I am very much enjoying the Sebastian Mallaby biography of Alan Greenspan

Here are two notable excerpts:

The windows were usually clamped shut and the blinds were often drawn; one of Rand’s cats had jumped to an untimely death, condemning visitors thereafter to endure the stuffy air in her apartment.

Are cats that stupid?  (Did not Aristotle describe the cat as the rational animal?)  And:

…the fact that Greenspan was following the ways of Washington was precisely the point.  Half a year into his tenure, Greenspan had completed his journey from Ayn Rand’s outsider salon to the inner circle of power; he might still condemn the status quo from time to time, but in truth he was now part of it.  In voting against Greenspan’s confirmation, Senator Proxmire had misjudged the man.  Ideas were not what drove him after all; his courteous, clubbable, and nonconfrontational manner proved to be a better predictor of his conduct in office than his libertarian ideology.  However disarmingly Greenspan might portray himself as a sideman, he was only human, after all.  He wanted to be at the center.

I’m on p.194, more reports to follow.  You can buy the book here, it is one of the best of the year even from just the first 193 pp.

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