Limitless

September 1, 2022

In Bloodbath Nation, Man Booker short-listed novelist Auster assays the history of gun violence in the United States from the time of the first white settlers through the current mass shootings that make the country the most violent in the Western world. A New York Times best-selling author (Unfair), law professor Benforado uses real-life portraits in A Minor Revolution to detail how the United States fails its children, with 11 million in poverty, 4 million lacking health insurance, thousands prosecuted as adults, and countless struggling in substandard public schools mere miles from the polished halls of elite private institutions. Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Yale University, Bloom recapitulates one of Yale's most popular courses in Pysch, offering an up-to-date understanding of the mind's workings--particularly in the context of key contemporary moral and sociopolitical issues (75,000-copy first printing). CNN senior legal analyst Honig (Hatchet Man) challenges the two-tier justice system in the United States that allows the wealthy, the celebrated, and particularly the powerful to be Untouchable (35,000-copy first printing). In A Woman's Life Is a Human Life, historian Kornbluh (The Battle for Welfare Rights) offers a timely overview of a half-century's worth of fighting for reproductive rights. Having unearthed the dismal origins of climate change denial in Merchants of Doubt, Oreskes and Conway tackle another Big Myth, the magic of the marketplace, from the early 1900s business challenges to regulations through to the down-with-big-government cries still prevailing (150,000-copy first printing). Owens, a Black gay journalist with Forbes 30 Under 30 credentials, makes The Case for Cancel Culture by repositioning it not as suppression or put-down but as a key means of democratic expression and accountability (60,000-copy first printing). The mega-best-selling novelist Patterson joins with his Walk in My Combat Boots coauthor Eversmann and thriller writer Mooney to Walk the Blue Line, telling the true-life stories of police officers (300,000-copy first printing). Named by Nature among "10 People Who Mattered in Science in 2018," retired biologist and investigative genetic genealogist Rae-Venter explains in I Know Who You Are how she found a serial killer in 63 days after he had eluded authorities for 44 years. The New York Times reporter charged with covering the Federal Reserve, Smialek shows in Limitless how this formerly behind-the-curtains institution has been forced into greater transparency by rising inequality, falling global economic prospects, and the ravages of pandemic. A political reporter for the Daily Beast who has spent the last several years tracking QAnon, Sommer explains what it is, why it has gained traction, what dangers it poses, and how to shake adherents loose from its dogma in Trust the Plan (100,000-copy first printing; originally scheduled for March 2022).Chief Justice Earl Warren Professor of Constitutional Law and executive director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging, respectively, at NYU School of Law, Yoshino and Glasgow investigate how we can Say the Right Thing in an era when issues of race, gender equity, and LGBTQ+ inclusiveness are at the forefront.

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 31, 2022
Over the past few years, America’s central bank has taken on vast new powers to regulate businesses and the economy, according to this probing study. Smialek, the Federal Reserve correspondent for the New York Times, provides a moment-by-moment account of efforts by Fed chairman Jerome Powell and other officials to avoid economic collapse during the Covid-19 lockdowns instituted in March 2020. Exceeding its usual purview of lending to banks and buying Treasury bonds, the Fed provided loans directly to Main Street businesses and bought vast quantities of corporate bonds and other private debt. Equally important, she notes, was the Fed’s shift from adjusting interest rates to subdue inflation to keeping them as low as possible to maintain full employment—a focus that, critics contend, allowed the current inflation surge to take root in 2021. Smialek dramatically describes the pandemic’s financial chaos—Fed economist Andreas Lehnert “was in his office plugging away, messaging colleagues and liaising with lawyers, when the next morning dawned, strange and terrifying”—and provides lucid sketches of Fed history, analyses of financial markets, and explorations of the impact of Fed policy on everything from wealth inequality to climate change. The result is a timely and insightful primer on one of America’s most powerful and least understood institutions.

February 3, 2023

New York Times economic policy reporter Smialek's book is the most comprehensive study to date explaining the Federal Reserve's historical and current inner battles to handle the United States' economic crises. During the Civil War, the author points out, currency-supply standardization was implemented to control the flow of money within the country. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency eventually expanded and defined the rules for that standardization to enable the government to manage government programs and taxpayers' funds. It also established the accounting principles for the national banking system, which could be updated and enforced. For example, this accounting system set up the methods through which banks could apply for federal charters, but they were required to keep government bonds on deposit as a security. When the focus was on fighting inflation from 1950 to 2000, the Federal Reserve became vastly more powerful and independent of the White House. Subsequently, during the late 1980s and 1990s, the debate over the power and oversight of the Federal Reserve lessened when unemployment was low and productivity increased. VERDICT This book will likely interest scholars. Recommended for collections in the social and behavioral sciences.--Claude Ury

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2023
A wide-ranging study of the Federal Reserve and its almost unrestricted power over the U.S. economy. "The Fed plays a quiet but critical part in shaping our everyday lives," writes New York Times financial journalist Smialek in this surprisingly--given its subject--readable account. To fulfill its mission of controlling inflation and employment levels, it essentially has the power to print money without much in the way of oversight. For example, "during the 2008 financial crisis, chair Ben Bernanke unilaterally approved a $600 billion bond-buying program to shore up crumbling markets." This independence has made the Fed "the most powerful economic institution the modern world has ever known." It has also come with the understanding that the Fed is apolitical, as Donald Trump discovered when he attempted to bend the institution and its head, Jerome Powell, to his will to make him look good during the economic implosion of 2020. The pandemic figures heavily in Smialek's detailed, cogent account, as the author illustrates how the bankers and economists who run the Fed are quick to abandon ideology and theory for practical solutions to the problems they face. Some of the Fed's governors tend to free market fundamentalism, but when faced with crisis, they allow for quantitative easing to increase the liquidity of banks. During the pandemic, the Fed reduced interest rates to zero and allowed foreign banks easier access to dollars in a package indicating that "the Fed was trying to say that it would do whatever it took to restore markets to normality." In 2021, the Fed's strategies kept the global economy from collapsing, "demonstrating that the Fed's powers could be wielded to address more of society's challenges than anyone had previously imagined." Today, as Smialek lays out in accessible prose, the Fed has a new battle to fight in attempting to curb inflation, which may bring about "another Fed evolution" in policy and practice. The best book on the Fed in our time and a model of financial writing.

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