Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World's Most Powerful Banker

Rating:
Summary: Insightful!
Review: If your view of Alan Greenspan is one of a humorless, pin-striped central banker, Jerome Tuccille has someone he'd like to introduce you to: Alan Greenspan, the jazz musician, libertarian philosopher and wooer of media princesses. In this lively and engaging book, Tuccille weaves together Greenspan's biography, a colorful history of the times and an analysis of political and economic philosophy. Of special note is the book's detailed look at how the thinking of Ayn Rand influenced Greenspan. We from getAbstract strongly recommend this book for such intellectual fare, as well as its juicer tidbits - like Greenspan's torrid fling with Barbara Walters.

Rating:
Summary: Alan Shrugged
Review: This is a fascinating look at this most powerful and influential banker, whose mind for economical and political thinking is world-renown. Even better, Tuccille explores his relationship with Ayn Rand, the legendary novelist and philosopher, and what made their relationship tick. Filled with anecdotes, and incredibly detailed research, this look at Greenspan is engrossing. Anyone interested in economics, politics, or just a good biography should not miss this!

Rating:
Summary: Recommended
Review: This is probably one of the lesser known of the books about Greenspan. However, I picked it up after randomly coming across it and found it to be intelligent and insightful, with more insight into his personality than his monetary policy, which is fine with me because there are a million places to learn more than you'd ever want to know about that.
Most people think of Alan Greenspan as the prototypical conservative banker, with his "dour" appearance and somber, wordy pronouncements. However, if you read this book, you will find that in some respects nothing could be further than the truth. An eccentric and a bohemian, Alan Greenspan was a Greenwich Village jazz saxophonist and an amateur philosopher until his mid twenties when Greenspan developed his true focus on economics. The book even alludes to the notion that he had been exposed to marijuana and the counterculture of that New York scene a full generation before the 1960's.
All in all, this book does a lot for Greenspan's image as a chronically unhip person. Similarly, it does a good job of establishing that Greenspan's beliefs and actions are grounded in genuine moral disdain for economic leftism and its disasterous implications.
So, if you can pick up a copy I really recommend this lesser known book. There is a lot of outlandish idolization of Greenspan as "the oracle" or some similar silliness. He is no oracle, just a very fine economist who seems to have a pretty interesting life story as well.

Rating:
Summary: Reader Snored
Review: This was an enormously disappointing, jingoistic, mass market human interest biography from which I learned little about the Fed and monetary policy, but from which I learned a great deal about the author's commitment to pseudo-intellectual, hyper-libertarianism and what passes for serious literature in the U.S. mass market. Pass on this unless you want an invitation to worship at the grave of Ayn Rand. You could log into a right wing blog and get the same stuff for free.