germany and the Allies, Germany's plunge into hyperinflation, and the return of most currencies to the gold standard at excessive and deflationary prewar rates. For example, he explains that when the U.S. stock market bubble burst in 1929 and economic activity collapsed, the central banks were restrained in stimulating the economy for fear of losing their gold reserves. In an epilog, Ahamed draws parallels between the crises of the Great Depression and those in recent times. He keeps his history interesting by highlighting the personalities of the heads of the major central banks, and he employs the economist John Maynard Keynes as a one-man Greek chorus critiquing the bankers' actions. This erudite and exceedingly well-written tale of financial chaos in the 1920s and 1930s is both timely and instructive for today's economic climate. Highly recommended for all academic and most public libraries.-Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Erudite, entertaining macroeconomic history of the lead-up to the Great Depression as seen through the careers of the West's principal bankers. Investment manager Ahamed sets the stage for his story with Toynbeean sweep. The gold standard, to which the major currencies of the world were tied, was thrown into tumult by World War I. France, Britain and Germany found themselves depleted of gold reserves. The United States, a new economic power holding the bulk of the world's gold bullion, demanded repayment of loans made to its allies; this forced large, untenable reparation payments on Germany. The main characters of this unfolding drama were a quartet of bankers who saw themselves as "elite tribunes, standing above the fray of politics, national resentments, and amateur nostrums," and who wielded astonishing, autonomous authority over monetary policy. Eccentric, aristocratic Montagu Norman of the Bank of England dealt with the problem of inadequate gold reserves to support the overvalued pound sterling by convincing Benjamin Strong, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, to lower interest rates in America to encourage the flow of gold back to Europe. This directly fueled the U.S. stock-market bubble, Ahamed argues. The crash of 1929 and the worldwide depression that followed were the inevitable results. Other catalysts included the Reichsbank's irascible, unpredictable Hjalmar Schacht, whose obsession with eliminating reparations led Germany to the brink of default, and vindictive mile Moreau, whose policy at the Banque de France aimed to destabilize the British pound. Ahamed compares these bankers to the Greek mythological character Sisyphus, condemned to eternal, endless effort. "Their goal is a strong economy and stable prices," he writes. "This is, however, the very environment that breeds the sort of overoptimism and speculation that eventually ends up destabilizing the economy." Ahamed soberingly suggests that, "bubbles and crises seem to be deep-rooted in human nature and inherent to the capitalist system." Spellbinding, insightful and, perhaps most important, timely. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
