Viking Dec 2001, hc $34.95

John Maynard Keynes: Fighting for Freedom, 1937-1946
by Robert Sidelsky

This is the eagerly awaited third, and final, volume of Robert Skidelsky's definitive and consummate biography of John Maynard Keynes. It is the culmination of a remarkable work dealing with the life and influences of a passionate visionary who finally succeeded in achieving respectability and acceptance on his own terms, not those of a British establishment usually mistrustful of men of ideas.

Skidelsky at all times is utterly lucid in his treatment of his subject, both in explaining Keynes's ideas and in picking his way through the complexities of his personality. The book abounds in good stories and memorable portraits, notably that of his devoted wife, Lydia Lopokova, whose eccentric but utterly logical "post-Keynesian" existence is charted in a delightful epilogue, and of his flamboyant medical adviser, Janos Pesch.

Insightful and intelligent, this is a work that tells the story of one of the most important and fascinating men of this century and provides an invaluable overview of matters that remain at the center of political and economic discussion.

Robert Skidelsky is Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. His books include Politicians and the Slump, Oswald Mosely and The World After Communism, as well as two previous volumes of his biography of John Maynard Keynes, Hopes Betrayed, and The Economist as Savior.

"This is the third and concluding volume of a biography that has already attained the status of a classic. It brilliantly lives up to the promise of the first two tomes. It may even be the best of the three, for now the author knows his subject as intimately as any historian could." -- Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

from the book jacket