Excellent intellectual biography of Keynes—not only covering his life, but running beyond it to cover how his ideas were adopted (and ultimately diminished) by subsequent economists. Carter does a brilliant job sketching out the personal details of his life, and how they fed the larger picture of values that he expressed through his economic and political philosophy.

Keynes ultimately overrated the power of persuasion compared to the economic interests of the capital class—and underrated the need to place the means of production under democratic ownership, lest they be used to nefarious and self-serving ideological ends. While you can sell an economic policy that promises prosperity for all, ultimately conservatives are interested in preserving the hierarchy above all else, even if it means the numbers on the balance sheet are lower. (And they'll even convince themselves the counterfactual would be worse.)