[.ca] Greenspan: The Man Behind Money (ISBN 0738205249)

From Amazon.com:
Alan Greenspan became chairman of the Federal Reserve a scant two months before the stock market crash of 1987. His deft handling of that crisis presaged his triumph in the 1990s, when he kept America from succumbing to the Asian financial flu, and received as much credit for the nation's booming economy as President Clinton. At appropriate points in this solid biography, former Fortune magazine staffer Justin Martin lucidly explains the intricacies of the financial system that Greenspan has dominated for 13 years. But the more fascinating revelations deal with the enigmatic Fed chairman's private life. Born in 1926, Greenspan was a Juilliard student and professional jazz musician before he entered New York University's School of Commerce in 1945. Novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand had a powerful influence on his economic thinking, and Greenspan spent 15 years as a member of her inner circle while he built a successful consulting practice. He made a few slips at the Fed, particularly when he failed to prevent the recession of 1990-91; but Martin shows him learning from his mistakes. Judicious quotes from interviews with colleagues and friends convey Greenspan's intriguing contradictions: aloof, yet collegial at work; deliberately obscure when testifying before Congress, but judged a fascinating conversationalist by the women he's dated, most of whom have been journalists. (He married NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell in 1997.) Is the secretive Chairman Greenspan secretly a media hound? In this instance, and many others, Martin's evenhanded portrait lays out opposing views and lets readers draw their own conclusions. --Wendy Smith

People Magazine Bio:
An extremely shallow book that offers no insight how Greenspan thinks or makes his decisions. The reason Greenspan is such an interesting character is how he has managed to constantly adapt to changing market conditions. The real story would be why and how he came to the decisions he did, but this book just reports his actions. There is almost no economic anlysis or justification. Anyone looking to gain some understanding of Greenspan's thought process will be left wanting and extremely disappointed with this book.

Interesting Material and Captivating Presentation:
This book is an excellent journalistic account of Alan Greenspan's life up to the first part of 2000 - the zenith of his career and fame. The book is not a serious biography. You will be disappointed if you expect the book to give you a deep and insightful analysis of Greenspan's life philosophy, his work methodology, or a revelation of the detail working of the Federal Reserve System. On the other hand, this book is a fascinating account of his life - both its private and public sides. Greenspan's brush with band music, his own economic consulting business which employed mostly female economists, his relationship with Ayn Rand and as an esteemed member of her Objectivist Collective, his role and relationship with the Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush and the Clinton teams. There are also some vivid accounts of how he handled some high profile financial and monetary situations as well as how he left his handprints on several important presidential commission reports and recommendations. And, of course, the book has not neglected to give brief but interesting accounts of the women in his life. This book is very well written - the material is interesting and well organized, and presentation is smooth and captivating. I find it to be very enjoyable reading. Read to the end. The last two paragraphs of the book were as weighty as everything written prior!

Great Source on Chairman Greenspan:
The principles that Alan Greenspan follows politically and economically are all accounted for in the in-depth writing Justin Martin presented in this book. Justin Martin even gets into small details about Alan Greenspan that not many people know about. I recommend this book to anyone willing to learn rock solid principles surrounding our economic conditions.

Disingenous:
Read all about the frightened little ec0nomist who happens to be (pragmatically) the most powerful man on the planet. Greenspan's dreadful fear of inflation is really the origin of our current economic recession, his timing is worse than a paranoid knife thrower afflicted with Parkinsons disease. This book isn't written objectively and will only benefit those who worship the detritus he leaves behind. It works too hard to portray him as well meaning guy who just happened to luck into his current job, but skims or omits his blunders and mistakes. This book is best for the Greenspan groupies.

A delightful read:
Justin Martin's "Greenspan" -- from beginning to end -- is a delightful read. I was laughing over and over as the pages turned, and was disappointed upon running out of pages to read. Here is one humorous example (page 225), about Greenspan changed his seating position at the FOMC meeting table. "Then there's the table flap. Since 1977, the FOMC has conducted its business around a twenty-seven-foot-long table fashioned out of Honduran mahogany, with a center section made of black granite. It weighs two tons. Since becoming Fed chairman, Greenspan had always sat at the head of this table. But in November 1998, attendees at one of the Fed's periodic public meetings noticed that he had moved to a spot in the middle. "The hubbub began immediately. What did it mean? Was Greenspan sending a message about increased 'collegiality' at the Fed? Turns out the move was for the sake of acoustics. 'Given the speed of sound, the advice arrived too late and inadvertently we got behind the curve,' joked Greenspan, during a meeting of the Fed's Board of Governors." I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in economics.