John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) is perhaps the foremost economic thinker of the twentieth century. On economic theory, he ranks with Adam Smith and Karl Marx; and his impact on how economics was practiced, from the Great Depression to the 1970s, was unmatched. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money was first published in 1936. But its ideas had been forming for decades ? as a student at Cambridge, Keynes had written to a friend of his love for 'Free Trade and free thought'. Keynes's limpid style, concise prose, and vivid descriptions have helped to keep his ideas alive - as have the novelty and clarity, at times even the ambiguity, of his macroeconomic vision. He was troubled, above all, by high unemployment rates and large disparities in wealth and income. Only by curbing both, he thought, could individualism, 'the most powerful instrument to better the future', be safeguarded. The twenty-first century may yet prove him right. In The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), Keynes elegantly and acutely exposes the folly of imposing austerity on a defeated and struggling nation.

John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world. A popular lecturer of economics at Cambridge University and editor of the Economic Journal, Keynes made The Economic Consequences of the Peace a major step in his career. It was translated into a dozen languages and sold 100,000 copies in six months. Taken seriously even by those who were opposed to his claims, the book helped lift economics to a new, higher level of recognition and acceptance. This volume, with its insightful portraits of Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson, remains one of the great works of political economy of our time. In a penetrating introduction written for this new edition, David Felix explores Keynes' reasons for writing the book, analyzes the author's arguments, and paints an historical backdrop of the period during which it was written.

John Maynard Keynes, then a rising young economist, participated in the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as chief representative of the British Treasury and advisor to Prime Minister David Lloyd George. He resigned after desperately trying and failing to reduce the huge demands for reparations being made on Germany. The Economic Consequences of the Peace is Keynes' brilliant and prophetic analysis of the effects that the peace treaty would have both on Germany and, even more fatefully, the world. A popular lecturer of economics at Cambridge University and editor of the Economic Journal, Keynes made The Economic Consequences of the Peace a major step in his career. It was translated into a dozen languages and sold 100,000 copies in six months. Taken seriously even by those who were opposed to his claims, the book helped lift economics to a new, higher level of recognition and acceptance. This volume, with its insightful portraits of Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, and Woodrow Wilson, remains one of the great works of political economy of our time. In a penetrating introduction written for this new edition, David Felix explores Keynes' reasons for writing the book, analyzes the author's arguments, and paints an historical backdrop of the period during which it was written. "The most important economic document relating to World War I and its aftermath."--John Kenneth Galbraith "This is a very great booka. Mr. Keynes writes with a fullness of knowledge, an incisiveness of judgment, and a penetration into the ultimate causes of economic eventsa. The style is like finely hammered steel. It is full of unforgettable phrases and of vivid portraits etched in the biting acid of a passionate moral indignation."--H. J. Laski, The Nation John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was one of the greatest economic theorists of the twentieth century. He was chairman of the liberal journal of opinion The Nation and economics advisor for more than thirty years to British governments. He wrote several books, including his masterpiece, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, the two-volume Treatise on Money, and A Tract on Monetary Reform. David Felix is professor of history emeritus at the City University of New York. His books include Biography of an Idea: John Maynard Keynes and The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money and Keynes: A Critical Life.

Most of the essays in this book were first collected together in October 1931, immediately after Britain had left the gold standard. They reflected Keynes's attempts over the previous dozen years to influence public opinion and policy over the Treaty of Versailles, over which he had resigned from the Treasury in June 1919, reparations and inter-allied war debts, stabilisation policy, the gold standard and the shape of liberal politics in Britain. In 1972 the essays were reprinted but with the full texts of the pamphlets he had included -- Can Lloyd George Do it?, The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill, A Short View of Russia, and The End of Laissez Faire. At that time, the full texts of his of his two post-1931 pamphlets -- The Means to Prosperity and How to Pay for the War -- were added. As a result the book contains examples of Keynes's finest writing on economic policy and politics.

This book was originally published by Macmillan in 1936. It was voted the top Academic Book that Shaped Modern Britain by Academic Book Week (UK) in 2017, and in 2011 was placed on Time Magazine's top 100 non-fiction books written in English since 1923. Reissued with a fresh Introduction by the Nobel-prize winner Paul Krugman and a new Afterword by Keynes' biographer Robert Skidelsky, this important work is made available to a new generation. The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money transformed economics and changed the face of modern macroeconomics. Keynes' argument is based on the idea that the level of employment is not determined by the price of labour, but by the spending of money. It gave way to an entirely new approach where employment, inflation and the market economy are concerned. Highly provocative at its time of publication, this book and Keynes' theories continue to remain the subject of much support and praise, criticism and debate. Economists at any stage in their career will enjoy revisiting this treatise and observing the relevance of Keynes' work in today's contemporary climate.

Most of the essays in this book were first collected and published in 1933, when Keynes had reached a turning point in what had by then become a highly successful career as an academic economist, as an official economic advisor, opponent of the reparations imposed on Germany, and critic of the orthodox economic policies of British governments. Before devoting himself fully to the final stages of his journey towards the General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Keynes put together these examples of one of his favourite literary genres, the psychological portrait and biographical sketch. With the additions made in 1951 and 1972, the book now contains almost all of Keynes's biographical writings: his savage portraits of the architects of the treaty of Versailles and sketches of other politicians, including Asquith, Balfour, Bonar Law, and Churchill; some classic accounts of the lives of economists, including Malthus, Jevons, Marshall, Edgeworth, and Foxwell; a pair of autobiographical memoirs; a short study of Newton; and many acute and affectionate character sketches of friends. Keynes shows himself here as a literary artist whose work does not suffer by comparison with that of his two friends within the Bloomsbury Group, Virgina Woolf and Lytton Strachey.

2011 Reprint of 1920 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. According to Paul Volcker, The Economic Consequences of Peace marked the entrance into the world scene of the twentieth century's most influential economist. It should be in the library of every serious student of world affairs. Keynes attended the Versailles Conference as a delegate of the British Treasury and argued for a much more generous peace. The book was a best seller throughout the world and was critical in establishing a general opinion that the Versailles Treaty was a vindictive and counter-productive peace settlement. The book also helped to consolidate American public opinion against the treaty and against involvement in the League of Nations. The perception by much of the British public that Germany had been treated unfairly in turn was a crucial factor in public support for appeasement. The success of the book established Keynes' reputation as a leading economist especially on the left. When Keynes was a key player in establishing the Bretton Woods system in 1944, he remembered the lessons from Versailles as well as the Great Depression. The Marshall Plan after Second World War is a similar system to that proposed by Keynes in The Economic Consequences of the Peace.

There is, first of all, the distinction between that part of our belief which is rational and that part which is not. If a man believes something for a reason which is preposterous or for no reason at all, and what he believes turns out to be true for some reason not known to him, he cannot be said to believe it rationally, although he believes it and it is in fact true. On the other hand, a man may rationally believe a proposition to be probable, when it is in fact false. -from Chapter II: Probability in Relation to the Theory of Knowledge" His fame as an economist aside, John Maynard Keynes may be best remembered for saying, "In the long run, we are all dead." That phrase may well be the most succinct expression of the theory of probability every uttered. For a longer explanation of the premise that underlies much of modern mathematics and science, Keynes's A Treatise on Probability is essential reading. First published in 1920, this is the foundational work of probability theory, which helped establish the author's enormous influence on modern economic and even political theories. Exploring aspects of randomness and chance, inductive reasoning and logical statistics, this is a work that belongs in the library of any interested in numbers and their application in the real world. AUTHOR BIO: British economist JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES (1883-1946) also wrote The Economic Consequences of the Peace (1919), The End of Laissez-Faire (1926), The Means to Prosperity (1933), and General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936).

Distinguished British economist John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) set off a series of movements that dramatically altered the ways in which economists view the world. In his most important work, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), Keynes critiqued the laissez faire policies of the day, particularly the proposition that a normally functioning market economy will bring full employment. Keynes' forward-looking work transformed economics from merely a descriptive and analytic discipline to one that is policy-oriented. For Keynes, enlightened government intervention in a nation's economic life was essential to curbing what he saw as the inherent inequalities and instabilities of unregulated capitalism.

Edited with an introduction by ROBERT SKIDELSKY 'Many of the greatest economic evils of our time are the fruits of risk, uncertainty, and ignorance' John Maynard Keynes was the most influential economist, and one of the most influential thinkers, of the twentieth century. He overturned the orthodoxy that markets were optimally self-regulating, and instead argued for state intervention to ensure full employment and economic stability. This new selection is the first comprehensive single-volume edition of Keynes's writings on economics, philosophy, social theory and policy, including several pieces never before published. Full of irony and wit, they offer a dazzling introduction to a figure whose ideas still have urgent relevance today.