El precio de la paz

At the dawn of World War I, a young academic named John Maynard Keynes rode in the sidecar of his brother-in-law's motorcycle to set off on a strange and frantic journey that would change the course of history. After leaving his placid life at Cambridge University behind, Keynes was pushed into the corridors of European finance ministries to process emergency loans and then sent to the United States to negotiate the terms of the economic struggle during the conflict. . The terror and anxiety unleashed by the Great War would make him the most influential and controversial intellectual of his time, a man whose ideas still retain the power to influence our time. Keynes was not only an economist, but one of the most relevant thinkers of the 20th century, and he dedicated his life to defending art and ideas as engines of change. As a moral philosopher, political theorist, and statesman, Keynes led an extraordinary life that took him from the turn-of-the-century parties in the riotous Bloomsbury Circle art scene, to the fervent negotiations in Paris that shaped the Treaty of Versailles, the collapse of marketplaces on two continents, diplomatic breakthroughs in the New Hampshire mountains, and wartime ballet premieres in London's flamboyant Covent Garden. Meanwhile, Keynes reinvented Enlightenment liberalism to cope with the heartbreaking crises of the 20th century. In the United States, his ideas sparked the rise of the economics profession, but they also sparked fierce political clashes in the Cold War when Keynesian acolytes engaged conservatives in an intellectual battle for the future of the country and the world. world. Although many Keynesian ideas survived the struggle, much of the project to which he dedicated his life was lost. In this fascinating biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of the most fascinating minds in history. The Price of Peace reestablishes a forgotten set of ideas about democracy, money, and the good life with transformative implications for current debates about inequality and the politics of power that shape the global order.