Uncovering the Legacy of John Maynard Keynes: Exploring the Impact of Money, Democracy, and the Cost of Peace

Haitham AL-SHAMI: I immensely enjoyed reading it! Recommended for anyone interested in economics, history, or the lives of transformative figures who have shaped our world.

United States on Nov 24, 2023

Steven: I highly recommend this book.
I complement the author, a young fellow, this being his first major book. It is written to hold the reader's interest with personal anecdotes of Keynes and other as well as "big picture" description of the tragedies, wars, hatreds of the 1900s up to Keynes' death.
Then the author goes on to describe the decline of Keynsian economics in the eyes of many--right-wing conservatives, European aristocrats and wealthy American corporatists who viciously attacked Keynes while they supported McCarthyism and fascism.
Keynes was brilliant--he was a philosopher, mathematician (his college studies primary emphasis), a perpetual optimist (perhaps to the point of being naive), a patron of the arts, and, oh yes, an economist.
The author's description of how free market fundamentalism, propagandized by the likes of Milton Friedman, Hayek and Mises, actively worked to destroy Keynes's ideas. Simply consider Milton Friedman who supported the murderous regime of Pinochet in Chile and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Hayek, an Austrian aristocrat (born to wealth) didn't believe in democracy.
Zachary Carter has written an excellent...

United States on Feb 26, 2022

Gazzarian: I had always meant to get round to reading Skidelsky's bio, but was a bit frightened by it. This book is an open, easy portal and the author has a talent that makes me think of Walter Isaacson or Adam Tooze. He melds the personal with the professional with the theory with the context in a totally beguiling way, it was a joy to read. The opening pages are clearly intended to hook you in and they do.

It's a bit expensive so I read the other reviews carefully before buying and saw one that complained about too much reverence for Galbraith in the latter chapters. I don't think that's quite right, but you might say there is not enough Friedman / Chicago for the contra view.

But what's most interesting is how he captures Keynes's own ability to change, refine and develop his thinking, as he learns more and the world presents him with new evidence. That's probably the best thing about this superlative piece of work.

United Kingdom on Jan 05, 2021

DAN OMEARA: This beautifully written book show why John Maynard Keynes was a towering 20th Century intellectual, how his ideas were modified - and largely deformed - by adapting them to the military industrial complex, and why his strategies remain relavent today. It is impossible to read this book's sustained analysis of how the dogmas of global finance lead directly to the Great Depression and to WWII without immediately grasping its relevance for the immensely difficult and dangerous times we are living through.

You don't have to have any training in economics to understand this masterful analysis.

Canada on Nov 22, 2020

Frederico Mazzucchelli: Livro cuidadosamente elaborado, entremeando detalhes biográficos com análises consistentes. As inflexões da reflexão de Keynes - desde seus primeiros escritos até sua participação em Bretton Woods - são minuciosamente analisadas. O livro percorre não apenas Keynes, mas também o Bloomsbury Group, o ambiente de Cambridge, e as contribuições de Joan Robinson, Kahn e Galbraith, entre outros. As discussões dos capítulos finais sobre a trajetória da economia norte-americana no pós-guerra são igualmente estimulantes. Livro indispensável para aqueles que se debruçam sobre a obra de Keynes. Ao lado das valiosas contribuições de Skidelsky, Dostaler e Belluzzo, o livro de Zachary Carter é uma contribuição duradoura ao resgate e esclarecimento do pensamento desse grande pensador do século XX.

Brazil on Oct 14, 2020

LUIS FUEYO : Una lectura pertinente en el contexto de los impactos económicos provocados por la pandemia COVID 19.

Mexico on Sep 26, 2020

AM: This is one of those rarity that would get a 6 stars rating, if possible.
I am not a professional in this subject (neither history nor economics) but I have read several books on the history of economics, economic crashes, exuberances and depressions, economic theories, globalizations and all flavors of liberalisms, but this book will tower as #1 in my section of such books in my library for a long time to come.

First, it is exceptionally clear with a language that even non-specialist (like me) understand from cover to cover.

Second, the biography of the central figure in the book is simply magistral and deeply humane: rarely people are dissected, explained, analyzed, criticized and loved as done for JMK by the author in this book.

Third, the author uses a style that reminds me of another older and beautiful book, A Distant Mirror by B. Tuchman, where the main figure is perfectly inserted in the dramas of his period to create a unique narrative of a human being inserted and explained in his historical milieu, not in an immaterial cloud of philosophical principles and abstract theories or, even worse, boring historical...

France on Aug 26, 2020

Delta D.: Keynes dies on page 367 of the book. Up to that point, the book is a splendid example of the art of biography. Those aspects of his life which make him worthy of a biography - his intellectual development and the exposition of his ideas - are conveyed very clearly, although the hero-worship is a little too obvious.

His colourful personal life is given an appropriate amount of attention: sufficient for the reader to understand the personality of the man, but not so excessive as to overwhelm the reason for the subject's historical importance.

Alas, the book continues for almost 200 pages past that. In theory, the book considers JMK's legacy and the impact of his intellectual contributions post-mortem.

In practice, the book is anything but that. In practice, Keynesian economics became like Christianity. There is an almost infinite variety of flavours. Those who claim to be Keynesians simply cherry-pick those facets with which they agree and those who claim to be anti-Keynesians simply cherry-pick those facets with which they disagree.

In effect, these final almsot 200 pages are simply the author's very personal opinions, in particular of...

United States on Jun 20, 2020

Thomas W. Moloney: As it should be, today’s news is filled with speculations about how we’ll emerge from the economic shocks resulting from the coronavirus. What should be done to recover safely, sooner and equitably? The stakes are huge of course, and the proposed remedies quite divergent. For example, do the green shoots of early recovery mean fiscal and monetary policies have worked and can now be eased off? Or are delayed demand disruptions sure to lead to prolonged years of slow growth and high unemployment unless considerably more fiscal stimulus is forthcoming?

There’s rarely been a better time for an enjoyable way to vastly improve your macroeconomic literacy. You may be among generations of American college students who last saw the whole picture through the numbing pages of one of the nineteen consecutive editions of Samuelson’s textbook on macroeconomics 101. You probably came away intellectually sidelined: concluding either that eventually everything reaches equilibrium on its own or that answers are too elusive, better left to the powerful computers of math quants.

What Samuelson didn’t tell us is that macroeconomics is inherently...

United States on Jun 09, 2020