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This is a mammoth book, and it represents only Volume 1, covering the history of the Federal Reserve System from 1913 until 1951. This latter date is not only about halfway in the Fed's history, but is also the year of the Accord between the Fed and the Treasury, whereby the Fed regained more control over monetary policy. The history of these first 38 years fills 745 tightly packed pages, with often fascinating, and lengthy, footnotes. There are five long and detailed, historical chapters. The book is topped and tailed with a brief Introduction, followed by Chapter 2 on the history of thought, mostly British (Henry Thornton and Bagehot), on "Central Banking Theory and Practice Before the Federal Reserve Act," and ends with a succinct "Conclusion: The First Thirty-Seven Years." The Introduction and Conclusion provide a good flavor of the contents for the hurried. There are two main drivers. The first is that, following the Freedom of Information Act, Meltzer had full access to the records of the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), and also to papers in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). Judging by this evidence, the FRBNY's records were more revealing and detailed than those in the FRB. So voluminous was the material that Meltzer needed to employ several research assistants, since the amount of archival material "was too great for one person to summarize. .. and complete in reasonable time"; and their work is nicely acknowledged in the Preface. Even so, this work, with Volume 2 still to come, has already been some 40 years in the making. The second driver arises from Meltzer's deep interest in certain analytical questions, notably (see p. x in the Preface), "Why had the Federal Reserve acted as it did? Why had it failed to respond to the Great Depression or the deep recession of 1937-38? Why was monetary policy often pro-cyclical?"
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