This very readable book makes the actual historical Keynes and his ideas accessible to modern readers, whose views are so often formed by misleading myths about him, his work, and its significance. -- David Laidler, University of Western Ontario The authors' interpretation of Keynes is broadly convincing, not least in challenging the way that his own arguments have been misleadingly stereotyped by subsequent economists. It succeeds in shifting our perspectives on the nature of Keynes's achievement. It recognizes his intellectual greatness while acknowledging the flaws and lacunae in his various arguments. And it brings out his own reluctance to police a new 'Keynesian orthodoxy' and his tolerance of various approaches. -- Peter Clarke, University of Cambridge An excellent introduction to the thought of John Maynard Keynes. Lucid and nontechnical, it explains how, because Keynes was such a different kind of economist--eclectic, practical rather than formalistic, worldly, intuitive--from the formalistic academic economists of the next generation, who came to dominate the economics profession, he was misunderstood by his successors. They created and later discredited 'Keynesianism'--a distorted version of Keynes's thought. Backhouse and Bateman explain that to cope with our current economic problems, we need to restore Keynes's original vision. -- Richard A. Posner, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit

Roger E. Backhouse is Professor of the History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Birmingham. Bradley Bateman is Provost and Professor of Economics, Denison University.