I received this book for free as part of LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program.

This is a fun little book, and by little, I mean just long enough to cover the life of John Maynard Keynes, while still clocking in under 200 pages, not counting endnotes and bibliography. I find the life of Keynes fascinating, and I genuinely learned things by reading this biography. For example, Keynes' literary friends in his Bloomsbury circle were genuinely mystified that he chose to marry a ballerina. Also, he and his wife wanted kids, but suffered from infertility.

Yet, I'm not sure I can really recommend this book. I've had this book for eight years, and I've read it three times trying to review it. I think the problem is the material is not quite chronological, and not quite topical, but rather a kind of stream-of-consciousness combination of the two. It makes it really hard to form a coherent picture of the life and times of Maynard Keynes, which is the only reason I want to read a book like this. I took to making notes in the margin to document what year an event happened, so I could reconstruct a timeline of events that are close in time but spread across chapters.

If you just want a fun read with a few facts sprinkled in, then this probably won't bother you. On the other hand, if you like to place things in perspective, then this book makes that unnecessarily hard. ( )

A brief biography of Keynes. Not terribly familiar with him or economic theory and reading this seemed a decent way to remedy that. If you are looking for something in depth or very academic this may not be the book for you. However, it is written for an adult audience and the author doesn't mind spending time on some of the technical issues Keynes had to deal with. ( )

I won this off goodreads, which just goes to prove that those get a free book competitions actually give out free books. That said, this was pretty blah. Clarke's a very nice writer, so it's easy to read. But that's about the best I can say- the biographical stuff was fine, but there was very little about the Fall or Return of this Influential Economist. And the book doesn't really explain why he was so influential until the last chapter... and even then doesn't do a very good job. Was his major innovation really convincing people that investment could lead to savings rather than the other way round? Really? The *General Theory* gets all of two pages. I'm sure there are better biographies; I hope to hell there are better intellectual biographies. But it's short enough to read in an afternoon, and I'm encouraged enough that I'd want to read other things written by Peter Clarke which require a little less explanation of complicated ideas, i.e., his history of 20th century Britain. ( )

A very excellent short life of Keynes, written accessibly. ( )

An astute study of a major figure in modern economics. I admit to having had to take a few initial cracks on it, but after the initial slog of thirty pages or so, it becomes a good read for those with only a passing interest in economics. ( )