To explain her olive complexion, “da Costa” was added to Greene’s altered surname to represent an invented Portuguese grandmother. “The Personal Librarian” by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, Berkley, 352 pp. Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act in 1883 – a ruling that ushered in Jim Crow segregation and gave white supremacy and racial discrimination legal cover, the ramifications of which are felt to this day – few opportunities were open to anyone classified as nonwhite. ![]() ![]() “The Personal Librarian” reminds readers that this decision was not made lightly. But what makes it even more extraordinary – and such rich material for historical fiction – is the secret she harbored throughout her long career: She hailed from a prominent, light-skinned Black family, many of whose members had chosen to pass as white. It quickly becomes clear why two popular authors, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, have teamed up to tell this important, inspirational story.īelle da Costa Greene’s success in the almost exclusively male world of art and rare book dealers was an unusual feat for a woman in the early 20th century. This is emphatically not the case with “The Personal Librarian,” a novel about the woman who helped shape the Morgan Library’s spectacular collection of rare books and art more than a century ago. Some books leave you wondering why the author has chosen to tell this particular story, and why now. Lucas is a reminder that someone can make a difference just by posing questions that matter. “Is there some action a government of India could take that would lead the Indian economy to grow like Indonesia’s or Egypt’s? If so, what, exactly? If not, what is it about the ‘nature of India’ that makes it so? The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: Once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else.”What became known as the “Lucas critique” of economic models has come in for its own critiques over time. But he was fascinated by the question of why some nations raise living standards for their people faster than others.“I do not see how one can look at figures like these without seeing them as representing possibilities,” he wrote in a 1988 paper. ![]() As a businessperson, you won’t go out and hire more workers.He isn’t remembered as unlocking a formula for economic growth. If you think a policy will cause inflation but not much growth, for instance, you’ll behave accordingly. Yet by raising a big question, and then more of them, he prompted others throughout the economics field to think in fresh ways. In a 1972 paper, he asked, in effect, whether a policy like expanding the money supply made sense if one doesn’t take into account the way people rationally adjust their expectations (and actions) as a result. Even the phrase he’s most associated with – “rational expectations” – wasn’t original to him. ![]() And by many accounts, his prescriptions were often wrong as well as right. This thought dates back at least to Socrates, and it’s been reflected in many a great teacher or thinker since.This week Robert Lucas, a University of Chicago economist who died Monday, is being remembered by his peers as perhaps the most important economist of his generation – one who in some ways reframed the entire field of “macro,” researching the economy as a whole. Yet this Nobel laureate is nowhere near as famous as, say, his Chicago colleague Milton Friedman. Sometimes asking questions is as important – maybe even more important – than finding answers.
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