This book is dedicated to the hundreds of bright and highly motivated UMASS graduate students who took my course in macro theory over the four decades that I taught it. The lively discussions and debates that took place in the classroom helped me develop the interpretations of Keynes’s views on economic theory and economic policy that are the subject matter of this book.

Everyone knows that Keynes is one of the most important and influential economists who ever lived. His magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (hereafter The General Theory), was published in 1936 when much of the world was in acute economic distress and intense political turmoil in the midst of the global Great Depression. Right- wing and left- wing revolutionary forces had become powerful in many countries in Europe in the interwar years. Mussolini and Hitler were already in power, as, of course, was Stalin. Capitalism was even under assault in the USA, which experienced significant economic and political unrest in the 1930s.

这本书是献给麻省大学研究生数百名聪明和积极性很高的研究生，他们在我教授宏观理论的四十年里选修了我的课程。课堂上活跃的讨论和辩论帮助我形成了对凯恩斯关于经济理论和经济政策的观点的解释，而这正是本书的主题。

众所周知，凯恩斯是有史以来最重要、最有影响力的经济学家之一。他的代表作《就业、利息和货币通论》（以下简称《通论》）出版于1936年，当时正值全球经济大萧条时期，世界许多地区正处于严重的经济困境和激烈的政治动荡之中。在两次世界大战期间，欧洲许多国家的右翼和左翼革命力量变得强大起来。墨索里尼和希特勒已经掌权，斯大林当然也是。资本主义在美国甚至受到了攻击，美国在20世纪30年代经历了重大的经济和政治动荡。