Upending the conventional wisdom that Bretton Woods was the product of an amiable Anglo-American collaboration, this book shows that it was in reality part of a much more ambitious geopolitical agenda hatched within President Franklin D Roosevelt's Treasury and aimed at eliminating Britain as an economic and political rival.
When turmoil strikes world monetary and financial markets, leaders invariably call for 'a new Bretton Woods' to prevent catastrophic economic disorder and defuse political conflict. The name of the remote New Hampshire town where representatives of forty-four nations gathered in July 1944, in the midst of the century's second great war, has become shorthand for enlightened globalization. The actual story surrounding the historic Bretton Woods accords, however, is full of startling drama, intrigue, and rivalry, which are vividly brought to life in Benn Steil's epic account. A remarkably deft work of storytelling that reveals how the blueprint for the postwar economic order was actually drawn, The Battle of Bretton Woods is destined to become a classic of economic and political history.
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The Battle of Bretton Woods is a well-researched and excellently written book that is recommended for everyone interested in economic and diplomatic history."
---Tobias Leeg, Political Studies Review
