No comments about Pickle the Spy - or, The Incognito of Prince Charles.

1 comments about Novelist to a Generation: The Life and Thought of Winston Churchill.

1. I just won a trivia contest, coming up with the "significance" of the person herein described. What did I win? Nothing. Imagine what you'd win, if you knew ANYTHING about this NOBODY.
   Read this book and see if you can amaze your friends.

No comments about The Young Disraeli.

No comments about TUNNELMASTER AND ARSONIST OF THE GREAT WAR: The Norton-Griffiths Story.

No comments about Skelligside.

1 comments about The Insatiable Earl: A Life of John Montagu, Fourth Earl of Sandwich 1718-1792.

1. Lord Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich, is often derided for three reasons. First, because as Secretary of State under Lord North he was responsible - in part - for the British conduct of the Revolutionary War. Second, because he prosecuted a fellow called Wilke for obscenity, prompting a series of celebrated insults by the aforesaid Wilkes and his followers. Third, and most memorably, because he invented the sandwich to enable him to practice his gambling habit without leaving the card tables - in other words, to enable him to be the stereotypical 18th century rake.

   As Rodger's illuminating life of Montagu reveals, none of those criticism are fair. His conduct of the American war was, for the most part, efficient and thoughtful, and he successfully masterminded the naval defense of Britain at a time where a Franco-Spanish invasion was a real possibility. In particular, the record exculpates him from responsibilty for the failure of the Saratoga campaign, and actually shows that it was Montagu who should take much of the credit for the subsequent British naval recoveries of the early 1780s. As for Wilkes, he was a worthless scoundrel who deserved all the punishment he got, along with a lot more.

   Finally, he was no rake: his financial affairs, though complex, were not those of a compulsive gambler, and he only ever had one mistress, who, for all purposes, was a de facto wife to whom he was devoted (his actual wife went mad and didn't live with him). Culturally, he was chiefly responsible for the revival of Handel, and took a leading role in promoting cricket. An portrait of an attractive and interesting figure, and a spirited demolition job on his detractors.

No comments about Winston Churchill.

4 comments about Public and Private Worlds of Elizabeth I.

1. The Public and Private Worlds of Elizabeth I is a nicely written look into her personal and private life. It is very informational; from the workings of Elizabethan politics to the fashion of the time. It is informative with out getting overly academic. It is great for anyone wishing to research and/or recreate aspects of that time period. I encourage anyone who is intererested in Elizabeth I to purchase this book. One of the greatest features of this book is the full color pictures. Definitely a must have!!! A wonderful coffee table book too.



2. Excellent, excellent book for anyone who is interested in Quenn Elizabeth I or the Elizabethan era. Interesting little tidbits of knowledge about court life, politics and Elizabeth's private life. The pictures are absolutely beautiful and go along so well with the the written text. Definate A+!



3. This work has a wealth of information about Elizabeth I and
   the era itself. She is portrayed as an elegant monarch, dressed
   in silk and other fine clothing. A portrait of Elizabeth
   depicts her stately appearance as a Tudor. Elizabeth liked to
   stroll in the area of the Great Hall at Hatfield. A personal
   astrolobe is depicted-a fine personal item created circa 1560.
   Her coronation was a stately affair depicted in a personal
   portrait considered to be priceless today. This work is perfect for historians and others interested in the period of Elizabeth. The full color portraits are valuable
   in their own right.



4. After checking this book out of the library multiple times, I decided to buy it because of the balanced overview of the Queen and her England. Many biographies of Queen Elizabeth I are riddled with the author's personal prejudice for or against the Queen and this one does not. I enjoy the photos as do students in the workshops I teach.

3 comments about Queen Victoria's Grandchildren.

1. "Queen Victoria's Grandchildren" is not particularly long-- about 130 pages-- but it is large-format (about 8 1/2 by 11 inches). It is a photographic tribute to Queen Victoria's grandchildren. It has been divided into sections, one section for each of the grandchildren. These vary in length from one page to five pages. Except for two grandchildren who died in very young infancy, at least one photograph-- usually more-- is included with each section. I've read a lot of books on Queen Victoria and her various offspring, and many of the photos are new even to me. There is a slight bias, of course, to the more-photographed grandchildren. (A lot of photographs of King George V, Queen Marie of Rumania, and Empress Alexandra of Russia, etc.) But two or three pictures are included of all of them, including the ever-elusive ones who died in childhood (except for the two babies). I especially enjoyed finding a picture of the ever-elusive Prince Frederick (Frittie) of Hesse.

   The text serves more as a synopsis of the person's life to provide background for the pictures; there are no real analyses or insights. The writing is usually very simplistic, but get this book for the pictures.




2. This book provides a wonderful history of the grandchildren of Queen Victoria. As well as being detailed and interesting, this book is also rich in photos of the royal family. Through this book, the reader can gain clear insights into this fascinating family and their unique personalities and how their intermarriage linked all of the houses of Europe together. A helpful family tree is also included, and I liked the format of this book, the way it was divided into sections.



3. This book provides a wonderful history of the grandchildren of Queen Victoria. As well as being detailed and interesting, this book is also rich in photos of the royal family. Through this book, the reader can gain clear insights into this fascinating family and their unique personalities and how their intermarriage linked all of the houses of Europe together. A helpful family tree is also included, and I liked the format of this book, the way it was divided into sections.

5 comments about John Maynard Keynes: Volume 2: The Economist as Savior, 1920-1937.

1. Keynes activities, both as an active participant of the economic life of his country and continent, and as an icon to the cultural life of his epoch and to his many friends and groups of interest, is impressive. To define him is an elusive task: philosopher?, economist?, historian?, linguist?. He was all this and much more, but he was above all a man of a very practical mind and, notwhidstanding his immense philosophical background, deeply attached to the theories of his contemporary G.E.Moore and others, he had the feeling of having a mission to accomplish, given the immense superiority his intellect had over the rest of the mortals.

   What was to become of Europe after the end of the First World War was foreseen by him in many essays and primarily in his book The Economic Consequences of the Peace. The task which lays ahead for him, and only him, was to warn politicians and thinkers of the impending dangers of the years to come, specially in regard to a lack of theoretical analisys to support the transition from the old economy (classicist in his jargon), which ended with the death of the great Alfred Marshall, and a new one, which he purpoted himself to establish and then save the world. And save the world he did!!! Keynes is one of this towering figures who had the opportunity to mingle himself with daily facts and change them for the better. Amid a lot of controversy and polemic regarding the originality of his ideas, he published his major opus in 1937, which was to be used against the vagaries of rampant unemployment and inflation. His General Theory of Interest , Employment and Money is a sort of tribute he pays to his father , Malthus and G.E.Moore.
   In the personnal side of his life, if this can be said of Keynes for his personal life was eminently devoted to cultural interests i many areas, the book portrays some important changes in his personal atitudes towards homosexuality (he abandoned) and his new life marrying the russian ballerina Ludmila.




2. The second part of Prof. Skidelsky's magnificent biography of J.M. Keynes is nearly totally concentrated on economic issues. Keynes' personal life was perfectly settled after his marriage with a Russian ballerina. He continued to be in contact with the Bloomsbury group, which 'remained subversive by habit, but was anxious to retain their dividends and beauftiful houses'.
   In fact, this book centres on the question how Keynes came to write the 'General Theory' and its defense of governmental intervention (public investments) in the economic cycle in order to break the capitalistic slump. He proved that in a laisser-faire system an equilibrium could be formed at a far lesser level than 'natural' unemployment: 'There is work to do, there are men to do it. Why not bring them together!'
   We discover that Malthus was a real influential precursor with his proposition to prop up insufficient demand by public works and that Richard Kahn made a decisive contribution with his multiplyer effect.
   Prof. Skidelsky characterizes perfectly the 'General Theory' as a complex psychological drama with as main characters the life-denying rentier, the businessman and his fantasies and the victimized working class.
   Keynes' ultimate nightmare was a world were making money triumphed over making things, which is actually happening. Financial transactions are dwarfing the industrial ones and there are many more investment trusts than industrial companies in the US.
   The discussions after the publication of the 'General Theory' are fascinating. In fact, the debate is still red hot: inflation/deflation, the influence of the (inter)national banks, savings and (un)employment.
   This book is not an easy read. I recommend readers to (re)read some parts of the 'General Theory'. But this work is a fascinating tale about the (r)evolution of the ideas of the greatest economist of all times.
   I have only one minor remark: Ibsen is a Norwegian, not a Swede.



3. I highly recommend the second volume of Skidelsky's three volume study of the life of John Maynard Keynes for the general reader.The general reader will be rewarded with a 5 star performance.Skidelsky masterfully weaves an incredible amount of material about the private and public life of Keynes in a manner that will provide the nonspecialist,general reader with many hours of reading pleasure.Unfortunately,the same cannot be said for the specialist seeking a technical analysis and evaluation of Keynes's scientific contributions to philosophy,applied probability,applied statistics,decision science and economics.It is in this area that Skidelsky fumbles the ball just as it appeared that he was going to go all the way and score a touchdown.This is most likely due to the fact that he is a historian with little or no training in philosophy,mathematics,statistics,probability and economics.Let me catalog the technical problems .First,Skidelsky confuses the 12th-13th century debate between the nominalists and the realists(Platonists) with the realist versus idealist debate of the 19th-20th century between,among others,G.E.Moore and Bertrand Russell(the realists of the 20th century who would be supporting the nominalists in the 12th century),on the one hand and J.M.E.McTaggart and F.H.Bradley,on the other hand,who would be supporting,in general,the realists of the 12th century.(See Skidelsky's extremely confusing discussion on pp.74-77).Second,Skidelsky is completely confused about the nature and construction of Keynesian probabilities.Keynesian probabilities,in general,are intervals.They require the use of two numbers ,not one.The first number is called a lower bound.The second number is called an upper bound.Keynes's approximation method has absolutely nothing to do with ordinal rankings. In fact,the general case occurring among decision makers in the real world would be of overlapping intervals.Consider the following simple example.Let probability one be estimated by the interval[.4,.6].Let probability two be estimated by the interval[.5,.7].The probabilities have very specific numeric bounds,but they are ,in fact,nonrankable,noncomparable and nonadditive.It is not possible to say that one of the two probabilities is greater than,less than or equal to the other probability.Skidelsky has accepted at face value the extremely poor analysis of Keynes's TP done by F.Ramsey in two book reviews published in 1922 and 1926.Ramsey committed the fatal error of misinterpreting Keynes's chapter 3 terms in the TP,nonnumerical and nonmeasurable,as meaning that no numbers could in general be used to estimate the probability relation.Ramsey never read chapters 15 and 17 of the TP where Keynes made it clear that most probabilities could be represented as intervals.(The reader will find literally one dozen errors of omission or commission committed on pp.58-61 and 67-73 of Skidelsky with regard to the issue of the use of numbers in Keynes's logical theory of probability).Skidelsky ignores Keynes's creation of an index to measure the weight of the evidence,w,where w is defined on the unit interval[0,1]and measures the completeness of the relevant potential evidence available upon which to make an estimate of a probability.Skidelsky overlooks Keynes's conventional coefficient of risk and weight,c,that solves all of the paradoxes of subjective expected utility theory.Keynes was the first scholar in history to devise a decision rule incorporating nonlinear probabilities and weight of the evidence(later called ambiguity of the evidence by D.Ellsberg in 1961).Lastly,Skidelsky has overlooked the mathematical specification of Keynes's theory of effective demand that Keynes derived from his Y model of chapter 10 and from his D-Z model of chapters 3,20-21 of the General Theory in 1936.Let us define w to equal a constant money wage,p to equal the price level,w/p to equal the real wage,MPL to equal the marginal product of labor in the aggregate,MPC to equal the marginal propensity to spend on consumption goods, and MPI to equal the marginal propensity to spend on copital goods.Keynes then arrives at the following general result:w/p=MPL/(MPC+MPI).The classical and neoclassical(monetarism,rational expectations,real business cycle theory,etc.)theories are all special cases which require that MPC+MPI=1.Skidelsky's claim that Keynes did not provide a mathematical model of his theory of effective demand in the GT (see pp.537-542,especially p.540)is an error in magnitude equal to the errors made by Frank Ramsey about the meaning of the terms "nonnumerical" and"non measurable".The specialist will be disappointed with this volume of Skidelsky's biography of J.M.Keynes.



4. John Maynard Keynes apparently had a life full of brilliant ideas, and the evolution from one idea to another is a brilliant story. I'm not quite sure how I know this, because the second volume of Robert Skidelsky's Keynes biography doesn't really convey it. But I do know it, somehow.
   
   The main thing I've learned from this book is that I should go and read Keynes himself. Whenever Skidelsky quotes Keynes at any length, I breathe fresh air and I'm reminded that life can, indeed, be a wonderful place. For the remaining 95% of the book, I'm plodding through perfectly serviceable but unengaging prose. Skidelsky doesn't explain Keynes's economics well enough for intelligent non-specialists to really get the point. He explains Keynes's social life decently well, but one can consume only so much about country vacations and "Bloomsberries" before mentally consigning the lot of them to an eternity of bad food and cattiness.
   
   The jacket insists that Skidelsky has told an amazing love story, presumably the one between Keynes and Lydia Lopokova. I don't know quite which biography that reviewer was reading. Certainly not this one.
   
   I'm told there's a condensed version of the Keynes bio: one volume instead of three. That may be worth your time. It depends on what you want. The life of Keynes doesn't actually seem all that interesting on its own -- no more interesting than any other smart person's life, and substantially less interesting than Bertrand Russell's (with whose life Keynes's overlaps). As for the content of Keynes's ideas, those certainly are worth the time, but I just can't see that Skidelsky -- condensed or otherwise -- is the man to teach these to us.
   
   Probably the best route is to read Keynes's own Economic Consequences of the Peace, Tract on Monetary Reform, Essays in Persuasion, and General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. I'm told that Alvin Hansen's Guide To Keynes is how economists normally approach the General Theory, and my initial glance at Hansen's book suggests that it's a good start.
   
   If we believe Skidelsky, Keynes's Treatise on Money is overlong, impenetrable, and notationally confused. I trust bad writers to spot their kin, so I believe him on this score.



5. If Keynes were alive today, I am sure he would subscribe to the Mark Twain quote: "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Keynes, the economic thinker, does live on. His many critics will be long forgotten before Keynes' ideas disappear.
   
   The absurdity of the idea of "self-regulating markets" has been exposed through the latest financial meltdown. Economics, for Keynes, is a "moral science"--not a hard science in the fashion of physics or biology. Economics is a discipline that should be mainly concerned about socio/economic outcomes. Are those outcomes justifiable in terms of economic efficiency and social justice? Are they meritocratic outcomes? Or are they simply outcomes based upon time worn traditions and the greater power of the economically privileged classes? Have we essentially traded past centuries' entitled aristocratic classes with their wealth and power for our modern day version of entitled aristocratic plutocrats?
   
   I am of the opinion that his critique of neo-classical economic theory is devastating. His warning about not trying to apply "too much precision" to ideas and concepts that are elusive and dynamic stands the test of time for me. It's too bad that contemporary economics appears to have learned so little from Keynes--or for that matter, from other critics of neo-classical capitalism such as Veblen, etc.
   
   Keynes was hardly the bogeyman that many of his reactionary critics have tried to paint him as. He was fundamentally conservative in terms of wanting to preserve capitalism. He felt that the best way to do this was to tame the worst excesses of the business cycle. Control the speculative flights on the upside of the cycles largely by monetary policy. Reduce the suffering of the working classes at the lower ends of the cycle thru fiscal and monetary policies. He wanted to civilize capitalism--not eliminate it. He was quite happy and satisfied as a privileged member of the British upper middle/upper classes. However, he also had sympathy for working class people and truly wanted a better quality of life for British working people in general. He wanted to civilize and housebreak capitalism. Modern day capitalism would be a lot better off if it had followed his prescriptive recommendations.
   
   The 3 volume set by Skidelsky is very lengthy, but certainly worth the effort if a person is very interested in life of Keynes. I was less interested in the first volume, but it lays out Keynes' early and formative years. He was a gay, intellectual aesthete in his early years. He fell in love in his middle years with Lydia, a Russian expatriate ballerina. She became his wife and love of his life for his remaining years.
   
   He was a brilliant and complicated man. Fiercely loyal and generous. Quite egotistical and insufferable at times. A hopeless snob, yet very endearing to many who came in contact with him. He was also frequently anti-American in his outlook, but that was largely a result of his passionate British patriotism. No great globalization advocate here--unless it would promote the British and the British Empire's interests. He truly loved his country. Something that contemporary American economists might take a lesson from.
   
   I liked the 3rd Skidelsky volume as well. However, I felt this 2nd volume is the best single volume choice for anyone wanting to learn about Keynes and his ideas of the 3 volume set. The author does a good job, although I often found myself in fundamental disagreement with his more conservative views. The 3 books were written during the high tide of the Reagan/Bush/Clinton eras of free market and de-regulation triumphalism.