Reviews for The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886-1929 (British History in Perspective)

The average rating for The Liberal Party: Triumph and Disintegration, 1886-1929 (British History in Perspective) based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-10-25 00:00:00 John Mcdermott If you're looking for a colorful, narrative history of financial bubbles, this book is not for you. Kindleberger is bone dry, and his goal is mainly to analyze common features of bubble cycles. Towards that end, he tends to pick a feature, then run through ten or twenty examples of how that feature worked during past bubbles. That leads to a lot of repetition, but by the end of the book, you definitely get a clear sense of how the Minsky model views bubbles. I think that's the reason the book has become such a classic-- it's probably assigned in economics classes all over the world. But a word of caution to the lay-reader: I have an MBA, and a couple of years of economics courses under my belt-- and some of the discussion was definitely above my head. You'll definitely need to hit Wikipedia to refresh your macro-economic knowledge-- especially at the end of the book, during the discussions of Domestic and International Lenders of Last Resort.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-04-29 00:00:00 Remington Chapman This was the second time reading this book. Honestly, the second time around I found this book to be rather boring. The theme of the book is as timely as ever, and I highly recommend reading something like it if you are interested in manias, panics, crashes (and financial fraud). As with the first time around, I appreciated the lack of bias and the common sense historical approach of the author. But this time around, I found elements of the book problematic. The first problem is the academic tone of the book. As a work of financial history, the book often found it necessary to deal with the theories and ideas of non-historians, particularly economists. Why? I found that historical analysis is often useful on its own merits and does not need to play too much with the theories of economists and their models. I also felt like the book would be better served dealing less with other academic works and more with establishing clearer historical narratives. The second problem I found was the author's use of historical cases. As the book develops he uses a historical shorthand, reaching across cases to develop his themes. For someone like me not familiar with all the cases in-depth, this became a dizzying affair. The author has laid out a chart in the book of the book. This chart is useful, but it would have been better if the author had established a clear narrative without haphazard jumping between cases. It's a pain to have to jump to an appendix to figure out where and what is going on with a particular example. And finally, the main thesis of the book: There should exist a lender of last resort, but the market should always be left wondering when and if it will come to the rescue. When I first read the book, I found this argument to be reasonable and well-argued. But having read this argument, I was looking for more the second time around. Some ideas I missed. Some tidbit that would make me rethink the elements of this book. Unfortunately, I didn't find it. I'm still interested in the subject matter and hope to find another book that can take me into the elements in way that is engaging and can challenge me a bit more. If possible, too, I would like this book to have a historical approach...but I would like the author to create clearer case studies and develop the patterns of human behavior in a more cogent way. I'll keep my eyes open for just such a book.