Ways and Means

October 1, 2021

Ranging from when New York City was inhabited by the Lenape people to the present day, from grubby brothels to chic hotels, Bird tells the story of New York by focusing on A Block in Time that's bounded east-west by Sixth and Seventh avenues and north-south by 23rd and 24th streets and is overlooked by the famous Flatiron Building (45,000-copy first printing). Chief editor for Le Monde diplomatique, Chollet argues In Defense of Witches, whom she sees as symbolic of female resistance to male oppression throughout history, with the women most likely to be perceived as witches--independent-minded, childless, or older--still being outcast today (75,000-copy first printing). Having reported from Hong Kong as well as South East Asia, journalist England offers Fortune's Bazaar, the story of kaleidoscopic Hong Kong through the diverse peoples who have made the city what it is today (75,000-copy first printing). A former senior editor at The New Yorker and author of the multi-best-booked Ike and Dick, Frank returns with a reassessment of our 33rd president in The Trials of Harry S. Truman. Influential Brown economist Galor, whose unified growth theory focuses on economic growth throughout human history, tracks The Journey of Humanity to show that the last two centuries represent a new phase differentiated from the past by generally better living conditions but also a radically increased gap between the rich and the rest. Following A Thousand Ships, which was short-listed for Britain's Women's Prize for Fiction and a best seller in the United States, Haynes's Pandora's Jar belongs to a growing number of titles that put the female characters of Greek mythology front and center as less passive or secondary than they've been regarded (25,000-copy hardcover and 30,000-copy paperback first printing). In Against All Odds, popular historian Kershaw tells the story of four soldiers in the same regiment--Capt. Maurice "Footsie" Britt, West Point dropout Michael Daly, soon-to be Hollywood legend Audie Murphy, and Capt. Keith Ware, eventually the most senior US general to die in Vietnam--who became the four most decorated U.S. soldiers of World War II. After World War II, six women were given the daunting task of programming the world's first general-purpose, all-electronic computer, called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) and meant to calculate a single ballistic trajectory in 20 seconds rather than 40 hours by hand; internet law and policy specialist Kleiman interviewed four of the women over two decades, eventually writing Proving Ground and producing the award-winning documentary The Computers (50,000-copy first printing). From former Wall Street Journal reporter and New York Times best-selling author Lowenstein (e.g., When Hubris Failed), Ways and Means shows how President Abraham Lincoln and his administration parlayed efforts to fund the Civil War into creating a more centralized government. New York Times best-selling author Rappaport (Caught in the Revolution) shows what happened After the Romanovs to the aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who fled the Russian Revolution for Paris (60,000-copy first printing).

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 3, 2022
Journalist Lowenstein (The End of Wall Street) argues in this masterful history that the financing of the Civil War was as crucial to the shaping of American history as the Emancipation Proclamation and the defeat of the Confederacy. Adjusted for inflation, President Lincoln’s requested $400 million budget for the Union Army in 1861 was more than the U.S. government had spent on the country’s three previous wars combined, Lowenstein notes. In order to help pay for the war, Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase initiated America’s first federal use of “fiat” money (currency not backed by gold), a new system of national (rather than state) banks, the Bureau of Internal Revenue (the precursor of today’s IRS), and the progressive income tax. Lowenstein’s lucid, character-driven narrative delves into these and other developments, explaining how crucial economic reforms were to winning the war, and how Republican legislation during Lincoln’s presidency greatly increased federal power and fulfilled his vision of how a strong national government could better the lives of ordinary Americans. As Lowenstein notes, in addition to waging the war, Congress also passed legislation for a transcontinental railroad, established departments of education and agriculture, and enacted the 1862 Homestead Act to promote the development of lands west of the Mississippi River. Full of fascinating historical tidbits and clear explanations of complex financial and political matters, this is a must-read for American history buffs.

February 1, 2022
How Lincoln's administration effected a significant expansion of the federal government to pay for the Civil War. Lowenstein is not a Lincoln scholar, but no matter. His experience writing about financial matters, on display in such books as America's Bank: The Epic Struggle To Create the Federal Reserve and The End of Wall Street, informs this fresh look at the president's essential Republican roots as a self-made man, rather than slaveholder, and belief that anyone could be successful in America. Even before the war, just as Lincoln was assuming office, a recession loomed, and he tapped one of his rivals, Salmon P. Chase, to lead the Treasury. (For more on Chase, turn to Walter Stahr's recent bio.) The economic differences between the North and South were vast, with the South essentially a monoculture of cotton exports, dependent on the North's manufacturing base. This led to widespread inequality and inefficiency, hampering the South's ability to wage war. Lowenstein ably chronicles the myriad economic problems facing each side. For example, in the South, Jefferson Davis fervently believed that the war was less about slavery than objection to "the Hamiltonian ideal of centralism. Federal involvement in the economy was off limits." The North, on the other hand, guided by Lincoln, believed the government should work for the betterment of the people. Lincoln's Congress, writes Lowenstein, "enacted a protective tariff worthy of Henry Clay and enabl[ed] legislation for a transcontinental railroad. It involved the federal government in agriculture, education, and land policy. It legislated an income and refocused the war's purposes to include a frontal attack on slavery. It could almost be said that it created the government itself." Eventually, Chase came around to implementing a legal tender, the greenback, to stabilize and regulate the economy and create national banking, a system that exists to this day. An accessible exploration of how war enabled the federal government to acquire real financial power.

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February 1, 2022
War is expensive, and the Civil War was America's most expensive war at the time for both North and South. Recounting how each side paid for its armies, Lowenstein focuses on the key figure managing the Union's economy, Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase. When he assumed office under Lincoln, the federal government issued no currency and had but two revenue sources, land sales and customs duties. When Chase resigned in June 1864, the government had imposed income and excise taxes, circulated paper cash (""greenbacks""), floated millions in bonds, and created a national banking system in nothing less than a financial revolution. Turning to the Confederacy's war finances, Lowenstein details an inexorable descent toward ruin. Its leaders squandered their greatest asset, cotton. Instead of exporting the 1861 crop to back bond sales, they embargoed it in hopes of compelling British and French support. That left but one option, printing money, which they did to excess, igniting hyperinflation that reduced the South to a barter economy by war's end. Lowenstein delivers a fine account of a crucial yet overlooked aspect of the American Civil War.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from February 1, 2022

When Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency in 1861, federal coffers were practically empty. The country's finances had been left in shambles by the administration of James Buchanan, who had unsound fiscal and monetary policies and feared that his treasury secretary held Southern sympathies. In this enlightening work of economic history, financial journalist Lowenstein (America's Bank) explores the massive transformation of U.S. finances under the tenure of Lincoln and his Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. For instance, during the Civil War, the federal government successfully implemented the first-ever income tax, to pay for the mounting war costs. Other firsts included the federal government taking on massive amounts of debt from bond issues; the establishment of a fiat paper currency issued by national banks; and the solidifying of Wall Street as the nation's financial hub. Chase and Lincoln's fractious relationship is on full display here, including Chase's multiple threats to resign and his pursuit of the presidency before and after Lincoln's tenure. Lowenstein details the Confederacy's missteps as it tried to raise money, as well as the federal blockade's stranglehold on Southern ports and shipping. VERDICT Based on Chase's papers and other documents, Lowenstein's clearly argued book shines a light on an oft-neglected history of the American Civil War and how it shaped the U.S. economy.--Chad E. Statler

Copyright 2022 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.