An orderly, winning book from the economist whose Volcker Rule limits risk-taking by banks.
The former chairman of the Federal Reserve describes the “challenge and satisfactions of public service” and laments the “breakdown” of effective governance in the United States.
In this thoughtful memoir, Volcker (co-author: Changing Fortunes, 1992), now 91, reflects on his lifelong dedication to good government, sparked during his comfortable Depression-era childhood in Teaneck, New Jersey, where his engineer-father was city manager. The grandson of German immigrants, Volcker studied at Princeton and Harvard before bringing his need for a “sense of order” to a lengthy career with the Treasury Department and the Fed, which he chaired from 1979 to 1987. He devotes much of the book to his high-level involvement in money matters from domestic finance to international banking, including behind-the-scenes stories about the relationship between the independent Fed and the administration in power. The author includes lengthy accounts of his actions on financial and monetary policy, the handling of financial crises (Chrysler and Latin American debt), and the recurrent challenge of inflation. Despite satisfying teaching stints there, he faults Princeton for its present failure to offer “effective education for public service.” Too many new graduates are interested only in large starting salaries. Volcker is sharply disappointed by Americans’ current distrust of government and institutions, from public education to a free press: “The once honored phrase ‘good government’ is now viewed as an oxymoron.” He continues later, “the rising tide of progress toward open democratic societies—the world in which I have lived and served—seems to be ebbing away.” In 2013, the author created the Volcker Alliance to rebuild trust in government. Amid recollections of his roles under several presidents, he also conveys personal enthusiasms (the Dodgers) and his gratitude to Princeton, both for making possible his senior thesis on the Fed and for an art class that allowed him to identify the Cezanne in David Rockefeller’s office restroom at Chase Manhattan.
An orderly, winning book from the economist whose Volcker Rule limits risk-taking by banks.Pub Date: Nov. 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5417-8831-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Nov. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
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