Courage to Act

In 2006, Ben S. Bernanke was appointed chair of the Federal Reserve, the unexpected apex of a personal journey from small-town South Carolina to prestigious academic appointments and finally public service in Washington's halls of power.

There would be no time to celebrate.

The bursting of a housing bubble in 2007 exposed the hidden vulnerabilities of the global financial system, bringing it to the brink of meltdown. From the implosion of the investment bank Bear Stearns to the unprecedented bailout of insurance giant AIG, efforts to arrest the financial contagion consumed Bernanke and his team at the Fed. Around the clock, they fought the crisis with every tool at their disposal to keep the United States and world economies afloat.

Working with two U.S. presidents, and under fire from a fractious Congress and a public incensed by behavior on Wall Street, the Fed-alongside colleagues in the Treasury Department-successfully stabilized a teetering financial system. With creativity and decisiveness, they prevented an economic collapse of unimaginable scale and went on to craft the unorthodox programs that would help revive the U.S. economy and become the model for other countries.

Rich with detail of the decision-making process in Washington and indelible portraits of the major players, The Courage to Act recounts and explains the worst financial crisis and economic slump in America since the Great Depression, providing an insider's account of the policy response.

“"Undoubtedly the best account we will ever have of how government and financial institutions dealt with what has come to be known as the Great Recession."”

"It was a happy chance that this scholar, known for his work on the Great Depression, was chairman of the central banking system of the US during the biggest financial crisis since the early 1930s. His [Bernanke's] new book, The Courage to Act, provides a fascinating account of the effort to save the world from another such catastrophe." -- Martin Wolf, Lunch with the FT - Financial Times
"Bernanke's memoir is a crucial document of record that will be invaluable to future historians. As far as any memoir can be, it is an honest and accurate account. There is no hubris or exaggeration: simply a telling of the tale of the most dramatic period in office of any Fed Chairman to date." -- Mervyn King - Prospect
"The former chair has penned a lucid account of the crisis and its aftermath... Mr Bernanke’s narrative of his time in office is a lucid, analytical affair… the book provides a robust defence of the Fed’s response to the crisis. Mr Bernanke clearly sees himself as someone who did what was necessary to save the economy from disaster, in the face of a barrage of unwarranted criticism. The result is a book which compels..." -- The Economist
"Bernanke was at the helm of the world's most important central bank during the financial crisis of 2007-08... Here he gives a compelling account of what he and the Federal Reserve did and why they did it... the defence of the Fed against its critics is compelling." -- Best Books of 2015 - Financial Times
"It was Ben Bernanke, not Gordon Brown, who steered us through the 2008 financial meltdown...the book's most interesting chapters are those that deal with the crisis...Above all, [Bernanke] exuded calm, even when there was plenty of inner turmoil. The calmness comes over in this book, and so does plenty of the turmoil." -- The Sunday Times

Ben S. Bernanke is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Author of the best-selling memoir The Courage to Act, he served as chair of the Federal Reserve from 2006 to 2014.

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