Hirsh's first book,
At War with Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World, was described by
Bill Keller in
The New York Times as "well-informed, historically literate, nonideological common sense. That may sound like faint praise, but in an America that sometimes seems poised between reckless adventure and helpless inertia, centrist common sense is something to be treasured." In his second book, ''Capital Offense: How Washington's Wise Men Handed America's Future over to Wall Street'', Hirsh argues that in the 2008 financial crisis, "otherwise intelligent and capable men like Greenspan, Rubin and Summers and later
Hank Paulson and
Tim Geithner permitted themselves to believe, in the face of a rising tide of contrary evidence, that markets are for the most part efficient and work well on their own." Michiko Kakutani of
The New York Times called the book "provocative" and noted that while much of its content had previously been covered in books by other authors (namely
Nouriel Roubini and
Stephen Mihm together,
David Wessel,
Daniel Gross and
Joseph E. Stiglitz), Hirsh still "does a highly informed, if decidedly opinionated, job of situating these developments within a historical context, and the book makes for useful and succinct reading". ==References==