Before there was John Maynard Keynes's General Theory (1936), there was his Economic Consequences of the Peace. Written during the summer of 1919, few books did more to discredit the Treaty of Versailles which formally ended four years of war between the victorious Allied powers and a defeated Germany. It also launched the 36 year-old Keynes into a public and international spotlight which he never left.
Reading this short text a century later, it's hard to dispute Paul Volcker's assessment that the book is “frankly a polemic.” Quickly becoming a best-seller, Economic Consequences amused readers with its portraits of those who had lead the Allies to victory: France's George Clemenceau (“dry in soul, empty of hope”), America's Woodrow Wilson (“slow and unadaptable”), and Britain's David Lloyd George (“ill-informed”).
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