As the stock market crash of 1929 plunged the world into turmoil, two men emerged with
competing claims on how to restore balance to economies gone awry. John Maynard Keynes,
the mercurial Cambridge economist, believed that government had a duty to spend when
others would not. He met his opposite in a little-known Austrian economics professor,
Freidrich Hayek, who considered attempts to intervene both pointless and potentially
dangerous. The battle lines thus drawn, Keynesian economics would dominate for decades and
coincide with an era of unprecedented prosperity, but conservative economists and
political leaders would eventually embrace and execute Hayek's contrary vision.
Nicholas Wapshott is a journalist and the author of Ronald Reagan and Margaret
Thatcher: A Political Marriage. A former senior editor at The Times of London and the New
York Sun, he lives in New York.
PREFACE
ONE: The Glamorous Hero
How Keynes Became Hayek's Idol, 1919-27
TWO: End of Empire
Hayek Experiences Hyperinflation Firsthand, 1919-24
THREE: The Battle Lines Are Drawn
Keynes Denies the "Natural" Order of Economics, 1919-27
FOUR: Stanley and Livingstone
Keynes and Hayek Meet for the First Time, 1928-30
FIVE: The Man Who Shout Liberty Valance
Hayek Arrives from Vienna, 1931
SIX: Pistols at Dawn
Hayek Harshly Reviews Keynes'sTreatise, 1931
SEVEN: Return Fire
Keynes and Hayek Lock Horns, 1931
EIGHT: The Italian Job
Keynes Asks Piero Sraffa to Continue the Debate, 1932
NINE: Toward The General Theory
The Cost-Free Cure for Unemployment, 1932-33
TEN: Hayek Blinds
The General Theory Invites a Response, 1932-36
ELEVEN: Keynes Takes America
Roosevelt and the Young New Deal Economists, 1936
TWELVE: Hopelessly Stuck in Chapter 6
Hayek Writes His Own "General Theory," 1936-41
THIRTEEN: The Road to Nowhere
Hayek Links Keynes's Remedies to Tyranny, 1937-46
FOURTEEN: The Wilderness Years
Mont-Pelerin and Hayek's Move to Chicago, 1944-69
FIFTEEN: The Age of Keynes
Three Decades of Unrivalled American Prosperity, 1946-80
SIXTEEN: Hayek's Counterrevolution
Friedman, Goldwater, Thatcher, and Reagan, 1963-88
SEVENTEEN: The Battle Resumed
Freshwater and Saltwater Economists, 1989-2008
EIGHTEEN: And the Winner Is...
Avoiding the Great Recession, 2008 Onward
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX