Books, Arts & Manners: Unholy Ghost

John Maynard Keynes, by Charles H. Hession (Macmillan, 400 pp., $22.95)

Roy Harrod’s “official” biography of John Maynard Keynes, published in 1951, was a most unwelcome kind of tour de force: a boring book about a fascinating man. One would have thought it impossible to write dully about an economist who claimed that his only regret in life was that he hadn’t drunk more champagne, but The Life of John Maynard Keynes is grim proof that, to the pedant, all bad things are possible.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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John Maynard Keynes, by Charles H. Hession (Macmillan, 400 pp., $22.95)

Roy Harrod’s “official” biography of John Maynard Keynes, published in 1951, was a most unwelcome kind of tour de force: a boring book about a fascinating man. One would have thought it impossible to write dully about an economist who claimed that his only regret in life was that he hadn’t drunk more champagne, but The Life of John Maynard Keynes is grim proof that, to the pedant, all bad things are possible.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.