General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money by KEYNES, JOHN MAYNARD - 1936

Original cloth and dust jacket, not price-clipped. A beautiful copy with the book and jacket equally fine.

FIRST EDITION of this classic of modern economics, "on which his fame as the outstanding economist of his generation must rest" (DNB).

World-wide depression induced Keynes to re-examine classical approaches to economics. Urging the use of a national budget as a principal instrument of the planning of the national economy, Keynes placed responsibility for regulation of the economy squarely in the hands of the government. John Maynard Keynes was one of the great intellectual innovators of the first half of our century, and certainly its greatest political economist" (New Palgrave).

The General Theory was the most important single work of economics in the 20th century. It helped to reshape economic policy around the world and thus changed the course of modern history. The work introduced the concepts of the consumption function, the principle of effective demand and liquidity preference, and gave new prominence to the multiplier and the marginal efficiency of capital. Paul Samuelson said that the General Theory "caught most economists under the age of 35 with the unexpected virulence of a disease first attacking and decimating an isolated tribe of South Sea islanders." In 1971 Richard Nixon delcared, "We are all Keynesians now."

This is an excellent copy of Keynes's most important work.

Printing and the Mind of Man 423. NYPL Books of the Century 142. Time Magazine 100 non-fiction books in English since 1923. Times Literary Supplement 100 greatest books of the twentieth century.