Battle of Bretton Woods

Economic history has always fascinated me and this looks like a good new book, The Battle of Bretton Woods, on the making of the new financial order following WWII. It was out of Bretton Woods that the IMF, World Bank and World Trade Organization were born, an attempt to bring global financial security to a world that had literally been torn asunder. The United States was the kingmaker in this regard. Great Britain found itself for the first time in a subservient role, as the US held two-thirds of the world's gold reserves.

The dollar would become the new world common currency, on which exchange rates were based, creating a new standard which John Maynard Keynes called "the exact opposite of the gold standard." Keynes wanted to go one step further and create a single global currency, but lost his argument. It would take nearly 30 years before this system eroded to the point of collapse, with Nixon taking the dollar off the gold standard, as there wasn't enough to gold to cover the amount of dollars in circulation. Currencies were allowed to float free for the first time since 1944.

Benn Steil explores the political intrigues, rival opinions and "acid humour" of the men making these decisions, notably John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White.

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The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Dylan in America

Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan. Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose. Looks like only yesterday. Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

Dispatches from Vilnius

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