Maynard Keynes: An Economist’s Biography: Donal Moggridge
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
This lengthy, plodding biography is for economists, historians and other specialists and will daunt the general reader. The book draws heavily on John Maynard Keynes’s 30-volume Collected Writings , which Moggridge edited, to paint a rounded picture of the English economist as monetary theorist, journalist, negotiator, confidant of politicians, diplomat, friend of the Bloomsbury circle, investor and arts administrator. An economics professor at the University of Toronto, Moggridge explains how Keynes (1883-1946) belatedly came to economics through philosophy, explores Keynes’s intuitive working out of his ideas, and reviews his impact as a shaper of British financial policy and an architect of the postwar international monetary system. Keynes’s marriage to Russian ballerina Lydia Lopokova and his many homosexual affairs are cursorily covered in a workmanlike, massively detailed biography from which the inner man is largely absent. Photos.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Keynes firmly believed that economists’ lives were wroth studying as a way of illuminating their ideas; and Donald Moggridge’s monumental new biography does this quite brilliantly for `JMK’ himself.” — Niall Ferguson, The Daily Mail
. . . a biography of Keynes that is more up-to-date and more thorough than any of its predecessors . . . the comprehensiveness of this work will insure its status as the standard academic biography of Keynes for some time.
–Choice
I have learned an enormous amount from this book. I had known Keynes well as a fellow working economist from the 1920s to the end of his life in 1945. But by the 1920s he was already the great man and confidant of senior statesmen. I had known little of his earlier life, of his relations to his Bloomsbury and Charleston friends and of them to Lydia, of how he came belatedly to economics through philosophy. Nor did I know the detail of his public life. All this Don Moggridge has been able to discover and record with very great detail and skill.
–Sir Austin Robinson, University of Cambridge
Keynes firmly believed that economists lives were wroth studying as a way of illuminating their ideas; and Donald Moggridges monumental new biography does this quite brilliantly for `JMK himself.
–Niall Ferguson, The Daily Mail
Keynes firmly believed that economists’ lives were wroth studying as a way of illuminating their ideas; and Donald Moggridge’s monumental new biography does this quite brilliantly for `JMK’ himself.
–Niall Ferguson, The Daily Mail
The book’s great virtue, and the source of its considerable value to historians, lies in its closely detailed treatment of Keynes’s almost continuos participation in British public life.
–Business History Review, Spring 1993
The books great virtue, and the source of its considerable value to historians, lies in its closely detailed treatment of Keyness almost continuos participation in British public life.
–Business History Review, Spring 1993
[Moggridge] writes throughout with a great sureness of touch . . . combining an outsider’s perspective with an instinctive insider’s knowledge. It is an admirable biography . . . wise and readable.
–Roy Jenkins, The Observer
[Moggridge] writes throughout with a great sureness of touch . . . combining an outsiders perspective with an instinctive insiders knowledge. It is an admirable biography . . . wise and readable.
–Roy Jenkins, The Observer
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