The Price of Peace

Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes

De: Zachary D. Carter

Narrado por: Robert Petkoff

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • An “outstanding new intellectual biography of John Maynard Keynes [that moves] swiftly along currents of lucidity and wit” (The New York Times), illuminating the world of the influential economist and his transformative ideas

“A timely, lucid and compelling portrait of a man whose enduring relevance is always heightened when crisis strikes.”—The Wall Street Journal

WINNER: The Arthur Ross Book Award Gold Medal • The Hillman Prize for Book Journalism
FINALIST: The National Book Critics Circle Award • The Sabew Best in Business Book Award
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PUBLISHERS WEEKLY AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times • The Economist • Bloomberg • Mother Jones


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-law’s 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 day—a 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 London’s 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 London’s 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 country—and 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 history’s most fascinating minds. The Price of Peace revives a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for today’s debates over inequality and the power politics that shape the global order.

LONGLISTED FOR THE CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE

Great history wrapped around biography

Carter does a masterful job of bringing the larger than life character of John Maynard Keyes to the page. This is cultural, intellectual and economic history at its best. Cast aside any view of economics as the dismal science and meet a Renaissance man of the 20th century.

Highly Relevant For A Season of Political and Economic Catastrophe

As a retired history teacher and a lifelong student of economic history, I thought I already knew a fair amount about John Maynard Keynes, but this superb biography greatly deepened my understanding of him as a person, a philosopher and, of course an economic thinker. With a wonderful performance by Robert Petkoff, this book for me was the audio version of a “page-turner.” As I write this in late July of 2020, Congress appears deadlocked over the roll that government spending can and should play to avert an economic collapse and it feels like we are in the midst of a tectonic historical shift. This history from 1914 through 1946 couldn’t be more relevant. The last section of the book explores what happened with Keynesianism, mostly in the US, after he died which moves it past being a biography into Intellectual/political history.

Thorough and always interesting

There’s a lot here to digest and let soak in. But I am glad I stuck with this book. I feel I now know who Keynes was and why his life’s work is as important today as it ever was. I love the last words of the book, which I think was a direct quote from Keynes, something to the effect that yes, “in the end we are all dead. But looking ahead to the future, anything is still possible.” This gave me hope in the face of today’s threats to democracy and the fate of life on this planet.

Must hear

So good I listen to it twice. This is why subscription to Audible is worthwhile.

Phenomenal

One of the better boos that inhale listened to. Genuinely entertaining while also presenting Keynes’s life in an informative manner.