Essays in Persuasion [Paperback]

John Maynard Keynes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 17, 1963

The essays in this volume show Keynes's attempts to influence the course of events by public persuasion over the period of 1919-40.

In the light of subsequent history, Essays in Persuasion is a remarkably prophetic volume covering a wide range of issues in political economy. In articles on the Versailles Treaty. John Maynard Keynes foresaw all too clearly that excessive Allied demands for reparations and indemnities would lead to the economic collapse of Germany. In Keynes's essays on inflation and deflation, the reader can find ideas that were to become the foundations of his most renowned treatise, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936). With startling accuracy Keynes forecast the economic fluctuations that were to beset the economies of Europe and the United States and even proposed measures which, if heeded at the time, might have warded off an era of world-wide depression. His views on Soviet Russia, on the decline of laissez-faire, and the possibilities of economic growth are as relevant today as when Keynes originally set them forth.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

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, Essays in Persuasion, Interest and Money, the two-volume Treatise on Money, and A Tract on Monetary Reform.

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st Pub Norton Library 1963 edition (January 17, 1963)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393001903
• ISBN-13: 978-0393001907
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nectar and Ambrosia for the Liberal Economist, December 13, 2003

By 

Andrei Scudder (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Essays in Persuasion (Paperback)

To the interested layperson John Mayanrd Keynes is known as a villain/genius responsible for the theory of governmental deficit spending in a time of economic crises. This book in a concise and understandable manner, without recourse to ponderous mathematical formulas, makes a very convincing case for the necessity of governmental intervention.
When people are unwilling to spend and are hoarding cash, it is up to government to inject money into the system by means of expansionary monetary policy, either it is public works in the most dramatic case or reduced interest rates, intended to stimulate investment in a more commonplace scenario.
Fiscal prudence or austerity will not lift the economy out of the slump, for a very simple reason; if everyone is saving and no one is buying, then no one is able to sell and economy is pushed further into a recession.
Villilfied by countless conservatives as an endorsement of governmental intervention and subsequent domination of the people, the ideas proposed in the book are accepted by such respected institutions as the Federal Reserve and merit attention of a person, who would like to claim general economic awareness.
Apart from the the discussion on public spending, there are highly informative essays on German hyperinflation of the 1920s, ruminations on Gold standard and much more; all presented with great clarity and humor, that few if any economists have mangaged to imitate.

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite mandarin prose and clear argument, May 30, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Essays in Persuasion (Paperback)

John Maynard Keynes at his most beguiling. A series of essays that have not lost their power despite the passage of 70 years or so. As a prose stylist Maynard Keynes could equal his friends Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster, and he does so in this volume. Perhaps the apogee of essay writing of the Oxford/Cambridge type, this volume has a charm that is absent from his longer works (General Theory, Tract on Monetary Reform, even the Economic Consequences of the Peace). For those people interested in hard edged macro theory, read elsewhere. For admirers of logic and clarity and the British tradition of enlightened common sense, Eureka! You have found it in this book.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Content; Dismal Edition, August 13, 2009

By 

Andrew H. Pincus - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Essays In Persuasion (Paperback)

The publishers of this edition should be ashamed of themselves. The quality of this edition of Keynes' Essays In Persuasion is poor to say the least.
There are numerous typos.
The text is not justified properly; some words hang off lines, and there are irregular and gigantic spaces between words.
The table of contents is missing numbers.
There is no introduction to the author or the material.
The page numbers are inversed.
This is a low-quality, junior-high school effort edition, unworthy of the material it professes to have "beautifully produced." This edition is poorly edited.

Reading Essays In Persuasion is certainly worthy of your time, but this edition is not worthy of your money.