The Coming of Keynesianism to America.

• Author: Steindl, Frank G.

The subtitle to this delightful, interesting book tells the editors' approach: "Conversations with the Founders of Keynesian Economics." And that is what it is, a series of reminiscences of twelve persons who began their professional careers in the 1930s. Preceding the conversations is a well-crafted Introduction which could serve as a synopsis for the book's "findings." But to read that alone would do an injustice to the book because so much of the enjoyment is reading the ruminations of those who were present at the (American) creation.

About half are native to the United States: Paul M. Sweezy, the Marxist, of Harvard, who was a student at the LSE in 1932; Alvin Hansen of the frequently cited Fiscal Policy Seminar he conducted jointly with John H. Williams at the then newly founded Littauer School; Walter S. Salant of Harvard, who as a student at Cambridge in 1933-34 listened to Keynes's lectures; Paul Samuelson; and Leon H. Keyserling, a lawyer and New Dealer who was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors in 1946-49.

There are three Canadians: Robert Bryce, Lorie Tarshis (of the first American Principles book with a Keynesian macroeconomics section, about which much time is spent on it and the subsequent Samuelson text), each of whom spent several pre-General Theory years attending Keynes's Cambridge lectures, and J. K. Galbraith, who in the absence from Cambridge of Keynes due to a heart attack spent 1937-38 discussing the General Theory with Kahn, Joan Robinson, Kalecki, and Sraffa. Bryce and Tarshis were also members of the fabled Keynes Club. "[D]etermined to be a missionary for Keynesian ideas," Bryce delivered to Hayek's seminar at the LSE the first systematic presentation of the General Theory's ideas. He went to Harvard for a few years beginning in 1935 and was with Sweezy the organizer of an informal seminar on Keynes, one in which several of the economists here participated.

Another who recounts his impressions is Abba Lerner, a student and later faculty member at the LSE for whom Keynes wrote to Robbins praising Lerner's "acute and subtle mind" but discouraging an appointment, suggesting instead that Lerner "take up . . . a craft" during the day and pursue economics in his "Talmudist" ways in the evening [pp. 113-15]. Lerner spent half a year at Cambridge, coming to understand the General Theory while listening to Keynes lecturing from its galley proofs.

Evsey Domar and Richard Musgrave's link to Keynes was through...