For finance wonks, a good-as-gold tome as imposing as the institution it covers—and with every promise of enduring...
Social historian Kynaston (Modernity Britain: 1957-1962, 2014, etc.) moves into fiscal realms with this overstuffed history of one of the world’s most important financial institutions.
The Bank of England, writes the author, was chartered on June 21, 1694, with then-staggering starting financing of 300,000 pounds, some of it provided by King William and Queen Mary. Democratically, Kynaston notes, even the royals were limited to the top investment of 10,000 pounds apiece; other investors were businessmen, among them a clockmaker and an apothecary. The bank was founded by three visionaries, one of them “a projector,” a speculator more interested in his own profit than in the success of the enterprise as a whole but still far-seeing enough to help put together a bank of credit of a kind more ambitious than any London had seen before—and, by extension, more ambitious than any in the world at the time. Other nations would develop similar institutions, which evolved into central banks. In closing his long history, the author notes that the very idea of a central bank is now under siege and that “their extinction cannot be ruled out,” while holding out the prospect that somehow the Bank of England will evolve to meet conditions as it has in the past. Though with no shortage of discussion of financial instruments, fiscal policy, and economic crises and turning points, Kynaston’s account is full of people as well—e.g., John Horsley Palmer, who was adamant in requiring that the bank actually be able to cover its loans with gold holdings, and Thomas Catto, who broke with John Maynard Keynes at just about the time the bank was nationalized (Catto never used that term, saying, “ ‘Public ownership’ sounds so much better”). Kynaston closes at the time the bank was emerging from the devastating financial crisis of a decade ago, so the effects of Brexit will have to await a revised edition.
For finance wonks, a good-as-gold tome as imposing as the institution it covers—and with every promise of enduring accordingly.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4088-6856-0
Page Count: 896
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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