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Beyond The Crash: Overcoming The First Crisis Of Globalization (2010)

by Gordon Brown(Favorite Author)

3.14 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1451624050 (ISBN13: 9781451624052)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Free Press

review 1: Very interesting account of the Crisis and related issues, such as debt cancellation, from someone at the eye of the storm. By and large he's right but his prose lacks clarity. Ironically, this would have been a better book had it had a ghost writer but it seems Brown's own work. As someone pro-Brown, I found this an unfortunate fact to accept. Sometimes, however, the stylistic soup is worsened by syrup. Obviously aware of his public reputation, Brown seems to have overcompensated by thanking anyone he can, being polite even about President Bush and toning-down the numbers.
review 2: Gordon Brown has a reputation for being a little too number-intensive and wonkish among British voters. I can see the point, but the details were the parts of this book I found... more most interesting. Mr. Brown's tenure as PM may be his least impressive job qualification to write this book, given his extensive work with the IMF, World Bank and as Chancellor of the Exchequer (yes, I just wanted to write that. That's what those silly Brits call the Secretary of the Treasury).Anyway, Mr. Brown narrates the audio book himself, and his Scottish brogue is pleasant. with that said, I struggled through the first half or so of this book, as he narrated his minute-to-minute account of how fantastically everyone behaved in the crisis and how everyone (again, everyone- his staff, Paulson, Bush, Obama, Sarkozy, I think Putin gets a mention) pulled together to do the right thigns and save the world. I had a few issues with this, the first being that had they done the right thing initially, we shouldn't have found the world economy teetering on the brink of collapse, the second being that things are far from fixed, and the third was this nagging, irksome feeling that this all felt somehow manufactured. I think the third sentiment was brought on by reading 500 Days simultaneously. That was a crisis- no that was THE crisis of my lifetime, where people died and fear reigned so supreme that our City on a Hill compromised much of what we hold most dear. This was greedy people, poorly incentivized, making the world poorer after it had been artificially richer, not death sworn by men so committed they strapped bombs to themselves. It just felt wanting in the wake of so much carnage, even while boys die still, more than a decade on, 14 time zones from where they live. Mr. Brown's emotional account, voice straining, about how his aide woke him at 4AM to give him bank capitalization numbers just rang hollow in comparison.If you want to know about the British financial crisis and the response to it, this is a very good book. Mr. Brown does a servicable job writing (and narrating) the event of the crisis, and a much better job explaining the intriciacies, pitfalls and possible solutions to international and domestic monetary policy.Owen Gardner Finnegan less

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