Wall Street Journal: Books of the Year 2012
Richard Fisher says: "Perhaps the best book about presidential leadership written this year was 'Ike's Bluff'"
Dec 18, 2012
We asked 50 of our friends to tell us what books they enjoyed in 2012-from Judd Apatow's
big plans to Bruce Wagner's addictions. See pages C10 and C11 for the Journal's own Top Ten lists
RICHARD FISHER
Perhaps the best book about presidential leadership written this year was "Ike's Bluff," Evan Thomas's masterful, concise study of how Eisenhower guided America through the post-World War I1 transition from victory in conventional warfare to a world threatened by mutually assured nuclear destruction. Ike was a brilliant strategist, possessed of baffletested self-confidence and innate common sense. As Mr. Thomas shows, Eisenhower had a keen awareness of the horrors of nuclear weaponry. Thanks to the author, readers can finally discern the shrewd visionary behind Ike's grandfatherly mask.
Readers interested in economics will appreciate Sylvia Nasar's "Grand Pursuit," which traces the development of the "dismal science" from Malthus and Charles Dickens through Man, Keynes, Schumpeter and Hayek, to Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen. It is a fast-paced, thoughtprovokjng
read that might benefit quantitative- minded policy types, who are often masters of mathematics but have scant knowledge of the history of economic thought. They might be shocked, for example,
to discover that World War I1 "put Keynes and Hayek on the same side of the economic policy debate." The war transformed Keynes into an "inflation hawk" fearful that "by running up a huge debt
and then printing money to hold down interest rates, the government was sowing the seeds of future inflation!'
-Mr. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Read More
Dec 18, 2012
We asked 50 of our friends to tell us what books they enjoyed in 2012-from Judd Apatow's
big plans to Bruce Wagner's addictions. See pages C10 and C11 for the Journal's own Top Ten lists
RICHARD FISHER
Perhaps the best book about presidential leadership written this year was "Ike's Bluff," Evan Thomas's masterful, concise study of how Eisenhower guided America through the post-World War I1 transition from victory in conventional warfare to a world threatened by mutually assured nuclear destruction. Ike was a brilliant strategist, possessed of baffletested self-confidence and innate common sense. As Mr. Thomas shows, Eisenhower had a keen awareness of the horrors of nuclear weaponry. Thanks to the author, readers can finally discern the shrewd visionary behind Ike's grandfatherly mask.
Readers interested in economics will appreciate Sylvia Nasar's "Grand Pursuit," which traces the development of the "dismal science" from Malthus and Charles Dickens through Man, Keynes, Schumpeter and Hayek, to Milton Friedman and Amartya Sen. It is a fast-paced, thoughtprovokjng
read that might benefit quantitative- minded policy types, who are often masters of mathematics but have scant knowledge of the history of economic thought. They might be shocked, for example,
to discover that World War I1 "put Keynes and Hayek on the same side of the economic policy debate." The war transformed Keynes into an "inflation hawk" fearful that "by running up a huge debt
and then printing money to hold down interest rates, the government was sowing the seeds of future inflation!'
-Mr. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.
Read More