A major new book from the former vice-chairman of the Fed ponders the origins of the financial crisis. Key quote: "What were these guys smoking? Apparently, the weed was called greed."
In a short excerpt from Nate Silver's new book, a look at how a random computer glitch enabled Deep Blue to unnerve and defeat Garry Kasparov in their famous 1997 chess showdown. (Part of our series of page 69 tests for notable new books.)
'The Victory Lab' goes inside the data-driven revolution of modern politics. So it's only fitting that page 69 lands in the middle of a meeting with a presidential frontrunner, interested in bringing big data to his campaign.
Gary Gorton's "The Panic of 2007" is perhaps the best single place to go to understand how problems in the subprime housing market almost toppled the global financial system. So I was excited to receive an early copy of his next book, "Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don't See Them Coming."
For Marten Gilens 'Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America", page 69 falls smack in the middle of the "data and methods" chapter. That doesn't seem fair. So I'm invoking the Ford exception, so named for Ford Madox Ford, who said, "Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you." So here's the best bit on page 99,
The media critic Marshall McLuhan famously suggested that people deciding whether to buy a book should turn to page 69, read what's on it, and then make up their minds. It's a technique I've been using for years, and now I'm going to bring it to the blog.
