WINTHROP KNOWLTON

The books that wwword official reader Winthrop Knowlton devoured—or tasted—in February.

DAILY: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Post
WEEKLY: Economist, New Yorker, New York, Bloomberg Business Week
BI-WEEKLY: Fortune, Forbes, Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, New York Review of Books
MONTHLY: Scientific American, Gloom, Doom, Boom Report, High-Tech Strategist

TITLE	AUTHOR	COMMENT
The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression	Amity Shlaes	Adored by the right and reviled by the left for its allegedly brutal treatment of FDR and the New Deal, this book was more balanced than I expected, very readable, filled with colorful characters and incident. It is, however, more anecdotal than analytical, not very coherent on international finance, not at all prescriptive, and failed to dissuade me from my view that while the New Deal was extraordinarily messy, with many absurd and counterproductive elements, it served the country extremely well until Roosevelt veered rightward post-1936.
Case Histories	Kate Atkinson	Another agreeable, low-key thriller featuring Jackson Brodie.
The Child That Books Built	Francis Spufford	This reminiscence (and literary analysis) of the books the author cherished in his childhood is so brilliantly written it simply sucks the life out of the subject. Couldn’t finish it.
The Whisperer	Donato Carrisi	Felt ashamed of myself for finishing this absolutely gruesome first novel about not one but several serial killers who do unusually serious damage.
The Honourable Schoolboy	John Le Carré	Having enjoyed the new movie version of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I decided to reread the last two volumes of the Smiley trilogy. This is certainly the weakest, a very poor Le Carré effort, hampered by the thinness of the main character (the schoolboy himself) and the implausibility of his love affair, upon which the denouement of the plot depends.
Smiley’s People	John Le Carré	All is forgiven. This is terrific, as is the TV version with Alec Guinness.

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