Money Talks

Money Talks
JEFFREY E. GARTEN ’68
Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy HARPERCOLLINS   448 PP.   $29.99

The belief that history hinges on small events—like the missing nail that dooms the horseshoe, then the horse, and then the kingdom in the classic nursery rhyme—is the guiding force behind Three Days at Camp David, which examines how a single weekend during the Nixon presidency sent shockwaves through the global economy that reverberate today.

Gold was the reason the president and his advisors clandestinely huddled at the presidential retreat in Maryland from August 13 to 15,1971. Since World War II, the precious metal backed every U.S. dollar, the standard currency for international trade. But gold reserves were running low, Garten writes — hardly enough to cover the $40 billion held by foreign banks. At the same time, unemployment and inflation were rising, stoking fears of an America in decline, an unflattering backdrop for Nixon’s re-election campaign.

At the meetings in the casual, wooded setting where attendees could offer views based on “what they sincerely believed,” Garten writes, Nixon’s inner circle decided to break with decades of monetary policy and sever the gold link for good. It was the first major turn inward for the United States, a go-it-alone break that angered allies and challenged the world order. It would hardly be the last word in the isolationism vs. globalism debate.

Making use of interviews, diary entries, and even a tour of Nixon’s helicopter, Garten’s narrative is thick with fly-on-the-wall details. “The chairs were arranged in a large circle for the first meeting, which began at 3:15 p.m.,” he writes. “Nixon was dressed in a pale blue sport jacket, while the others wore either sport coats or suits; all wore ties.” Jumping between jocular dinner parties, late-night phone calls, and poolside chats, the book also animates wonky material with a touch of suspense. Garten fleshes out the competing priorities of the weekend’s guests—including Office of Management and Budget director George Shultz, Treasury Under Secretary Paul Volcker, and speechwriter William Safire—and Nixon, who at times seems more motivated by the shock value of his monetary maneuvering than anything else.

“I conceived of the book early in the Trump era,” says Garten, who has been a dean of Yale’s business school, a managing director of the financial firm Blackstone, and a commerce undersecretary in the Clinton administration. “But the change of administration, and the opportunities and challenges it brought, was an added bonus.”   —C.J. Hughes ’92

EDITOR’S PICKS
WILLIAM CARPENTER ’62
Silence
Islandport Press

This intensely edgy novel tells the story of Nick, a young Iraq War vet who returns home to Maine after surviving a brutal IED attack that killed his whole unit and left him permanently deaf. The author—a poet and a founding faculty member at the College of the Atlantic, where he taught creative writing for 48 years— juxtaposes Nick’s violent flashbacks and inner voices with his youthful memories and determination to preserve an island sanctuary threatened by development.

ANNETTE GORDON-REED ’81
On Juneteenth
Liveright Publishing

In a series of essays, the Pulitzer Prizewinning historian creates a personal and affectionate memoir of Juneteenth celebrations and growing up in Texas, where the topic of slavery and its role in the state was rarely mentioned in school. She weaves that tangled history with an analysis of Texas’ belated declaration of the end of slavery on June 19,1865, more than two years after President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

SUSAN SCHOENBERGER ’84
The Liability of Love
She Writes Press

This author’s third novel centers on a young woman who is assaulted during her first year in college and delves into the consequences of her efforts to subsequently conceal the experience. Many of the story’s memorable characters harbor painful secrets, from shame about an unusual medical condition to credit wrongly taken for an important gift to unrequited love.

LORI MCMULLEN ’00
Among the Beautiful Beasts
She Writes Press

Marjory Stoneman Douglas’ passion for Florida’s wildlife and wild places made her the acclaimed champion of preserving the Everglades. This biographical fiction focuses on her early years—a bewildering childhood in Massachusetts with a mentally unstable mother, a disastrous marriage to a con man, and a new start with help from her father, the founder and editor of the Miami Herald.