It’s no easy task to write a readable history of the WWII years leaving out all battles and concentrating on how the bill...
Final volume in the definitive biography (following The Economist as Savior, 1920–1937, 1994, etc.) of the brilliant British economist.
Keynes (1883–1946) may or may not have been the greatest economist of the last century, but he was certainly the most influential. Moving easily in academic, literary, business, and political circles, he was merely an unpaid advisor to the Treasury (albeit with his own office) during the 1930s and ’40s, yet no British politician could ignore him. Rejecting Marxism and socialism, he also dismissed much of classical economics. Many of his ideas outraged traditional economists. He taught that efforts at a balanced budget made no sense. He advocated generous government spending during slumps but frugality in boom times. Skidelsky (Political Economy/Warwick Univ.) begins the present volume with Keynes at the peak of his influence in 1937. This was partly due to the power of his ideas but also because he advocated programs politicians were eager to follow for other reasons (it was, after all, the Depression). Almost immediately he was caught up in the preparations and financing of WWII. Keynes’s advice ensured that Britain’s enormous war budget did not produce the damaging inflation that occurred during WWI. In addition, he advocated a postwar monetary system that avoided the chaotic currency swings that stifled trade and aggravated economic cycles between the wars. Negotiating with the US, he was forced to compromise, but the successful Bretton Woods agreement contained many of his ideas. His greatest failure was America’s 1945 refusal of a massive grant to revive England’s crippled economy. Readers accustomed to the History Channel view of the two allies as blood brothers will be surprised to learn how aggressively US leaders strove to eliminate Britain’s empire and economic influence.
It’s no easy task to write a readable history of the WWII years leaving out all battles and concentrating on how the bill was paid, but Skidelsky succeeds superbly.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-03022-8
Page Count: 576
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
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