The Truth Matters - Bruce Bartlett (Ten Speed Press, 2017)

A useful summary and guide to quality data sources, research tools, and questions to ask oneself in evaluating published information.  [070.9051]

The title, given the author, might lead one to expect a philippic on the leaders of these times or a cry of exasperation regarding our society's increasingly cavalier relationship with truth, facts, and objective reality.  It isn't either of these.

What this small book does provide is a collection of methods or sources for undertaking research, comments about interpreting news stories (i.e., understanding terms such as background), suggestions for doing internet and news research, and other tools for fact-checking.  The argument - reasonable for adults - seems to be that the reader should be better informed about the quality of materials set before him.  He should learn to be skeptical about fantastic stories and more accepting of well-curated sources.

These are all good advice.  If the reader comes to the book with a more toned-down attitude, she will find it quite useful.

This short book is recommended as quick read.   

America's Bank - Roger Lowenstein (Penguin Press, 2015)

A history of the conditions, events, and political maneuvering that led to the creation of the United States' third attempt at a central bank, the Federal Reserve System.  The book serves to remind those who argue against having the central bank how the world actually was in its absence.  [332.110973]

Depending on how they are counted, the Federal Reserve is the third or fourth attempt at establishing a central bank in the United States.  Central governments need a fiscal agent: a financial entity where public money can be held and that faces the rest of the economy for the collection of taxes, fees, and customs and for the disbursement of funds.  The Bank of North America,  a private bank chartered by the Confederation Congress in 1781, served that role during the earliest days of the Republic.  When it was re-chartered as a Pennsylvania bank, it could no longer serve the necessary role.

The Bank of the United States, as designed by Alexander Hamilton, was then chartered for twenty years to take up the role of the central bank.  It served as the fiscal agent of the government, but did not provide a uniform currency.  When the Bank's charter was due for renewal, the Jeffersonians were in power.  They opposed the centralization of credit power the Bank represented and allowed the charter to lapse in 1811.  The War of 1812, however, demonstrated the handicap the Nation operated under with a fragmented financial structure.  By 1816, a second Bank of the United States was chartered to operate for 20 years.  Once more, populist political forces, under Andrew Jackson, allowed the charter to lapse.

After the demise of the Second Bank of the United States, an extended period of financial disarray and volatility marked the United States' economy.  There was no uniform currency until the American Civil War made it desirable.  Every bank issued its own notes.  There was no central source of credit; the growth of the new economy was funded through London.  Individual banks were fragile; there was no system for pooling reserves to meet banking crises.  The only defense system was a pyramid of deposits in correspondent banks that could not survive severe credit events and there were many severe "panics" through the period.  The Panic of 1907 highlighted how much the system depended upon a few individuals and how precarious such a situation could be.

Republican Senator Nelson Aldrich had been an advocate for minor changes in the National Banking Act (1864) as constituting all that was needed to repair the system.  Through the efforts of Paul Warburg, however, he began to see the need for a European style central bank.  In the new approach, a system of pooled reserves would be available among a large group of banks to stave off bank runs or other temporary stresses that could lead to larger panics if not checked.  Aldrich, unfortunately, represented the "old Guard" and, as such, his efforts to bring it about were suspect.  The split in the Republicans and the election of Woodrow Wilson brought a fresh complication.

Through all of this, the term "central bank" was a forbidden concept, particularly among the Democrats and the Populists.  (Bryan was still a major leader of the Democrats and Wilson would have to keep him on side.)  A central bank was feared to be a tool for powerful Eastern interests to control the economy.  And, among the Eastern bankers, generally Republicans, there was little enthusiasm for a government-managed bank that might encroach on their practices.  

In the end, the issue came down to who was the proper manager of "money" under its possible definitions. Bankers felt that money was a creation of the financial system and that the central bank should be private.  There was a further split regarding the basis of bank credit which created money; the "real bills" doctrine came into play.  For some, bank credit should be based on discounting of commercial paper and notes related to actual trade.  Clearly, consumer credit was beyond consideration.  The other view was closer to the "Greenback" view, that is, that money was created by government fiat, although the gold standard was assumed to prevail.

The final legislative action was led by Carter Glass in the House and Robert Owen in the Senate.  The legislative struggle is covered extensively.  At points, one might even fatigue of the legislative dance, except that one is reminded of how difficult any major legislation can be.

The value, for me, in this text is that it stresses how ingrained the resistance to a central bank was in the United States despite the evidence that the financial system was weak and brittle without one.  One need only look, however, at the blogs and opinion pieces that still decry the Federal Reserve's existence to realize how easily important lessons are forgotten when the conditions that taught those lessons are addressed.

This book is generally recommended.

     

  

Getting It Right the Second Time - Michael Gershman (Addison-Wesley, 1990)

This is a quick, entertaining read on the history of several major products with emphasis on difficulties they experienced in getting started or in dealing with market changes.  It is also a guide to thinking about marketing when it explores how the challenge facing each product was addressed.  [658.800973]

Companies fail and products fail.  Even the most successful companies have their "New Coke" moments.  Sometimes the trajectory of failure can be changed.  This book looks at forty-nine major consumer products that, surprisingly, were not the successes that they became.  In fact, many looked like they were never going to achieve any consumer acceptance.

In analyzing these stories, the author identifies what changed in product promotion or placement.  In fact, he uses the forty-nine stories to illustrate the value of twelve aspects of marketing.  For example, Quaker Oats was sold originally in open containers from which grocers would fill bags for sale.  Henry Parsons Crowell, who had bought the failing Quaker Mill, was up against a virtual monopoly in the steel-cut oats market.  Crowell's insight was to sell the oats prepackaged as a guarantee to cleanliness that also reduced grocers' work time filling open bags, eased shipping, and allowed a space for recipes suggesting other uses for oats.  Gershman uses this anecdote to stress the value of packaging as the pivotal change with the opportunity for premiums and promotion to add on.

In another example, Gershman describes how Kimberly-Clark began by offering Kleenex as a premium, disposable face cloth for removing makeup in the 1920's.  Despite price cuts and promotion by Hollywood stars, the product was not moving.  What Kimberly-Clark did hear was that customers were using the product instead as a handkerchief substitute.  This prompted them to survey users with newspaper ads.  The results were definitive as to how Kleenex were really being used and Kimberly-Clark duly changed its pitch of the product.  Success was further enhanced by a lower price and the pop-up style of packaging.

Each chapter focuses on one of the author's marketing principles by explaining how it can be applied.  He then offers three or four anecdotes to illustrate the lesson.  The twelve marketing principles Gershman describes are pitch, piggyback, perception, position, packaging, placement, price, premium, promotion, publicity, promise (warranty), and perseverance.  (The gimmickry of making everything begin with the letter "p" has to be overlooked.)  The anecdotes strengthen each discussion of a principle by making the concept clearer in its application.

Even if one has no interest in marketing, the anecdotes should be an enjoyable read.  The book is recommended.       

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba - Tom Gjelten (Penguin Books, 2008)

A well-written account of the history of Cuba - and its relations with the United States - as seen through the fortunes and travails of the Bacardi family and their rum.  [338.766359097491]

Perhaps by virtue of geography, Cuba's history since the 19th century has been linked to the history of the United States.  The island has been a lure for American interests for since at least the 1850s.  It was eyed as a prospect for expansion of the slave territories by some in the South before our Civil War.   The United States intervened in its revolt against Spain in the 1890s and inherited a global empire as a result.  Thereafter, the United States was uncertain about what it should do with its new dependent.

Tom Gjelten has chosen an innovative way to explain Cuba's recent history and its tangled relationship with the U.S. by following the fortunes of one of its premier families, the Bacardis.  Across several generations, members of the family had been important in commerce, in the revolution, in civil administration, and even in the Castro Revolution.  At the same time, the family was introducing new distillation processes and moving to become the leading rum distillers on the island.

Although rum was easily found throughout the Caribbean, there was no Cuban rum industry at the start of the 19th century.  Cubans produced a form of aguardiente from their sugar, but the molasses was refined into rum in New England and elsewhere.  Facundo Bacardi returned to Santiago de Cuba from Spain in the 1850s after several years' absence to find his local warehouses had been looted and that he faced a financial struggle.  Sugar had stopped rising in price and the demand for molasses from the United States was falling off.  He chose to develop a distillation process that improved on the rather rough local distilled products.  He experimented carefully with sugar concentrations, preparation, and distilling techniques until he achieved a satisfactory rum.  He then developed a brand and a market for his rum.

Emilio Bacardi became involved in the business with his father after his return from study in Spain.  He also became sensitive to the ills of slavery and to the rising aspirations of the Cuban people to be independent of Spain.  He became a patriot and eventually joined the rebellious forces.  The revolt ended after ten years, but soon Spain again began to neglect the rights of Cubans.  After the U.S. intervention, Emilio Bacardi had to adapt to working with the new government as a functionary.  It was still not complete independence.  The U.S. government imposed its own restrictions on the autonomy of the Cuban government.

The twentieth century brought a series of changes.  Prohibition in the United States encouraged American travel to Cuba.  The government, however, decayed into a corrupt dictatorship under Fulgencio Batista which provoked a new revolution in the 1950s.  The Bacardi Company was sympathetic to the Castro forces; Raul Castro even married a daughter of a senior Bacardi executive.  Perhaps that is why the company felt betrayed when the Castro government nationalized the Bacardi holdings in Cuba.  From that point forward, the Bacardi Company became a forceful member of the Cuban diaspora resistance.

With late twentieth century capitalism, the anti-Castro sentiment played out in rivalries among major liquor conglomerates such as Pernod Ricard, Diageo, and Bacardi Limited.  The struggle came down to trademarks, labels, and import licenses.  In this contest, once again American political considerations came into play.  That challenge for Cuba is the underlying theme of the book.

The book can be detailed in trivial aspects of the Bacardi family life.  It is, however, an engrossing history set against the history of one family.  With the warning that some sections focus more on individual lives rather than the larger tides of history, this book is recommended.  

Breakfast at Sotheby's - Phillip Hook (Overlook Press, 2014)

A witty look at the modern art market.  The book is formatted as a brief lexicography with entries on aspects of art presentation, history, and anecdotes.  From fakes and forgeries to the personal lives of artists, this book always leads to how the price of an art work is affected.  [707.5]

Phillip Hook served as a director at both Christie's and at Sotheby's.  From these experiences, he draws insights into the functioning of the art market as a response to aspects of the works that make each one more or less desirable. 

Although this book and the classic The Economics of Taste, which covered the variations of the art market from 1760 to 1960, each provide some analysis of the art market, the similarity ends there.  The approach taken by Hook is not an updated analysis of statistics of sales records by artist.  Hook instead presents a lexicon of key terms and names in five areas: the artist, subject and style, wall power, provenance, and market weather.  Within these categories, he presents brief essays on individual artists (such as Géricault or Breughel) which may deal with their biography, but also attempts to identify periods or subjects of the most auction  appeal, or he addresses concepts (such as Branding or Color) to note how it affects the salability of artists' works.

The book is a rich store of anecdotes, many from the author's own experiences (and mistakes), to illustrate the peculiarities of the market for art; that is, a market in which every item may be unique, a market which is driven by forces that defy analysis: status, emotions, and fleeting opportunities, and a market distorted by frequent rent-seeking behavior by some investors.  Along the way, the reader is introduced to factors that drive art prices.  One learns that blue skies over sunny landscapes with bright colors sell positively.  Hence, the Impressionists continue to enjoy a strong market.  The right frame becomes important, even though it isn't a fixed aspect of the work itself.  The public generally dislikes rain, muddy colors (even those of van Gogh's early work), religious themes, especially martyrdoms, and war.  Even individual artists' work may be affected by some non-aesthetic concerns: is it a Mondrian with any red in it? is it a Chagall with a blue background?

This book is recommended as a refreshing break from issues of policy or from quantitative analysis and offers a reason to rethink what economic behavior encompasses.

The Death of Expertise - Tom Nichols (Oxford University Press, 2016)

An extended critique of the shifts in American public discourse that have elevated the opinions of everyone regardless of their expertise and lowered the relative weight given to expert judgement.  The author reviews a number of aspects of modern American life where expertise has been eclipsed by an equality of opinion regardless of the basis for any single view.  Tom Nichols is a conservative intellectual.   [303.4833]

This is a book that, by its title, invites approval from professionals in public arenas and by educated individuals.  It is becoming clear to subject matter experts that public policy discussions often degenerate into exchanges of opinions by the masses with little weight given to the opinions of genuine experts.  This may be the book that we have awaited; it is at times, however, disappointing in its delivery.  The result is less of an analysis than an extended statement of informed opinion.  Comforting as such texts may be in reassuring policy professionals that the problem is real, they lack utility when they fail to highlight the underlying causes that must be addressed if the problem is to be solved.  The book grew out of an article of the same name that Mr. Nichols had published in The Federalist.  A journal article may be expected to limit its analysis to a clear statement of the problem; a book, however, deserves a deeper analysis.

The opening states the basic problem: that there is a distinction to be made between citizens and subject experts and citizens are becoming comfortable with disposing of the experts.  If experts are not needed, then each person may seek information on their own.  Unfortunately, we prefer hearing information if it matches our current biases.  Such confirmation bias provides an easy basis for sorting through the myriad hits that any internet search can yield.  And, those hits will include rumors and old-wives' tales as well as "junk" research.  When our discussions take a political aspect, such as questions of foreign affairs or economics, citizen's refusal to accept an authority whose well-founded views conflict with the unschooled views of the individual, the latter will hold final sway.  If no appeal to authority can be made, much of our conversation becomes a tedious re-hash of positions with no defensible justification.  This is tedious.  At their worst, our exchanges become nasty ad hominem rages at each other.

The author enters into the well-worn topic of the inadequacy of public education, particularly at the university.  The allegation, sadly, is not new and it is a waste of time to simply re-plow the same furrows.  In Richard Hofstadter's  book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), the last chapter cites studies and reports from the 1890s and the 1920s and later that report American students incapable of finding the Pacific Ocean on a map or similar instances of ignorance.  It would be more useful to inquire why universities and colleges (if there are any institutions that cling to that less grand title) have changed their focus.  Why has the change taken place?  An analysis, for example, that argued how the continuing cuts in aid to state schools has made them far more dependent upon tuition and that requires attracting and keeping students.  Small private colleges might need to follow suit since they are competing for the same market.  (It may also be that the absence of a draft has removed the incentive for students to please their schools.)  The issue of grade inflation, if it is a real phenomenon, at elite schools poses a different problem.  With the stagnation of most incomes and the widening distribution of wealth or incomes, a degree from an elite school may have significant market value.  Why then, does Harvard or Yale need to create satisfied customers?  Why has the gentleman's C been replaced by the gentleman's A-?  Here the text is silent; it only notes the problem.

Two topics that the author enters into are noteworthy.  He points out that the metrics often used to assess expert opinion are the wrong ones.  Comparison of expert predictions against purely mechanical systems (throwing darts) or mass voting are the wrong measure.  Experts may be wrong, but the reasoning underlying their opinions is more valuable than random methods.  In short, being wrong may not be the real test.  The author proposes, instead, to keep track records of expert opinions and to include assessments of their work evaluated by other experts.

The book needed a better editor than the author got from his publisher.  A serious reader would have noted shifts in argument with a half-dozen pages or an overall lack of an argument.  The author at one point argues the phrase familiar to on-line comments that the United States is a republic, not a democracy.  Three pages later, the author uses democracy as it is generally used to describe our polity.  The text sometimes hints that a good outline might have tightened the presentation.

For summarizing the problem at its first level, the book may be recommended, if not warmly. 
For providing a sharper analysis of how we got there, the book fails.

The Panic of 1907 - Robert F Bruner and Sean D Carr (John Wiley & Sons, 2007)

This is a case study of a bank panic and the financial community's response to stem its consequences.  Because the incident predates the formation of the Federal Reserve System (and provided a motivation for doing so), preventing further contagion throughout the banking sector fell to the New York banks under the leadership of J. P. Morgan.  A review of the causes draws quick comparison the events of 2008.  [333.9730911]

With startlingly clear insight, or good luck, the authors published this book in 2007 on the centennial of the bank panic of 1907.  That panic threatened the banking system through insolvency exacerbated by runs on the banks.  brought the collapse of the Knickerbocker Bank and threatened to spread contagion throughout the banking system.  The risk to the banking system in this instance was similar to so many other bank crises: the interlacing lines of credit that could pull down several institutions even a second- or third-hand.  The bank run stresses the reserves of other banks as depositors act on precaution to withdraw their funds from even safe banks.  The result of drawing down reserves tightens short-term credit to paralyzing levels.  The collapse of the credit market carries knock-on effects for other institutions including those outside of the banking system.  When these events fall during a period in which the financial sector has already been battered - say, in insurance losses - or there is a slowdown in commerce, the impact can be devastating on the economy.  Saving the situation calls for the means to inject reserves without restraint into the banking system.

In hindsight, it is easy to see how the situation in 1907 paralleled that of 2008.  One might forget the effect of the San Francisco earthquake and fire had on insurance companies and the financial markets although losses from Hurricane Katrina may have played a similar role.  The first financial institutions to weaken lost their reserves in dodgy or highly speculative financial plays; in 1907, it was copper.  The network of financial relationships relayed that shock through the system  The challenge lay in the absence of a central bank or other means of injecting reserves into the system to steady it during bank runs.  Only by the grace of J.P. Morgan's intervention and action in commanding solvent banks to lend heavily to other banks that may be shaken but remained fundamentally sound was the crisis stemmed.  Banks had to follow Morgan's direction if they hoped to ever have relations with the Morgan community in the future.  It was the lesson of this panic that led to the establishment of a semi-private network of reserves available to member banks as a means of stopping contagion.  That network was the Federal Reserve system created by the Act of December 23, 1913.

This book is recommended.  The reader should be warned that the authors are not always as clear in laying out the full situation in 1907 and some of the narrative seems to wander until it is brought back sharply into focus.

Federal Taxation in America: a short history - W. Elliot Brownlee (Cambridge University Press, 1996)

A concise history of the several tax regimes used by the United States government from its founding to the late 1990s.  Usually, a war or other financial emergency was severe enough to provoke a rethinking of what should be taxed and how it was to be carried out.   The last chapter addresses the discussions about the tax system following the elections of 1994.  The topic has been popular for the last twenty-five years, although no substantial change in the system has taken place.  [336.200973]

The taxation issue has dominated much of American politics for the past half-century with opponents to the current system growing in volume and intensity and political power.  A system as core to government functions as taxation, however, deserves a long look at the what can be gained from the experience that has accrued since 1789.  This book provides just such a review.  It covers the several tax regimes that the national government has relied upon for revenues across its history.

Two points stand out in this history.  First, that the country has implemented major changes in its tax regime only in the face of severe, nation-threatening crises.  These crises were the Civil War, World War I, the Depression, and World War II.  (Some mention is also merited for the Tax Reform Act of 1986 for its efforts to broaden the tax base and its bipartisan development.)  In each of these cases, the national government was faced with massive requirements for resources that could not be met by the regime still in place.  The regime of the 1790s was established partly to create the ability of the government to tax.  It sufficed with its protective tariffs and customs duties and, eventually, sales of government land to fund the government and even to pay off the debt by 1837.  The system was inadequate for the financing needs of the Federal government in putting down the rebellion of 1861-65.  That crisis even brought the first attempts to enact a mild income tax.  The First World War expanded the use of the new personal income tax, but it also expanded the taxes on business.  This included progressive taxes on business income (they are a flat rate today.)   The Depression and the Second World War saw further refinement of income identification.  In the 1930s, the challenge was to pay for public works and reconstruction while taxable incomes were reduced.  At the same time, FDR was wary of running deficits and often moved to balance the budget.  The demands of WWII were just enormous, but the Administration hoped to broaden the tax base to promote a patriotic effort.  Outside of the adjustments made in 1986, the country has faced no existential crisis and this is likely why there has been no agreement on the direction forward to a new tax regime.

The second key point is that redistribution of income has always played a role in designing tax regimes.  In its earliest years, the government would have considered property taxes as a means of addressing an "ability to pay" issue.  The Constitution's restriction on direct taxes was, according to the author, created to keep the national government from competing with state governments who relied on this same tax base rather than on some principle about even-handed taxation.  Part of Woodrow Wilson's plan for WWI financing was to redistribute wealth by encouraging the middle class to by government bonds which would be paid off in future years by taxation on the wealthy.  In fact, all income tax schedules have had some element of progressivity, although Secretary Mellon did his best in the 1920s to reduce that.  Although FDR was less interested in progressive tax rates during WWII, the Congress did keep them along with flat rate corporate taxes and the regressive payroll taxes.  Post-War inflation probably did contribute to easy finance through "bracket creep."  Finally, some note must be made of the Reagan Administration's tax reform of 1986 with its efforts to close loopholes and broaden the tax base.  Since then, there have been no radical reforms of the tax regime.  Further, the growing anti-government movement - as reflected in movements such as California's Proposition 13 - has contributed to the impediments to any such reform.

The shifting balance of the tax burden across income groups and between citizens and businesses  is the result of these processes.  And, it contains the motivation for future tax regime changes when the need presents itself.

(This book has been issued in two subsequent editions which may bring it up to date.)

This book is recommended for its brevity and the insight it provides on the topic.

The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom - Stephen M. Stigler (Harvard University Press, 2016)

An eminent statistician and historian of the field examines the seven key concepts that form the basis of the modern theory of statistical inference and analysis.   [519.5]

Stephen Stigler of the University of Chicago has written extensively on the historical development of the discipline of statistics.  This book examines the history of the seven key concepts of statistical theory.  These are the concepts that underlie our understanding of what it is that we are doing when we accept statistics as the reflection of reality and when we use statistics to guide our judgements. 

For many of these concepts, Stigler finds their origins in the 17th century or earlier.  This should not be surprising: the intellectual questions that are addressed have, most likely, been at the core of our thinking about the world.  But, the full mathematical development and elaboration of the methods is surprisingly modern.  Most of these can be traced to sources such as Galton (1880s) or Laplace (1770s) for the first clear realization of what would be required.  The final development had to await the work of such moderns as Sir Ronald Fisher at the agricultural laboratory at Rothamsted (1920s) or Jerzy Neyman in the 1940s.  Suddenly, statistics, which likes to trace its lineage to the 18th century, is seen as an exceptionally new science.

The keys to statistics lie in these discoveries:

• Aggregation. What is necessary to summarize a collection of observations?  What may now be called sufficient statistics, think of the mean and variance, pose a puzzle; this reduced set of information may reveal as much about the parent population as the full record of observations. 
• Information.  How much do additional observations add to our knowledge?  A critical rule in statistics, under standard assumptions, is that doubling the sample size does not double the information content.  Information is found to increase with the square root of the number of observations; to double the information in a sample, one must quadruple the size.  This situation means that sampling must balance economy with information.
• Likelihood.  What do the observations tell us about the underlying probability distribution, among all possible distributions, that was most likely to be the source of the data?  Likelihood methods become our tool for making inferences about how the world works.
• Intercomparison.  How can observations be meaningful without reference to an external standard?  The variability within the samples can provide a basis for judging whether subsamples are from the same parent or not.   
• Regression.  How does one explain the tendency of populations to remain clustered around central values rather than spreading out continuously?  The issues were critical for the survival of Darwin's theory of evolution; they are the basis of our model building today. 
• Design.  How can experiments be planned to yield the sharpest distinction among factors influencing the outcome?  How can randomization strengthen our conclusions?  The pioneer work of Sir Ronald Fisher in agricultural experiments blossomed into the field of experimental design that guides marketing and medical research.  
• Residual.  How are complicated phenomena sorted to reveal relationships when some factors are stripped away?  

This may be a particularly difficult book to read.  Although Stigler tries to make the argument accessible to non-specialists, he is still limited in how much he can reduce the mathematics or the logic of the arguments to everyday speech.  The author also assumes that the reader may be familiar with the pioneers of statistical logic.  Still, for the reader with a basic background in statistics and probability, this may be an intriguing book.

With that qualification, the book is highly recommended.

Once in Golconda: a true drama of Wall Street 1920-1938 - John Brooks (W W Norton & Co, 1969)

A very talented writer describes the mood and the events of the 1920s boom, the crash, and the aftermath.  Brooks wrote with great clarity.  Each of his business history books deserves a look.  [332.64273]

The Wall Street crash of October 1929 stands as a milestone in American financial history that surpasses all others.  The panics and crashes that preceded it are lost in popular history; those that have followed it are constantly compared against it the way geologic events are compared with the August 1883 Krakatoa eruption or the April 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

In a similar manner, the books written about the 1929 Crash all spend some time examining the popular culture of the age.  The sense of easy money is a frequent topic; what review of the age doesn't mention John J. Raskob's "Everybody Ought to be Rich" magazine article?  The day-by-day events of that October are also popular material for these histories.   These are offered as a means of contrast with our own less frenzied or more sophisticated age.  When the 'twenties are contrasted too strongly with the present, it can lure us into a complacency; we can see how the sins of the past led to the downfall, but, as we are not guilty of such greed and passion, no such calamity awaits us.  History has proved this wrong many times.

John Brooks, however, has a more subtle eye.  His narrative does not stress the extraordinary nature of that age, although he discusses some of the major figures of the era.  His narrative encompasses the economic forces that imposed changes on the nation and the social changes that marked a permanent turning in the society's mores and viewpoint.  Further, Brooks covers the period more fully: from the 1920 bomb that exploded at lunchtime on Wall Street to the Pecora hearings and Richard Whitney entering Sing Sing in 1938.  In fact, Whitney becomes the central character in the history and his personal fall chronicles the falling away of the old elite and its replacement by a new generation.  When seen from this view, the 1920s are not extraordinary or distinct from later years, they are the time when the attitudes of our era first emerged. 

This book is very highly recommended.