Keynes

Keynes

The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist

By Peter Clarke

A timely and concise accounting of John Maynard Keynes's life and work by a renowned historian and Keynes scholar.

The ideas of John Maynard Keynes inspired the New Deal and helped rebuild world economies after World War II -and were later dismissed as "depression economics." Then came the great meltdown of 2008. Market forces that the world relied on suddenly failed to self-correct-and Keynes's doctrine of corrective action in an imperfect world became more relevant than ever.

Keynes was not a traditional economist: He was a polemicist, iconoclastic public intellectual, peer of the realm, and political operative, as well as an openly homosexual Bohemian who befriended Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster. In Keynes, noted historian Peter Clarke provides a timely and masterful accounting of Keynes's life and work, bringing his genius and skepticism alive for an era fraught with economic difficulties that he surely would have relished solving.

Reviews for Keynes:

“Robert Skidelsky, Keynes definitive biographer, and Peter Clarke, an eminent historian who has published extensively on Keynes, have both written deft books of little more than 200 pages of text…Clarke does a more comprehensive job on the arc of Keynes’ life, career, arguments, and relevance…” —Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

“Useful and important introduction to what a modern Keynesianism might look like…Clarke lays out the development of Keynes’s economics from the mid-1920s to his “General Theory,” and it’s a gripping journey.” —Justin Fox, New York Times Book Review.

"The British historian Peter Clarke has written the liveliest of the three, called "Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist". The historian's prose sparkles, and his book is the place to begin if you want to understand the economist's personality and charisma." —Devin Leonard, Business Section, the New York Times.

“Clarke’s is also a book in two halves, but it sails upon smoother (and somewhat safer) narrative seas. The first half is a very readable biographical essay on this extraordinarily rich and full life…”—Boston Review

“Cambridge historian Peter Clarke paints a careful portrait of the prophet whose voice was once heard only in the wilderness of social democracy…there are lessons aplenty to be drawn from Clarke’s recitation of the facts of Keynes’s life and thought—not least the lunacy of cutting government spending in tough times. A useful, timely primer.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Peter Clarke has also published widely on the subject…Inevitably the books overlap a great deal…I have to admit that Clarke is a smoother read.”—Financial Times. Read full review.

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The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist