The book that I’m currently devouring is The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes, an economist who writes articles for media outlets like Bloomberg. I was a little worried this would turn out to be a great big yawner, even while it has a relevance to contemporary times so intimate that I shouldn’t even say how carnally intimate it could have been. And it probably would be a yawner to people who somehow, don’t ask me how, aren’t the least bit interested in as historic an event as the Great Depression. I know I wasn’t as recently as five years ago, but I sure am now. I used to sit through lectures in history class and wonder why we were bothering with learning about this, because people could not possibly be stupid enough to let it happen again. And now that it’s happening again and I read about the very smart people who not only watched helplessly as it unfolded the last time, but actually made it worse with their tinkering, I nod and think to myself, Yeah, okay, I can see how they could’ve done that, and yeah, I can see how they could be that dumb again. As Shlaes spins the tale, each new wave of economic depression unfolds with such inevitable horror that, even in her very bare-bones style of prose, I’m compelled to turn page after page. Reading The Forgotten Man is like watching a train wreck unfold in real time before your eyes.