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Alan Shrugged: Alan Greenspan, the World's Most Powerful Banker By Jerome Tuccille
2002 | 321 Pages | ISBN: 047139906X | PDF | 2 MB
I am an avid reader of the works of Ayn Rand. I picked up this book from a used book store thinking that it would be a nice book to give an overview of the career of Alan Greenspan with special emphasis on his relationship with Ayn Rand. Unfortunately, I was bored by the content on Alan Greenspan and offended by the content on Ayn Rand.The initial chapters on Greenspan's youth and his hobby as a jazz player are interesting. However, the latter sections on Greenspan as a financial adviser (for Ford and Reagan) and his time with the Federal Reserve are somewhat informative but boring to read. Chairing the Federal Reserve is not exactly the most exciting position, so perhaps the author is just doing the best with the material he has. This is true but the treatment of Ayn Rand is very unkind if not just downright immature. For example, Tuccille writes "[M]uch of Rand's rational individualism was in harmony with the teachings of the scholastic Thomas Aquinas....But Rand *chose* to believe that she had created a new morality that stood Christianity on its head."The emphasis on the word 'chose' is mine. Reading this paragraph insinuates that not only is Rand's ethical philosophy a mere rehash of previous ideas but that she deliberately and dishonestly *evaded* this fact. While both Rand and Aquinas have Aristotelian roots, this is still not an honest comment to make in passing about Rand's philosophy. It is not appropriate for me to go into details about the details between Rand and Aquinas here, but any interested reader can learn about Rand's ethical philosophy by reading 'The Virtue of Selfishness' by Ayn Rand, 'Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand' by Leonard Peikoff or 'Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics' by Tara Smith.There are numerous other snipes at Ayn Rand throughout the book, but the comment above is very representative.I definitely do not recommend this book for genuine fans of Objectivism. I also do not recommend this book for general fans of laissez-faire capitalism as I do not see much value in this book for this broader audience either.