Essays in Persuasion

Essays in Persuasion is probably the best introduction to John Maynard Keynes, a collection of lucid and wide-ranging essays written between 1919-1930 on a variety of economic issues: unemployment, the gold standard, the Treaty of Versailles, the financing of the war efforts, and other early writings that would form the basis of The General Theory. Even Keynes’s incorrect predictions — e.g., “Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren,” an essay that envisions a future so wealthy that it would lead to enormous amounts of leisure time — are enlightening for the ways in which they would be proven wrong.