The idea of world leaders gathering in the midst of ecomic crisis has become all too familiar. But the meeting at Bretton Woods in 1944 was different. It was the only time countries from around the world have agreed to overhaul the structure of the international monetary system. Against all odds, they were successful. The system they set up presided over the longest, strongest and most stable period of growth the world ecomy has ever seen. Its demise some decades later was at least partly responsible for the periodic ecomic crises that culminated in the financial collapse of the 2000s. But what everyone has always assumed to be a dry ecomic conference was in fact replete with drama. The delegates spent half the time at each other's throats and the other half drinking in the hotel bar. The Russians nearly capsized the entire project. The French threatened to walk out, repeatedly. All the while war in Europe raged on. At the very heart of the conference was the love-hate relationship between the Briton John Maynard Keynes, the greatest ecomist of his day, who suffered a heart attack at the conference itself and who was a true worldwide celebrity - and his American counterpart Harry Dexter White (later revealed to be passing information secretly to Russian spies). Both were intent on creating an ecomic settlement which would put right the wrongs of Versailles. Both were working to prevent ather world war. But they were also working to defend their countries' national interests. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished accounts, diaries and oral histories, this brilliant book describes the conference in stunning color and clarity. Bringing to life the characters, events and ecomics and written with exceptional verve and narrative pace, this is an extraordinary debut from a talented new historian.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Pegasus Books
ISBN-10
160598681x
ISBN-13
9781605986814
eBay Product ID (ePID)
209198468
Additional Product Features
Place of Publication
NY
Content Note
16 Pages of B&W Photographs
Author Biography
Ed Conway is the economics editor of Sky News. Previously he was the economics editor of the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. His appointment to this role, when only twenty-five, made him the youngest ever economics editor of a British national newspaper. He lives in London.
