Re: Books you DON'T read in one day
Posted: April 7th, 2024, 1:11 pm
Just finished the third of the three volumes of Robert Skidelsky's biography of Maynard Keynes.
Previous biographies of Keynes make him out be be saintly as well as brilliant, and airbrushed traits that may, at the time of their publication at least, be regarded as tarnish, such as his vicious put-downs of anyone he regarded as his mental inferior*. Harrod's authorized biography even completely omits Keynes's earlier homosexuality.
Skidelsky's is different; it portrays in great detail a full rounded picture of an extraordinary man.
Very comprehensive; very well written; and I learned a lot of (Keynesian-slanted) economics.
A real tour de force and highly recommended.
* for example, he once derided a senior Treasury official to his face as 'intellectually contemptable'
Previous biographies of Keynes make him out be be saintly as well as brilliant, and airbrushed traits that may, at the time of their publication at least, be regarded as tarnish, such as his vicious put-downs of anyone he regarded as his mental inferior*. Harrod's authorized biography even completely omits Keynes's earlier homosexuality.
Skidelsky's is different; it portrays in great detail a full rounded picture of an extraordinary man.
Very comprehensive; very well written; and I learned a lot of (Keynesian-slanted) economics.
A real tour de force and highly recommended.
* for example, he once derided a senior Treasury official to his face as 'intellectually contemptable'