The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. by Keynes, John Maynard

London: Macmillan and Co,, 1936. 8vo, 403 pp. Original dark blue publishers cloth with title to backstrip in gilt, in original grey-blue dust jacket. Some minor foxing to fore-edge, boards edges slightly rubbed, dust jacket price clipped and slightly sun toned; otherwise a very good, clean copy. § First edition of John Maynard Keynes masterpiece, which solidified his position and fame as the most outstanding economist of his generation. “The world-wide slump after 1929 prompted Keynes to attempt an explanation of, and new methods for controlling, the vagaries of the trade cycle. First in A Treatise on Money, 1930, and later in his General Theory, he subjected the definitions and theories of the classical school of economists to a penetrating scrutiny and found them seriously inadequate and inaccurate...A national budget, over and above its function of providing a national income, should be used as a major instrument in planning the national economy. The regulation of the trade-cycle...must be the responsibility of governments. Lost equilibrium in a national economy could and should be restored by official action and not abandoned by laisser faire. In 1936...The General Theory...threw the economists of the world into two violently opposed camps. Yet eight years later Keynes was to dominate the international conference at Bretton Woods, out of which came the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank...” (Printing and the Mind of Man, 423). An essential and foundational text to any serious collector, student or employer of economics.