An engaging chapter-by-chapter guide to the most important economics text of the twentieth century
John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money revolutionized economics. But it can be dense and cryptic, an intimidating work for the uninitiated. This companion volume approaches the argument methodically and with clarity, explaining obscure terms and breaking down Keynes’s ideas and their significance for his time and ours. Award-winning economist and author Geoff Mann allows readers to comprehend why the word “Keynesian” has become so contentious today — and so important.
What People Are Saying
"I can think of no single book that has so changed the conception held by economists as to the working of the capitalist system as The General Theory." Robert Heilbroner
"The General Theory is nothing less than an epic journey out of intellectual darkness. That, as much as its continuing relevance to economic policy, is what makes it a book for the ages. Read it, and marvel." Paul Krugman
"The General Theory combined towering intellectual achievement with immediate practical relevance to a global economic crisis. There has been nothing like Keynes’s achievement in the annals of social science." Paul Krugman
"Over the past 70 years The General Theory has shaped the views even of those who haven’t heard of it, or who believe they disagree with it." Paul Krugman
"Keynes’s magnum opus of 1936 completely recast macro-economic thinking about government policy." Tony Judt
"Economists may have forgotten The General Theory and moved on, but economics has not outgrown it, or the informal mode of argument that it exemplifies, which can illuminate nooks and crannies that are closed to mathematics. Keynes's masterpiece is many things, but 'outdated' it is not.” Richard Posner
"The General Theory was a work of genius." Paul Samuelson
"The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is a work of enduring fascination. It is simple and subtle, obscure and profound." Robert Skidelsky (Keynes’ biographer)
"The General Theory broke in on the established structure of economic thought, as it was termed, with a glass-shattering effect." John Kenneth Galbraith
"The General Theory struck off the shackles of laissez-faire ideology. Keynes knew that new freedom would raise fresh problems and require fresh solutions." Joan Robinson
About the Author
Geoff Mann is Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver BC, where he teaches political economy and economic geography. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books, and the author of In the Long Run We Are All Dead: Keynesianism, Political Economy and Revolution, Disassembly Required: A Field Guide to Actually Existing Capitalism, and Climate Leviathan: A Political Theory of Our Planetary Future (with Joel Wainwright), which won the 2019 Sussex International Theory Prize. Mann is a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking and a Guggenheim Fellow.