Books

First edition. 8vo. Original blue-green cloth with gilt titles to spine. Contemporary newspaper clipping of a review of the book loosely inserted. A near fine copy, with slight bumping to the corners of the lower cover. Regarded as the most influential social science treatise of the century upon which Keynes' "fame as the outstanding economist of his generation must rest" (DNB). Inspired by the world-wide slump of 1929, as an attempt to find new methods for controlling the vagaries of the trade cycle, he "subjects the definitions and theories of the classical school of economists to a penetrating scrutiny, and found them seriously inadequate and inaccurate" (Printing and the Mind of Man) Although The General Theory threw economists into two violently opposed camps, the book heavily influenced Roosevelt's 'New Deal' of 1936 and the international conference at Bretton Woods eight years later, out of which came the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, thus permanently changing the way the world looked at the economy and the role of government in society. Loosely inserted is a clipping of a newspaper review of the book from its day of publication pasted onto letter paper of Mr. A.J Tyler of the American Steamships Lines Agency with his annotations about Keynes's new economic ideas. PMM 423.

John Maynard Keynes' groundbreaking work established the framework for contemporary macroeconomic theory. It analyses the causes of fluctuating employment levels and proposes interventions to stabilize the economy.