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

The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and its Aftermath, by Ben Bernanke, is many things at once. It is the autobiography of a prestigious economist. It is a history of the financial crisis of 2008, and the Great Recession that followed, from the perspective of someone at the center of events. It is a commentary on the economics profession and modern macroeconomics. It is a political tract. And it is the apologia of a public servant who was probably the target of more criticism than any in recent memory. If you come to this book looking for only one or two of these things, you will be frustrated; you are going to get them all. There is a good reason that Bernanke wrote his book this way. He is giving the reader the complete picture—forcing us to see through his eyes for the duration of the epic story. The autobiographical sections tell us what kind of man Bernanke is; this allows us to understand what he cared about when he was making his policy decisions. The sections on economics explain his intellectual background—what he believed was actually going on in the economy. And the sections about politics tell us about the constraints under which he operated. International Finance 19:1, 2016: pp. 108–118 DOI: 10.1111/infi.12084