The battle of Bretton Woods : John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the making of a new world order / Benn Steil.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Steil, Benn.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Keynes, John Maynard, 1883-1946.

Keynes, John Maynard.

White, Harry Dexter, 1892-1948.

White, Harry Dexter.

United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference (1944 : Bretton Woods, N.H.).

United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference.

Monetary policy--History--20th century.

Monetary policy.

International finance--History--20th century.

International finance.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (478 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, c2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's epic account. Upending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, Steil shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival. At the heart of the drama were the antipodal characters of John Maynard Keynes, the renowned and revolutionary British economist, and Harry Dexter White, the dogged, self-made American technocrat. Bringing to bear new and striking archival evidence, Steil offers the most compelling portrait yet of the complex and controversial figure of White--the architect of the dollar's privileged place in the Bretton Woods monetary system, who also, very privately, admired Soviet economic planning and engaged in clandestine communications with Soviet intelligence officials and agents over many years. A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn, The Battle of Bretton Woods is destined to become a classic of economic and political history.

Contents:

Introduction

The world comes to the White Mountains

The improbable rise of Harry White

Maynard Keynes and the monetary menace

"The most unsordid act"

The best-laid plans of White and Keynes

Whitewash

History is made

Begging like Fala

Out with the old order, in with the new

Epilogue.

Notes:

"A Council on Foreign Relations Book."

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781299051300

1299051308

9781400846573

1400846579

OCLC:

827236445