This is a well-documented, engaging account of the Bretton Woods Conference. It should be of wide interest to economists, political scientists, and historians. As the title and the pictures on the cover suggest, Benn Steil focuses his account on John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White's battle over the structure of the Bretton Woods System.

Steil naturally begins with a summary of each economist's background. The biographical material on Keynes will be familiar to those who have read Robert Skidelsky's masterful three-volume biography. The material on Harry Dexter White is fascinating and less familiar. We learn how White rapidly gained influence at the Treasury Department during the 1930s despite not holding a permanent civil service appointment.

Steil is particularly interested in White's sympathies for the Soviet Union and his role as a Soviet spy. While likely not of primary interest to readers of this JOURNAL, these sections are gripping. That White passed information to the NKVD is well-documented. Steil goes further to make the controversial claim that White, acting on Soviet instructions, helped write the U.S. ultimatum to Japan in fall 1941 that lead to Pearl Harbor. Steil writes, “That White was the author of the key ultimatum demands is beyond dispute. That the Japanese government made the decision to move forward with the Pearl Harbor Strike after receiving the ultimatum is also beyond dispute” (p. 55). This seven-page section of the book has little relation to Bretton Woods but has sparked an active debate (see Eric Rauchway. “Whitewashing History.” Finance and Development 50, no. 1 [March 2013]: 53–54).

The core of the book is an account of the wartime negotiations between the United States and Britain, and White and Keynes in particular, on the future of the international monetary system. These negotiations culminated in the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference. But by then much had been decided, and Steil rightly discusses the prior negotiations in detail. Beginning in 1942 the United States and Britain sparred over how to construct a system that would remedy the real and perceived defects of the interwar gold standard.

The U.S. interest was in promoting American exports and securing a dominant position for the dollar. Thus White pushed for mandated current account convertibility and for a dollar and gold based system. By contrast, Keynes and the United Kingdom wanted leeway to pursue expansionary policies even while running current account deficits, and the United Kingdom hoped to preserve an important role for Sterling. Thus Keynes advocated for an international monetary fund with large resources, the ability to issue its own currency (“bancor”), and a mandate to sanction surplus countries. Keynes wanted Britain to retain the ability to use controls on the current and capital account to favor British trade with its empire. White was, to say the least, unsympathetic to this goal.

Steil recounts the negotiations in great detail, exploiting an extensive written record. Sources include Keynes' correspondence, unpublished private essays by White, and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau's diary. The middle chapters show the evolution of White's and Keynes' blueprint for a future international monetary system.

The apex of the book is a description of the conference itself. Steil gives the reader a blow-by-blow of United States and British behind the scenes maneuvering. The reader is struck by the minimal weight put on other countries' views. Steil leaves the impression that the conference itself was mostly for show. All meaningful decisions were made by the United States and Britain, many beforehand. And U.S. strength and British weakness meant that the U.S. position usually prevailed; it helped that White, while no rival to Keynes as an economist, was at least as effective a negotiator.

The book concludes with a brief discussion of Keynes' and White's post-conference activities and the Bretton Woods System's collapse in the early 1970s. As at the beginning of the book, Steil devotes many pages to revelations about White's Soviet espionage. The book concludes with some speculation by Steil on the future of the international monetary system.

The book's focus on personalities may be frustrating for readers of this JOURNAL. Deeper political and economic themes are neglected. For instance, that Bretton Woods occurred when the United States was the sole global hegemon must have facilitated agreement. Yet this theme, while often implicit in the narrative, is mostly unexplored.

In addition, Steil almost completely neglects the economic history that shaped the Bretton Woods negotiations and the economic history that was shaped by the Bretton Woods System. For example, Steil notes that a fear of competitive devaluations motivated the design of the Bretton Woods System. But he never mentions the literature showing that this was a misreading of 1930s history; devaluations, by allowing monetary expansion, were a source of recovery (Barry Eichengreen and Jeffrey Sachs. “Exchange Rates and Economic Recovery in the 1930s.” The Journal of Economic History 45, no. 4 [December 1985]: 925–46).

The book also lacks a discussion of the role of Bretton Woods in facilitating growth in the 1950s and 1960s. The reader is left wondering how much the detailed negotiations described by Steil mattered for the postwar global economy. As suggested by Barry Eichengreen in The European Economy Since 1945 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), it is likely that the Bretton Woods System was part of a constellation of institutions well-suited for extensive growth in the 1950s and 1960s. By leaping almost directly from the 1944 Conference to the advent of floating exchange rates in the early 1970s, Steil misses a chance to discuss this link.

Despite these flaws, The Battle of Bretton Woods will remain an essential reference on the Bretton Woods Conference and has much to teach economic historians. Steil's focus on personalities has the advantage of reminding economists that deep political and economic forces are not the only shaper of institutions. Individual idiosyncrasies can matter a surprising amount. Had Keynes died five years sooner or had White been revealed as a Soviet spy earlier, the postwar international financial system may have been rather different.