An enthralling account of an economic revolution that emerged from a scandal.
The story of government debt finance, which sounds boring but definitely isn’t.
Science writer and MIT professor Levenson reminds readers that rulers throughout history have taxed citizens to pay bills. During wars, this proved insufficient, so they borrowed from rich people and often didn’t pay it back. As a result, governments paid higher interest than private borrowers and sometimes found no lenders. Alternatives such as seizing church money created other difficulties, but unpaid soldiers wreaked havoc. Britain solved this problem around 1700 when clever men invented the joint-stock company, which would exchange government bonds for stock in their business. The bonds were collateral for loans that the company would invest, make a profit, and pay dividends. What could go wrong? Succeeding in business takes time and expertise, but joint-stock shares had value immediately. One could profit trading them, and savvy company owners, with insider knowledge (not then illegal) and a printing press, went to town. Levenson’s fascinating subject, the South-Sea Company, was not the first but the most memorable. In 1711, Parliament approved a plan to trade its bonds for South-Sea stock, which they believed would skyrocket because the company possessed exclusive trade rights in South America. This trade never amounted to much, but few paid attention. The company absorbed a great deal of government debt and satisfied both owners and shareholders until 1720, when—for reasons no one, including the author, can explain—stock prices shot upward during a buying frenzy and then collapsed. While historians often portray this as a scam, Levenson points out that it worked. Despite recriminations following the crash, British leaders understood that issuing bonds that buyers could trade or use as collateral was a superb way to borrow. Other nations did not catch on for another century, during which time Britain’s ability to raise immense quantities of money allowed it to “punch above its weight class” in wars against far more populous and wealthy nations.
An enthralling account of an economic revolution that emerged from a scandal.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9846-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2020
HISTORY | SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY | BUSINESS | MODERN | WORLD | ECONOMICS | GENERAL BUSINESS
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
IN THE NEWS
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.
A decidedly warts-and-all portrait of the man many consider to be America’s greatest writer.
It makes sense that distinguished biographer Chernow (Washington: A Life and Alexander Hamilton) has followed up his life of Ulysses S. Grant with one of Mark Twain: Twain, after all, pulled Grant out of near bankruptcy by publishing the ex-president’s Civil War memoir under extremely favorable royalty terms. The act reflected Twain’s inborn generosity and his near pathological fear of poverty, the prime mover for the constant activity that characterized the author’s life. As Chernow writes, Twain was “a protean figure who played the role of printer, pilot, miner, journalist, novelist, platform artist, toastmaster, publisher, art patron, pundit, polemicist, inventor, crusader, investor, and maverick.” He was also slippery: Twain left his beloved Mississippi River for the Nevada gold fields as a deserter from the Confederate militia, moved farther west to California to avoid being jailed for feuding, took up his pseudonym to stay a step ahead of anyone looking for Samuel Clemens, especially creditors. Twain’s flaws were many in his own day. Problematic in our own time is a casual racism that faded as he grew older (charting that “evolution in matters of racial tolerance” is one of the great strengths of Chernow’s book). Harder to explain away is Twain’s well-known but discomfiting attraction to adolescent and even preadolescent girls, recruiting “angel-fish” to keep him company and angrily declaring when asked, “It isn’t the public’s affair.” While Twain emerges from Chernow’s pages as the masterful—if sometimes wrathful and vengeful—writer that he is now widely recognized to be, he had other complexities, among them a certain gullibility as a businessman that kept that much-feared poverty often close to his door, as well as an overarchingly gloomy view of the human condition that seemed incongruous with his reputation, then and now, as a humanist.
Essential reading for any Twain buff and student of American literature.Pub Date: May 13, 2025
ISBN: 9780525561729
Page Count: 1200
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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