Keynes (Life&Times series) [Paperback]

Robert Cord (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 2007 | ISBN-10: 1905791003 | ISBN-13: 978-1905791002

Keynesianism was arguably the great economic theory of the 20th Century. As various economic schools were propounding the virtues of socialism and fascism during the tumultuous post war years of the 1920's, Keynesianism emerged as a particular style of capitalism, arguing that the economy was determined by aggregate demand. So successful was Keynes's theory that, by the mid 1940's, it was widespread across almost all of Europe s social democracies and, by the 1960's, the United States, too. Keynes personal life was no less remarkable. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, where Leonard Woolf and Lytton Strachey helped elect him to the Cambridge Apostles; he amassed a large fortune, almost all of which he lost during the crash of 1929, but from which he quickly recovered; he was instrumental in the founding of the Arts Council of Great Britain, and was subsequently its chairman; he married a Russian ballerina. Though Keynes was a never a radical, he challenged the predominant orthodoxies and assumptions of pre-war economics. Spurred by what he'd witnessed at Versailles, he wrote The Economic Consequences of Peace, a book that showcased both his ability to understand economic reality and his acute political acumen. Keynes never saw his life's work fully come to fruition - he died in 1946, aged 63 but his theories long survived him. From a combination of Keynesianism and classical economics emerged the 'neoclassical synthesis', which came to dominate mainstream macroeconomic thought. His vast influence can be gauged by how, when new economic models were later proposed by Friedman, Hayek and others, their theories were, first and foremost, based on a criticism of Keynesianism.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Robert Cord ... provides a thoroughly readable account, written in a lively style and, perhaps uniquely among accounts of Keynes, using colour, numerous photographs, a chronological table and numerous inserts to explain people and ideas without disrupting the main narrative ...Specialists will question some of the judgments made but that is, perhaps, to miss the point, which is to stimulate interest in a remarkable figure about whose life many people would otherwise remain ignorant.' Times Higher Education Supplement

About the Author

Robert Cord is a specialist in Keynes, with an additional interest in the lives and work of the Bloomsbury Group. He is currently based at Cambridge University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Haus Publishers Ltd. (December 19, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1905791003
• ISBN-13: 978-1905791002
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,372,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars IN THE LONG RUN WE'RE ALL DEAD, August 14, 2010

By 

DAVID BRYSON (Glossop Derbyshire England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keynes (Life&Times series) (Paperback)

That must be, surely, Keynes's most famous statement, and it's rightly famous. Before we get anywhere near the economic arguments in any technical sense, this simple insight tells economists what their job is. Their job is not, (labouring the point), to inform us how the various economic trends and processes will achieve equilibrium if we just give them long enough to work themselves out. The days of a man's life are threescore years and ten - if the man is lucky enough: Keynes did not live that long - and we ain't got that much time to give them. The high ground in any kind of argument can sometimes be achieved just by loudly asserting a claim to it, but the ultimate decider is often what Harold Macmillan called `Events, dear boy, events'. If the events were the 1930's slump, then that was bad luck for Friedrich von Hayek and his view that the strategy for economic bad times was to fold your arms and wait until they got better. Keynes had a better proposal.

I suppose this little book is a bit of a noddy-guide, but if so I would call it quite a good one. Robert Cord is plainly in command of the basic facts, including summary versions of the disputations that Keynes got into at frequent intervals. He is slightly prone to describe certain academics as `the most...' this that or the next, which is unwise. Try getting any gathering of economists to assent to any such simplistic proposition as that. However he is not so foolish as to try to describe Keynes himself as some `greatest economist' of the 20th century, or of the Christian era or any such jejune proclamation. What he does take as widely agreed is that Keynes inaugurated a new era in political economics, and that surely takes a bit of gainsaying.

What could put you off this book is a slightly odd and awkward style in the earlier chapters, less so in the later. Obviously such a short book cannot go into too much detail on every issue, but what the style sometimes reminded me of was obituaries in a college magazine - something, alas, that I have experience of writing. In particular there are insets printed in a nearly indecipherable pink giving potted accounts of some person place or thing that features in the accompanying text. How about `Eton is a famous English public school for boys'; or `Michal Kalecki was arguably the greatest all-round economist of the 20th century'; or `King George VI and Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters, Princesses Elizabeth (the present Queen...)'? Who, really, does Mr Cord think he is talking to? One rather entertaining case where I might have enjoyed some more detail is in respect of Keynes's less intellectual side. Mr Cord informs us, rather pompously I thought, that Sir Roy `Harrod wrote the first full-length biography of Keynes which, although competently written, glossed over various aspects of Keynes's life, in particular his homosexuality.' Cord has a couple of brief references to Keynes's membership of the Cambridge `Apostles' club which was `known for its homosexual tendencies around this time.' However Cord is, I fear, no fun at all about this, although he does at least confirm that `Three decades on, Keynes still clung to...the notion that love, beauty and truth should come before all else.' With thoughts such as these is it any wonder that Keynes became an economist?

What I like about this book is that it gets its balance right. There is a certain amount about the great man's personality and personal life, but the bulk of it is about what Keynes is significant for. The account of the academic toing and froing is nicely judged, I thought. Keynes did not get the best of every duel or get unfailingly flattering reviews by any means. Also, there was luck as well as merit in the achievement: he was often just at the right time in delivering his insights for them to be listened to. As I have just relegated the significance of personality behind that of intellect, I should take a step backwards and compliment Mr Cord for his entirely proper stress on the impact that Keynes's seemingly charismatic personality often had in winning over opinion.

In my own opinion we are all deeply in his debt. We're all dead in the long run, and the thing about managing an economy is to get it to deliver for us while we're still here, and to dig us out of pits we manage to get into. It is not some ivory tower academic exercise, and the irony is that it was this eburnean aesthete who had the best practical grasp of that matter, so far as the rest of us are concerned. Sit ei terra levis.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 3.5 stars-A good ,introductory "Keynes for Dummies" book, May 29, 2008

By 

Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Keynes (Life&Times series) (Paperback)

Cord does an above average job of covering Keynes's life.The book is written for a reader who has no idea who J M Keynes was or what he did.Such a reader would not have taken a principles of macroeconomics course.The reader will learn the following:

(a)-Keynes was a world class philosopher-logician besides being the greatest economist of the 20th century.

(b)-Keynes was a major advisor to the British Treasury department from 1916 through 1946

(c)-Keynes was an elite member of The Apostles ,a secret Cambridge intellectual and debating club,and the Bloomsbury group,which was a famous group of artists,painters,sculptors,writers,and poets.

(d)-Keynes married the famous ballerina, Lydia Lopokova.

(e)-Keynes was the bursar(treasurer) for Cambridge.

(f)-Keynes is practically the only economist in history,besides Ricardo,who was able to make a fortune by his own private investing skills.

Cord has included a large number of pictures and explanations of the various persons who interacted with Keynes throughout his varied life.A reader of the book will have no idea of why Keynes is considered the greatest economist of the 20th century.However,this is a minor problem because the vast majority of economists haven't a clue either.