Keynes Hayek : the clash that defined modern economics

 by Nicholas Wapshott. British journalist Wapshott likes dual biographies. But the politicians at the heart of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher: A Political Marriage (2007) were on the same side. Here, Wapshott chronicles profound disagreements between John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946), the British Bloomsbury Group veteran who urged governments to spend to bolster demand in economic downturns, and Friedrich Hayek (1899-1992), the Austrian School (and, for a time, University of Chicago) economist who came over time to view most government intervention in the market as a step toward totalitarianism. Keynes' approach macroeconomic in analysis, pragmatic and experimental in prescriptions is precisely what many Democrats (and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman) wish the U.S. was doing now to reduce unemployment. Meanwhile, Hayek's The Road to Serfdom (1944) rides high on Glenn Beck's recommended reading list, and his microeconomic, theoretically based prescriptions often match those of the Tea Party. A journalist's biography (Wapshott's first footnote concedes that his opening anecdote may never actually have happened), but perhaps more accessible than the several respected academic biographies of these two iconic twentieth-century economists. --Booklist (Check Catalog)