The extended title of this superb biography is perhaps unusual but certainly apt. James Boughton, for twenty years the official historian of the IMF and himself a respected international monetary economist, was ideally suited to produce a fuller and more contextualized account of Harry Dexter White's life and accomplishments than had been given by previous historians. When, in the aftermath of World War II, large parts of Europe came under the sway of the Soviet Union and China too was “lost” to the Communists, a “McCarthyite witch hunt” was on for people to blame.
Attention soon fell on White (1892–1948). After completing his Harvard PhD dissertation in 1933 under Frank Taussig on the French international accounts, 1880–1913, White was recruited in 1934 by Jacob Viner to his “Freshman Brain Trust” at the US Treasury, along with White's fellow Harvard student and friend Lauchlin Currie. Viner assigned these two to work...
