Universal Man: The Lives of John Maynard Keynes - Hardcover

Davenport-Hines, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465060676 ISBN 13: 9780465060672

Publisher: Basic Books, 2015

Synopsis

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) was the twentieth century's most influential economist. His ideas inspired Franklin D. Roosevelt to launch the New Deal and instructed Western nations on how to ward off revolutionary unrest, economic instability, high unemployment, and social dissolution. Keynes was nothing less than the Adam Smith of his time: his The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Moneybecame as important in the twentieth century as Smith's The Wealth of Nations was in the eighteenth. Now, in the long wake of the 2008 global economic collapse, Keynesian economics is once again shaping our world.
In Universal Man, acclaimed historian Richard Davenport-Hines offers the first biography of Keynes that reveals the man in full. Like many Englishmen of his class and era, Keynes compartmentalized his life. Accordingly, Davenport-Hines treats Keynes in turn as a youthful prodigy, a powerful government official, an influential public man, a bisexual living in the shadow of Oscar Wilde's persecution, a devotee of the arts, and an international statesman of worldwide renown. Delving into Keynes's experiences and thought, Davenport-Hines shows us a man who was equally at ease socializing with the Bloomsbury Group as he was persuading heads of state to adopt his policies. Through Davenport-Hines' nuanced portrait, we come to understand not just the most enduringly influential economist of the modern era, but one of the most gifted and vital men of our times: a disciplined logician with a capacity for glee who persuaded people, seduced them, subverted old ideas, and installed new ones.
Engaging, learned, and sparkling with wit and insight, Universal Man is the perfect match for its brilliant subject.

About this title

Review:

"[A] succinct, lively and well-written biography.... [Reducing the amount written on Keynes] has been done with great elegance and panache by Davenport-Hines, in a volume that will introduce Keynes and his strange world to a new generation of readers."--London Evening Standard

"[Davenport-Hines's] lens is directed not at Keynes the macroeconomist but at Keynes the man himself. Fortunately, the author has a rich and compelling story to tell...non-economists who have never read a Keynes biography and are not looking for lots of technical detail and jargon will find it an absorbing read. Even many economists, like me, are likely to derive some fun and profit from it."--H-Net

"This is an entrancing book, always light but never weightless and I am sure that John Maynard Keynes would have enjoyed it."--The Oldie (UK)

"This book will suit a broad audience wanting to understand Keynes and the period in which he lived."--Library Journal

"An admiring and nuanced book filled with insights into this scholar and man of action in all his complexity."--Kirkus Reviews

"[A] gracefully written biography.... This is a delightful, detailed portrait, rich in interesting anecdote and encompassing the entire roster of Keynes's accomplishments."--Publishers Weekly

"[F]ascinating reading.... [Davenport-Hines] has understood his subject better than any previous biographer.--Spectator (UK)

"Never has the biography of an economist been so gripping, so witty or, indeed, so racy: Keynes had countless flings with men before, as his biographer puts it, 'he got the knack of heterosexuality' and enjoyed a happy marriage."--Daily Mail

"Richard Davenport-Hines's fine series of sketches of Keynes makes a clear case that he was a great man -- intellectually dazzling and original, generous-spirited, industrious, astonishingly wide-ranging and largely effective.... Davenport-Hines has produced a very readable single volume that succeeds...by providing a professional, temperate and clear account of a gripping subject." --New Statesman (UK)

"[T]his marvelous book is a high achievement: It shows us Keynes as altruist, boy prodigy, official, public man, art connoisseur and envoy. He was a gay man who switched over when he met the Russian dancer Lydia Lopokova, an enjoyer of life who worked himself to death, an economic savior, a truly great man who never imposed a dull moment."--Toronto Star

About the Author:

Richard Davenport-Hines an award-winning historian, as well as the acclaimed biographer of W. H. Auden and Marcel Proust. An advisor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and of the Royal Society of Literature, he lives in London.

About this edition

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0465060676
• ISBN 13: 9780465060672
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432