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Alan Shrugged

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Alan Shrugged

Alan Greenspan, the World's Most Powerful Banker

Wiley,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Meet Alan Greenspan, jazz musician, libertarian philosopher and wooer of media princesses.

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Editorial Rating

7

Qualities

  • Background
  • Engaging

Recommendation

If your view of Alan Greenspan is one of a humorless, pin-striped central banker, Jerome Tuccille has someone he’d like to introduce you to: Alan Greenspan, the jazz musician, libertarian philosopher and wooer of media princesses. In this lively and engaging book, Tuccille weaves together Greenspan’s biography, a colorful history of the times and an analysis of political and economic philosophy. Of special note is the book’s detailed look at how the thinking of Ayn Rand influenced Greenspan. getAbstract.com strongly recommends this book for such intellectual fare, as well as its juicer tidbits - like Greenspan’s torrid fling with Barbara Walters.

Summary

Alan Greenspan: The Early Life

For a man who became the world’s most powerful banker, Alan Greenspan had a modest beginning. He was the son of a successful stockbroker and Wall Street trader, Herman Herbert Greenspan, but in 1929, when Alan was three years old, the stock market crash devastated his family. His parents divorced and his father appeared only sporadically in his life afterwards. His mother moved with him back to her parents’ apartment in the Washington Heights section of New York, a largely lower-income Jewish neighborhood. He developed an early love of classical, bebop, and jazz music from his mother, who became an accomplished singer and musician. At the local public school, Alan first discovered his talent for math. Before he was 10, Alan could correctly multiply 3-digit figures in his head.

As he grew up, Alan’s interests were math, baseball and music. Though he tried out unsuccessfully for the baseball team, he joined the school band and played the clarinet and tenor saxophone. As a teenager, he developed an early interest in the relationship between the individual citizen and the government. After graduating from high school, Greenspan was torn between...

About the Author

Jerome Tuccille is the author of 20 books, including Trump and Rupert Murdoch. He has worked in the investment industry for 25 years, as a financial writer and vice president with a major financial firm.

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