The Price of Peace
Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes
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4.3 • 3 Ratings
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “outstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and wit” (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas
“A timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.”—The Wall Street Journal
WINNER: The Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism
FINALIST: The National Book Critics Circle Award • The Sabew Best in Business Book Award
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • The Economist • Bloomberg • Mother Jones
At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes hastily folded his long legs into the sidecar of his brother-in-law’s motorcycle for an odd, frantic journey that would change the course of history. Swept away from his placid home at Cambridge University by the currents of the conflict, Keynes found himself thrust into the halls of European treasuries to arrange emergency loans and packed off to America to negotiate the terms of economic combat. The terror and anxiety unleashed by the war would transform him from a comfortable obscurity into the most influential and controversial intellectual of his day—a man whose ideas still retain the power to shock in our own time.
Keynes was not only an economist but the preeminent anti-authoritarian thinker of the twentieth century, one who devoted his life to the belief that art and ideas could conquer war and deprivation. As a moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes led an extraordinary life that took him from intimate turn-of-the-century parties in London’s riotous Bloomsbury art scene to the fevered negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, from stock market crashes on two continents to diplomatic breakthroughs in the mountains of New Hampshire to wartime ballet openings at London’s extravagant Covent Garden.
Along the way, Keynes reinvented Enlightenment liberalism to meet the harrowing crises of the twentieth century. In the United States, his ideas became the foundation of a burgeoning economics profession, but they also became a flash point in the broader political struggle of the Cold War, as Keynesian acolytes faced off against conservatives in an intellectual battle for the future of the country—and the world. Though many Keynesian ideas survived the struggle, much of the project to which he devoted his life was lost.
In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of history’s most fascinating minds. The Price of Peace revives a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for today’s debates over inequality and the power politics that shape the global order.
LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Carter debuts with a compassionate and richly detailed exploration of the life and legacy of economic theorist John Maynard Keynes (1883 1946). Seeking to assemble Keynes's disparate views on politics, money, art, war, and culture into the "singular, definitive philosophical statement" he never produced in his lifetime, Carter delves into The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936) and other writings to explain Keynes's theories on public welfare, deficit spending, and financial markets. He also documents Keynes's public support of "deficit-financed expansion" during the New Deal, and credits Keynes with securing government funding for the restoration of the Royal Opera House at Covent Gardens after WWII. On a more personal note, Carter describes Keynes's involvement with the Bloomsbury group, and the shock of confidants Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey at his "wild, impossible love" with Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova (Keynes's previous romantic relationships had been with men). Tracing the impact of Keynesian economics on modern U.S. politics, Carter sketches the policies of every president from Kennedy through Obama, and explores how Keynes's "spirit of radical optimism" animates contemporary efforts to arrest the "global slide into authoritarianism." Carter makes complex economic concepts accessible, and eloquently untangles Keynes's many personal and professional contradictions. This is an essential portrait of the economist and the man.
Customer Reviews
We’re all Keynesians now
3.5 stars
Author
American. Senior reporter at HuffPost covering economic policy and American politics. Lives in, you guessed it, Brooklyn. Frequent guest on cable news. Writing appears in in The New Republic, The Nation, and The American Prospect, yada, yada (none of them conservative as @realDonaldTrump would be sure to tweet about should he break the habit of a lifetime by reading a book.)
Summary
John Maynard Keynes, Maynard to his homies, was undoubtedly a genius (The guy named Maynard I went to school with, who bore some resemblance to a llama, was definitely not a genius). Most people have heard of him associated with economics, but there's more to it. He wasn't an economist by training, rather a Cambridge mathematician called in to help sort our British finances for Lloyd George during WW1, which he did with great aplomb and a fair bit of lateral thinking by the standards of the day. Like his Cambridge mentor Bertrand Russell, Maynard was a philosopher as much as anything else, and had thoughts worth hearing on just about every subject. He stayed on after the war for the peace treaty, of which he is widely credited as having been a scathing critic, predicting it would lead to Hitler, Mussolini, and WW2, which he didn't exactly, but it makes a good story. Before all this, he was a member of the Bloomsbury group, intellectuals who used to get together for hijinks, pontification, and self aggrandisement at Maynard's place, Virginia Woolf's place and elsewhere. Our boy was predominantly a left footer during this period, then changed his game after falling in love with, and marrying, a Russian ballerina ten years his junior, to whom he remained married the rest of his days and who served as his muse. He wrote quite a few page turners (I'm joking) about highly arcane subjects culminating in The General Theory of Life, The Universe, and Everything, I mean Employment, Interest, and Money, in 1936. At Bretton Woods in 1944, he was an advocate for abandoning the gold standard and other riveting stuff that might have transformed all our lives in ways few of us really understand if the US Treasury Secretary had been more kindly disposed.
Writing
Tight prose as expected from a skilled journalist. Mr Carter is obviously a fan-boi of Keynes and his personal biases becoming increasingly apparent as the book goes on, which is okay if you recognise them. Many might not. The first two-thirds of the book, which are essentially biographical, add little to the extensive material already published about Keynes, but lay it out nicely, humanising JMK and how he did his thang. In the latter third, the author goes on a haphazard tear through America from the Cold War to Obama, much of which has little to do with Keynes because (a) he died in 1946, (b) he did little of his work in America, and (c) the American political classes have long been more enamoured of the monetarists (economo-speak for really dull) anyway. I presumed the point he was trying to make was that we'd have been better off if we were all Keynesians all the time, rather than just when the economy crashes, or maybe not.
Bottom line
4.5 stars for the first 350 pages. The rest, not so much.
Note
Zachary D Carter is in no way related to Sean (Jay-Z) Carter.