Summer Beach Reading from … CNN’s Jake Tapper?

 His Two Novels – The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance – Are Real Page-Turners

 

by Ray Keating

The Keating Files – July 14, 2021

 

I’m not exactly a big fan of CNN. But then again, I’m not a fan of any television network’s coverage of politics these days. It’s only the select few reporters, and even fewer commentators, that I can, well, tolerate. But I do appreciate Jake Tapper, CNN’s lead anchor for Washington, DC, events and chief Washington correspondent. Why? 

While I agree with him on some issues and disagree on others – more often disagreeing, I think – Tapper seems to annoy both sides of the political aisle. Democrats dislike him when in power and the same goes for Republicans, which says something positive about any political journalist.

 

Also, after hearing him in a couple of interviews, Tapper is something of a political history nerd. I like that.

 

Finally, since Donald Trump arrived on the political scene, Tapper has been somewhat careful in separating Trump acolytes and true, traditional conservatives. I very much appreciate that.

 

But now there’s another reason. I discovered Jake Tapper, the novelist. Tapper has written two excellent political mysteries/thrillers. As both a writer and reader of this genre, I thoroughly enjoyed his first book, The Hellfire Club, which was published in 2018, as well as the follow up, The Devil May Dance, published in May of this year. The two make for a nice combo summer beach reading.

 

Tapper skillfully walks a line in these books. No punches are pulled as to the underbelly of politics. In this sense, both books have a noirish feel at times. I’m also a big believer in novels being first about characters, obviously followed quite closely by the story. Readers need to care, in some way, about the characters. And Tapper neatly balances the seedy, noirish aspects of his two tales with two eminently likeable main characters. These novels are entries in the Charlie and Margaret Marder Mystery series, and this reader found himself liking and caring for both Charlie and Margaret, and rooting for them through assorted challenges. 

 

In The Hellfire Club, Charlie and Margaret are two academics whose lives get turned upside down after Charlie is appointed to a vacant congressional seat from New York thanks to his family ties. The two work to maintain their bearings inside and outside their marriage throughout both books. 

 

The Hellfire Club involves power, politics, murder, secret societies, double crosses and conspiracies. As for the mystery, the reader keep turning pages (or swiping the Kindle screen) trying to figure out who is involved and in what exactly. Much the same can be said of The Devil May Dance – not that Tapper repeats himself.

 

The Hellfire Club serves up Washington, D.C., in 1954, with Tapper, the political history nerd, having Charlie and Margaret interacting with the likes of President Eisenhower, Senators Estes Kefauver, Joe McCarthy and Margaret Chase Smith, the Kennedys, and others, and being involved with some actual historical events.

 

Meanwhile, The Devil May Dance takes Charlie and Margaret to Hollywood in the early 1960s, largely hanging out with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. The Kennedys and the mob play heavily into the plot, as does Scientology. The reader even gets a dead body in trunk (fitting for such a story), along with a key scene taking place at the Oscars. 

 

If you’re looking for an engrossing mystery with fascinating characters and some humor sprinkled throughout, then both The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance are for you. 

 

Tapper’s journalistic instincts can be detected throughout these two books. The historical figures brought into his fiction are dealt with in straightforward fashion, not shying away from shortcomings and darks aspects, yet also highlighting positives. And to his credit, Tapper strives for accuracy regarding the historical points sprinkled throughout these works of fiction. Along the way, he occasionally draws some parallels between his characters and situations based in the 1950s and 1960s, to characters and scenarios playing out in our recent, real-world politics. Fortunately, though, he does so with a subtle touch. 

 

Much more can be said about these two books, but I’m not keen on reviews that reveal too many details. After all, that’s why we read the books in the first place. But it is worth coming back to Charlie and Margaret. Here are smart, interesting characters, but not perfect. The reader is glad to ride along with the couple – engrossed, entertained, hoping for the best, and looking forward to the next journey with Charlie and Margaret Marder.

 

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Ray Keating is a columnist, novelist, economist, podcaster and entrepreneur.  Keating has three new books out. Vatican Shadows: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel is the 13ththriller/mystery in the Pastor Stephen Grant series. Get the paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon, or signed books at www.raykeatingonline.com. Past Lives: A Pastor Stephen Grant Short Story is the 14th book in the series. Get the paperback or Kindle edition at Amazon, or signed book at www.raykeatingonline.com. And order the 15^th book in the series What’s Lost? A Pastor Stephen Grant Short Story.

 

The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?

 

You also can order his book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York  from Amazon or signed books  at RayKeatingOnline.com. His other recent nonfiction book is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know. 

 

One of the best ways to enjoy Ray Keating’s Pastor Stephen Grant thrillers and mysteries is to join the Pastor Stephen Grant Fellowship! For the BEST VALUE, consider the Book of the Month Club.  Check it all out at https://www.patreon.com/pastorstephengrantfellowship

 

Also, check out Ray’s podcasts – the Daily Dose of Disney, Free Enterprise in Three Minutes, and the PRESS CLUB C Podcast.

 

Check out Ray Keating’s Disney news and entertainment site at www.DisneyBizJournal.com.

10 Points Book Review: Insights on Teaching and Learning Economics, and Why it Matters, from "The Four Pillars of Economic Understanding"

by Ray Keating

The Keating Files – June 29, 2020

During my time writing, speaking, teaching, and doing policy work over the years, I’ve run into a lot of misguided economics. Indeed, I often find myself wondering if this or that person ever took an economics class. I tend to ask this most when testifying before Congress.

But then I realize that these people probably did take at least one economics course in college. The problem was who taught the course, not to mention the textbook being used. They simply learned bad economics.

For the sake of our nation and others around the world, we economists need to get a heck of a lot better at what we do, including getting focused on what we’re actually supposed to do. Fortunately, some excellent economists do spend their careers working to get the discipline properly focused, and to improve economic education.

That includes Dr. Peter Boettke, who is a professor of economics and philosophy at George Mason University, and the director of the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at the Mercatus Center, among other responsibilities. 

Boettke has a new book out titled The Four Pillars of Economic Understanding (American Institute for Economic Research, 2020). This book serves multiple purposes. It’s a wonderful introduction to economics. It serves as a refresher on economic thinking. It is a much-needed corrective for economics, and economists, gone awry. It also will re-energize many economists and other students of the discipline in terms of why economics matters. It certainly re-energized me on this front. And all of that in a highly readable 172 pages.

Let’s briefly highlight 10 key points Boettke makes, in the hopes that this will ignite interest in the reader to absorb the entire book.

First, Boettke highlights several times the roles that prices, profits, losses and property rights play in the market. In his introductory chapter, for example, he writes, “Prices guide us, profits lure us, and losses discipline us in our decisions, and property rights provide the institutional infrastructure required for all of this to take place.” And later, he adds that “a market is never perfect, nor is it in equilibrium. The price system guides individuals to discover mutual gains from trade, prodding them to find the most valuable uses for scarce resources and thus moving the whole system into more efficient resource allocation.”

Second, Boettke hits the mark on what the purpose, if you will, of economics is, and why it matters. He observes, “[Adam] Smith’s analysis of the wealth of nations is not ultimately measured in trinkets and gluttonous acts of consumption, but by a rising standard of living that is shared by more and more of the general population. It is an empirical matter as to which set of institutions best achieve that task. But the concern with raising the living standards of the least advantaged in society is never far from view in any careful reading of liberal political economy from Adam Smith to Vernon Smith.” Boettke’s use of the term “liberal,” by the way, refers to classical liberalism, not the modern-day, Progressive liberalism.

Third, that’s right, economists, including free market economists, do not teach, to quote Gordon Gekko, that “greed is good.” Indeed, it’s not about selfishness. Adam Smith often is misinterpreted on this point. Boettke offers a short, but important summary of his own thinking: “In my view there have been two great defining characteristics of economics since its birth as a discipline in the eighteenth century: the market economy’s self-regulating capacity (the invisible hand) and self-interest (rational choice).” Note how he identifies “self-interest” – not as selfishness, but as rational choice.

Fourth, Boettke also makes clear that both competition and cooperation work to improve life in the market system. He states that “we require institutions that will enable us to engage in productive specialization, realize mutual gains from exchange, and achieve peaceful social cooperation among distant and disparate people.” Pointing to Paul Rubin’s book The Capitalist Paradox, Boettke further explains, “Rubin’s book is highly recommended because he offers a useful corrective by stressing the importance of social cooperation among distant and disparate people, rather than the ruthless competitive nature of market society. Yes, market competition is unrelenting and valuable. But the by-product isn’t just the delivery of goods and services at least cost, but also the network of social relationships and bonds of cooperation that are formed even among strangers.”

Fifth, Boettke also notes that classical liberal economics understands the need for institutions to “produce a society of free and responsible individuals, who have the opportunity to participate and prosper in a market economy based on profit and loss, and who live in, and are actively engaged in, caring communities,” while also requiring “a set of institutions where bad men could do least harm if they were to assume positions of power.”

Sixth, thankfully The Four Pillars of Understanding does not neglect the central player in the market, in the process of economic growth, i.e., the entrepreneur. The great and glaring failure of economics driven by pristine mathematical models meant to predict where the economy might be headed is that those economists and their models have no way to account for the entrepreneur. That, of course, makes you wonder about the usefulness of such work.

Boettke points out, “Economic progress is ... a consequence of entrepreneurial innovation.” He explains, “Entrepreneurs in the private sector act on price signals to constantly seek out deals by buying low and selling high, and in doing so bring mutual gains from trade. But these entrepreneurs are also constantly on the lookout for cost saving technologies in production and improvements in the delivery mechanism to consumers of their goods and services. And, don’t ever forget, the innovations they introduce and the discovery of new products and new services that better satisfy the demands of consumers. Hope in the form of improved living conditions is born out of individuals being able to bet on ideas and bring those bets to life.”

While Boettke advises “don’t ever forget,” so many in the economics profession have forgotten to the detriment of economic education and policy.

Seventh, so, let’s turn directly to economic education. Boettke does yeoman’s work in laying out what are the essential economic principles – the economic way of thinking – that should be the focus of teaching economics. Yet, that has not been done by many teachers for a variety of reasons, including, as he notes, a transformation of the discipline from teaching economic principles to taking on the task of assisting the government with interventionist policies. 

I’ve long argued that when various economists got bored with economics, they decided to dress up their political preferences in the guise of economics. See John Maynard Keynes and his disciples. Indeed, far too many within the economics discipline were more than happy to sign on, and then teach their students accordingly. Hence, we have the problem persisting today of people learning bad economics in too many classrooms. Boettke counters this impulse, including by pointing out, “Economics is a tool for social understanding, and not a tool for social control.”

Eighth, Boettke makes clear the link between the corruption of economics in the classroom and misguided public policies. He points to the work of MIT economist Paul Samuelson, who was prominent in leading the charge to ignore the common knowledge established by classical political economy. Boettke notes the impact of Samuelson and his long-dominant textbook on thinking about how the market worked, or in Samuelson’s case, didn’t work, in the public arena: “Samuelson knew that if he could wrest control of the tacit presuppositions of public policy functionaries, then their thoughts and actions would be guided by what he taught about market failure, macroeconomic instability, and government as a corrective to our economic woes. It’s an amazing achievement what he did. For at least a generation, perhaps two, he controlled both the introduction to economics market, and the advanced training of PhD students in the economics market.”

Ninth, Boettke makes clear what the mission of the economist should be: “Those of us who ... believe in the common-sense nature of economic reasoning must be willing to engage in the futile crusade for economic literacy in the general population, to continually refine our understanding of basic economics, and to persuade our peers in the discipline that there isn’t anything boring about working with the persistent and consistent application of economic principles to understanding the way the world works in all its given diversity. Simple economics is not simpleminded, and clarity of exposition of the principles of economics is to be valued over quickness of mind and cleverness in presentation.” Well said.

Tenth, Boettke addresses the arrival of incoherent populism in the current economic policy debate. Boettke acknowledges that classical liberalism and populism often wind up criticizing the same ills brought about by Progressivism’s interference in society and the market. But he highlights two big differences. First, the classical liberal “critique of the progressive elite is grounded in sound economics and the grand and honorable tradition of political economy, and is not born in disillusionment and angry frustration,” as is the case with populism. For good measure, there is the great irony of populism. Boettke explains that “the populist criticizes the establishment elite in public policy while advocating an increased role of government and its agencies to counter the social ills of instability, inefficiency and inequality.” Populists don’t like government action, unless it’s on their behalf.

I was fortunate to have two excellent professors during my formal economics education (I’ve learned and continue to learn from so many outside the classroom) – one at the beginning and the other at the end. During my undergraduate days, Dr. John Arnez got me interested in economics by explaining it in sound, common-sense fashion, and making clear how economics is concerned about expanding opportunity and improving living standards for all. Pete Boettke came in at the end of my graduate school education, and he reinforced and expanded my thinking as an economist. Others can benefit from learning sound economics from Dr. Boettke through his various books, including his notable accomplishment with The Four Pillars of Economic Understanding.

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Ray Keating is a columnist, economist, podcaster and entrepreneur. You can order his new book Behind Enemy Lines: Conservative Communiques from Left-Wing New York from Amazon or signed books  at RayKeatingOnline.com. His other recent nonfiction book is Free Trade Rocks! 10 Points on International Trade Everyone Should Know. Keating also is a novelist. His latest novels are  The Traitor: A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel, which is the 12^th  book in the series, and the second edition of Root of All Evil? A Pastor Stephen Grant Novel  with a new Author Introduction. The views expressed here are his own – after all, no one else should be held responsible for this stuff, right?

Also, tune in to Ray Keating’s podcasts – the PRESS CLUB C Podcast and the Free Enterprise in Three Minutes Podcast