“The Price of Peace”: Biography of John Maynard Keynes Wins Prestigious Arthur Ross Book Award

Zachary D. Carter has won the twentieth annual Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) Arthur Ross Book Award for The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes (Penguin Random House), a biography of the influential British economist. Carter, a writer in residence with the Omidyar Network’s Reimagining Capitalism initiative and former senior reporter at HuffPost, will be awarded the Gold Medal and $10,000. 

“Zachary Carter’s study of Keynes and Keynesianism is deeply researched, beautifully written, and completely absorbing. It masterfully weaves together biography and social and intellectual history,” said Gideon Rose, CFR’s Mary and David Boies distinguished fellow in U.S. foreign policy and chair of the award jury, which includes CFR members, but reaches its decision independent of the institution. 

The jury awarded the Silver Medal and $5,000 to Susan B. Glasser and Peter Baker for The Man Who Ran Washington: The Life and Times of James A. Baker III (Penguin Random House). Glasser is a staff writer at the New Yorker and Baker is chief White House correspondent for the New York Times.

The Bronze Medal and $2,500 were awarded to Harvard University professor Robert D. Putnam and entrepreneur Shaylyn Romney Garrett for The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again (Simon & Schuster).

Additional shortlist nominees: 

• New York Times national editor Jia Lynn Yang for One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924–1965 (W. W. Norton & Company) 
• Chancellor of the College of William & Mary and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates for Exercise of Power: American Failures, Successes, and a New Path Forward in the Post–Cold War World (Penguin Random House)
• Princeton University professor G. John Ikenberry for A World Safe for Democracy: Liberal Internationalism and the Crises of Global Order (Yale University Press)
• University of Toronto professor and former CFR Visiting Distinguished Historian Margaret MacMillan for War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Penguin Random House)

Endowed by the late Arthur Ross in 2001, this award recognizes nonfiction books that make an outstanding contribution to the understanding of international relations, and is among the most prestigious prizes for books related to international and foreign policy issues. Recent winners include Patrick Radden Keefe’s Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Jill Lepore’s These Truths: A History of the United States, Stephen Kotkin’s Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929–1941, and John Pomfret’s The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom: America and China, 1776 to the Present. A full list of previous winners is available here.

This year’s awardees will be honored at a CFR virtual event on December 7.