*The Price of Peace*

The author is Zachary D. Carter, and the subtitle is Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes.  Maybe you’ve read plenty about Keynes, but still this book is good enough to qualify (without reservation) for the year’s “best of non-fiction” list published every December.

One surprise is that the author seems to “get” the Bloomsbury Circle, Woolf, and the like, even though he is not an old, crusty British pain in the ass.

A second surprise is that much of the biography goes well past the life of Keynes, though with no diminution of quality.  I very much enjoyed for instance the discussion of Samuelson vs. Galbraith, the career of Milton Friedman, the role of the Volker Foundation, and so on.

Very readable, substantive, and the main topic never ceases to be interesting.  I am not sure if there is anything truly new in here, but it is nonetheless a very good book to read about Keynes and his later influences on economic thought.