Kathleen Burk
Taking Gold
The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order
By Benn Steil
Princeton University Press 443pp £19.95 order from our bookshop
This book has the shape of a mountain: you tramp up one side, looking at the preparation and run-up to the ‘battle’ for nearly two hundred pages, spend fewer than sixty on the Bretton Woods conference itself and then tramp down for another hundred, as Benn Steil considers the aftermath to the present. It could be seen as something of a policy-driven production, invoking history to provide a context for our current predicament (comparisons with today’s US–China relationship repeatedly appear). Yet this would be to underrate its interest and its quality, which are both considerable.
The title promises a battle of the titans: John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. Keynes needs little introduction: British, arrogant, self-regarding, brilliant, fluent, acerbic, wittily cruel, intellectually flexible and the most famous economist in the world. Steil displays an admiring dislike of the man and works to deflate him.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Perhaps, rather than having diagnosed a real societal malaise, she has merely projected onto an entire generation a neurosis that actually affects only a small number of people.'
@HoumanBarekat on Patricia Lockwood's 'No One is Talking About This'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/culturecrisis
*Offer ends in TWO days*
Take advantage of our February offer: a six-month subscription for only £19.99.
https://www.mymagazinesub.co.uk/literary-review/promo/literaryfebruary/
'Nourished on a diet of exceptionalism and meritocracy, millennials internalised the harmful falsehood that hard work necessarily yields success. The very least they should settle for is a "cool job", one that ... is the focus of their "passion".'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/workers-twerkers