Includes bibliographical references (pages 334-362) and index.

Love stories. Yellen's youth : "I'm going to tell your mother," 1946-1967 ; Akerlof's youth : exotic furry creatures, 1940-1967 -- Yellen at Yale and Harvard : rowing upstream, 1968-1976 ; Akerlof's early voyages : lemons and the Hills of Olympus, 1968-1976 - Yellen and Akerlof meet : in the grips of a long inflation and a fast romance, 1977-1978 -- Battlegrounds. Redefining Keynes : inside the ideological battles that shaped Yellen's generation, 1940s-1980s ; Yellen and Akerlof at Berkeley : labor of love, 1978-1990 -- Behavioral economists : remarkable errors in the history of economic thought, 1980s and 1990s ; Yellen, Akerlof, and socialism's failure : the Richtungskoeffizent, 1989-1994 ; Yellen becomes a central banker : confronting a maestro, 1994-1997 ; Yellen in the Clinton White House : boom times and boys' clubs, 1997-1999 ; Trade in the twilight of a golden age : China, Mexico, and Ricardo's theory of advantage, 1993-2001 -- Crisis. Akerlof wins a Nobel, Yellen returns to the Fed : lessons from a financial bubble and jobless recovery, 2000-2004 ; Yellen as a regulator : an introduction to Frankenstein finance, 2004-2006 ; Yellen and Akerlof see storms from the lighthouse : nursing the economy and Robby's damaged back, 2007 ; Financial panic : Bernanke's loyal field commander, 2008 ; "These are fucking people!" : at the center of a new way of central banking, 2009-2010 ; Yellen as #2 : palace intrigue, 2010-2014 ; Yellen becomes leader : a summer of summers, 2014-2014 -- Leader. Identity crisis : Akerlof's new theory of reds versus greens, 2014 ; Yellen leads the Fed : flying a plane with no gauges, 2014-2015 ; Yellen loses her job : too short, 2016-2018 ; Professor Robert Akerlof : explaining a red and blue America, 2018-2020 ; Yellen makes history : cleaning up another mess, 2020 ; Yellen leads the Treasury : trillions, 2021 ; Janet at war : causing bank runs in the streets of St. Petersburg, 2021-2022 -- Conclusion: bonds

Chronicling the past fifty years of American economic and social upheaval, an award-winning economics writer examines what happened, viewing events through the experiences of two historic figures: Janet Yellen, Treasury Secretary, Federal Reserve Chairwoman, and Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and her husband, George Akerlof, an imaginative Nobel prize-winning economist.