Okay, not really, but imagine the possibilities if these two authors met up while they’re both in town today.
This evening, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be in the National Press Club’s ballroom at 6:30 p.m. to talk about his latest book, The Map and the Territory: Risk, Human Nature, and the Future of Forecasting (Penguin Press, $36).
Years after the recession began on his watch, the author reflects on “the existential crisis for economic forecasting.” Since “no one with any meaningful role in economic decision-making in the world saw beforehand the storm for what it was,” he presses, “what went wrong? Why was virtually every economist and policy maker of note so off about so large an issue?” He then answers these questions and charts a different course using economic philosophy, investor psychology, and historical analysis.
Greenspan does not delve into his own involvement as Fed chairman, much of which was covered in his 2007 memoir. In hindsight, he says some causes of the crisis were the incorrect assumption that humans act rationally, lacking capital standards, government spending on entitlement programs, and raised taxes that caused high-income individuals to invest less.
Tickets can be purchased here for $10 and are required for entry. The event is a fundraiser for the National Press Club Journalism Institute and no outside books or memorabilia are permitted.
Also tonight, M. Night Shyamalan will be interviewed by MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews at Politics and Prose at 7 p.m. Best known for producing/writing/directing blockbusters like The Sixth Sense, Signs and Unbreakable, the man whose self-described “mind is hardwired to see possibilities everywhere” also started a foundation and wrote a book all about closing the U.S. educational achievement gap.
I Got Schooled: The Unlikely Story of How a Moonlighting Movie Maker Learned the Five Keys to Closing America’s Education Gap (Simon & Schuster, $25) compiles lessons from schools that accomplished this goal, and is most definitely the only book on this topic explained M. Night Shyamalan-style. And don’t worry, he won’t make any of those pesky comparisons to Scandinavia: “One bit of advice I’m ready to share is … whenever anyone brings up Finland, back away slowly,” he writes. “In fact, it mystifies me that a country with fewer people than Greater Philadelphia, no civil rights problem, and virtually no significant income inequality is held up as a model for the United States.”
Beer and wine will be available at the talk. Besides the one copy of I Got Schooled that must be purchased on-site to enter the signing line, the event is free. The author will not sign memorabilia and no flash or posed photographs may be taken.
