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The Price of Peace
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes | Zachary D. Carter
4 posts | 6 read | 6 to read
An important, resonant, and memorable portrait (Jon Meacham) of world-changing economist John Maynard Keynes and the transformative ideas that outlived him A brilliantly wrought, beautifully written life of one of the most captivating intellects of the twentieth century.Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance 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-laws 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 daya 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 Londons 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 Londons 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 countryand 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 historys most fascinating minds. The Price of Peace revives a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for todays debates over inequality and the power politics that shape the global order.
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fredthemoose
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⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Whew—there was a lot there! Starts as a biography of John Maynard Keynes and the development of his work and theories and their application in his lifetime, and then moves into his legacy and and impact of his work, and the evolution of different macroeconomic and political schools@of thought through the second half of the 20th century through the 2008 financial crisis. Really interesting, but dense! I‘m sure I missed a lot.

holly.langhorst This is giving me flashbacks to my macroeconomics class. 😅 2y
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Jessicareadingwala
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Excellent history of monetary policies and theories. Added benefit of involving the Bloomsbury group, and so glad I learned about Joan Robinson. Carter pulled me back from a hopeless despondency that sets in as Keynesian economics are inevitably attached, perverted and then wielded as tools for the rich by the neocons, but the final few pages are downright rousing. Fascinating life, great read (and biographies are not my favorite genre).

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LTOC
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So brilliant and incredibly insightful. A must read

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Howard_L
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An entertaining and educational presentation of John Maynard Keynes and his economic school of thought that is profoundly relevant in today's troubled and pessimistic times.

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