Ben Bernanke's The Courage to Act: A Review Essay

• Date: 01 April 2016
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/infi.12084
• Published date: 01 April 2016
• Author: Noah Smith

BOOK REVIEW

Ben Bernanke’sThe Courage to

Act: A Review Essay

Noah Smith

College of Business, Stony Brook University.

Ben Bernanke. The Courage to Act: A Mem oir on a Crisis an d its Afterm ath.New

York:W.W.Norton.2015.

The Courage to Act: A Mem oir of a Crisis and its Aftermath,byBenBernanke,is

many things at once. It is th e autobiography of a prestigious econom ist. It is a

history of the financial crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession that followed, from

the perspective of someon e at the center of events. It is a commentary on the

economics profession and mod ern macroeconomics. It is a po litical tract. A nd it is

the apologia of a publi c servant who was probably the t arget of more criticism t han

any in recent memory. If you come to this book look ing for only one or two of these

things, you will be frus trated; you are going to get them all.

There is a good reason that Bernan ke wrote his book this way. He is giving the

reader the complete pic ture—forcing us to see through his eyes for the duration of

the epic story. The autobiographica l sections tell us what kin d of man Bernanke is;

this allows us to understan d what he cared about when he was m aking his policy

decisions. The sec tions on economics exp lain his intellectu al background—what he

believed was actual ly going on in the economy. And the sections about polit ics tell

us about the constra ints under which h e operated.

International Finance 19:1, 2016: pp. 108–118

DOI: 10.1111/infi.12084

© 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd