Follow the money

JANE HUMPHRIES reviews a wide-ranging but very readable study of the changing tides of global economics from the Great Depression to the present day

- JANE HUMPHRIES

The Economic Government of the World, 1933-2023
by Martin Daunton Allen Lane, 1024 pages, £45

This new book is a history of the institutions and individuals who sought to manage the global economy over the last century. It is a huge topic, and a big book - but readers need not be discouraged as Daunton makes the story accessible and absorbing, explaining how successive orders begin to fail, break down (often painfully) and then are hesitantly replaced, with the succeeding order modified and adapted to changing circumstances until it, too, begins to weaken.