Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Financial journalist and historian Grant (The Forgotten Depression) gives a thoughtful, evenhanded, and frequently witty take on one of his professional forebears: Walter Bagehot (1826-1877), a 19th-century British banker, editor-in-chief of the Economist, and a skilled writer on political and economic subjects. The subtitle is misleading-an epigraph clarifies that Bagehot was labeled "the greatest," as in quintessential, Victorian by historian G.M. Young, not by Grant. Grant's view is much more down-to-earth; he passionately admires Bagehot as a "virtuoso writer on money and banking" whose output was "eclectic, fearless, aphoristic, prolific" and whose ideas remain respected today, but doesn't hesitate to point out his flaws (among them "hauteur" and "studied forgetfulness about forecasting errors") and failures (including three unsuccessful runs for political office). Bagehot was born into a provincial business and banking dynasty; he went into one of the family businesses, the regional bank Stuckey's. He became influential among other prominent Victorians, corresponding with and counseling such luminaries as William Gladstone; succeeding brilliantly at the Economist; and accurately predicting and warning against the numerous banking panics and runs that plagued England in the 1800s. It is a measure of Grant's talent as a biographer that Bagehot appears as scintillating and charismatic as he is reputed to have been in life. Even readers not normally drawn to economic subjects will find themselves enjoying this lively and erudite biography and guide to financial Victoriana. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in defending his lending practices during the 2008 financial crisis, cited for authority 19th-century banker Walter Bagehot (1826--77). In response, financial journalist Grant (Grant's Interest Rate Observer) offers this biography of Bagehot, asserting that his subjects' secure career at Stuckey's Bank, a large and successful English country bank, allowed him to be editor of the weekly Economist as well as to write prolifically on various subjects for other publications. Grant sketches influential events in Bagehot's career, including the Peel Banking Act of 1844, the Panic of 1857, the American Civil War, the Overend Gurney bankruptcy, electoral reform, and a foreign government debt crisis. Grant explains it was Bagehot's 1873 book Lombard Street that popularized the idea of having a lender of last resort to stem financial panic but adds that Bagehot also called for that lending to be at high interest rates and only against good collateral. VERDICT Grant's readable work both illuminates Bagehot's life and places his writings in the conservative gold standard context of his time. [See Prepub Alert, 1/7/19.]--Lawrence Maxted, Gannon Univ. Lib., Erie, PA
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Financial journalist Grant (The Forgotten Depression: 1921: The Crash That Cured Itself, 2014, etc.) pays homage to the founding genius of the genre, the pioneering Economist editor and capital Victorian chap.Walter Bagehot (1826-1877)as the author helpfully points out, it's pronounced "Badge-it"was impossibly accomplished, devouring libraries of Latin literature as a child, writing literary essays as a teenager, insatiably learning, and, at his peak as a journalist, writing at least 5,000 meticulously arranged words per week. He was also largely self-taught in economics, a discipline that was then only beginning to shape itself. Grant recounts the prime minister and chancellor of the exchequer William Gladstone's remark, "The machinery of our financial administration is complicated, and Mr. Bagehot is the only outsider who had thoroughly mastered it. Indeed, he understood the machine almost as completely as we who had to work it." The author's account is not without its complications, from the opening discussion of the British monetary system in the two-metal years to repeated encounters with financial panics and depression brought on by wishful thinking, willful error, and the inevitable bubbles and busts of the business cycle. Born into both banking and journalism, Bagehot, as editor and principal columnist for the Economist, was in a position to admonish, correct, and suggest; by Grant's account, the treasury note is one result. He was also in a position, as Grant notes, to prognosticate and imagine: "To write about finance in a useful way," writes the author, "is to take an unconventional view of the future (there's not much demand for what everybody already knows)." Bagehot's imagination led to a publication that, in his own image, was politically somewhat liberal and fiscally conservative, learned without being ponderous, and able to adapt and to admit error, all qualities that lend credence to Grant's estimation of Bagehot as one whose "words live."Essential for readers with an interest in the history of economics and, more important, how to write about and read the dismal science. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
