International monetary policy is usually not a topic that lends itself to both intense academic interest and a popular general audience. Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods, however, is clearly an exception to this general rule. As William Glenn Gray points out in his review, in less capable hands the wartime monetary negotiations that established the foundation for the postwar economic order can make for quite tedious reading. But Steil breathes new life and controversy into a familiar story by emphasizing the intellectual and political clash between John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White. In stark contrast to the still-common vision of American and British officials cooperatively designing a postwar economic order that would avoid the problems of the interwar era, Steil’s book highlights the competing national interests and power struggles between the two nations, as personified in the struggle between Keynes and White.

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