John Grieve Smith traces the origins of postwar full employment policies in the experience of the interwar years and the work of Keynes and Beveridge. He reviews the successful achievement of full employment after the war and its subsequent abandonment as the Keynesian consensus gave way to the new, monetarist-inspired, orthodoxy. The book puts forward alternative proposals for expansionary policies, and for international financial reform. It is written throughout in terms accessible to both the layperson and the expert.