The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes by Zachary D. Carter (2020)

 The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money [written by Keynes and published in 1936] is a liberating book because it reframed the central problem at the heart of economics as the alleviation of inequality, pivoting away from the demands of production and the incentives facing the rich and powerful that had occupied economists for centuries.

--Zachary D. Carter, The Price of Peace (Random House, 2020)

The Price of Peace beautifully combines the life of Keynes and his thoughts and analyses of economic policies, through the two world wars of the twentieth century.  Unlike many economists Keynes constantly thought about the effects of his economic ideas on the real world, regardless of the beauty of their mathematical calculations.  Carter's elegantly written book follows the formation and influence (or, often, the lack of it) of these ideas on policy makers.  Keynes was married to Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova and close friends with members of the Bloombury Group; he believed strongly that economic and monetary policy could make life better for everyone.

Carter details how Keynes's attempts to solve post-WWI economic problems -- such as giving money to Germany that they could use for reparations -- were stymied by Woodrow Wilson and how FDR used Keynes's ideas to lessen the impact of the Depression.  The last third of the book details how America viewed Keynesian ideas as "socialist" during the cold war and how most recent Presidents misused Keynes's ideas to spend mony on wars (Vietnam, Iraq, etc) rather than to promote welfare and equality;  Carter also explains how credit default swaps led to a diastrous recession.

At the moment we seem to have a President who understands Keynes and is willing to spend the money necessary to improve not only our infrastructure but our lives and our equality, but we shall see how successful he is.  Meanwhile, I highly recommend Carter's book for understanding the important role of Keynes in the economies of both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

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