A column on vox by Matthew Luzzetti and Lee Ohanian celebrates the 75th anniversary of the publication of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. They argue that the reason it proved such an influential book was in large part because it was published in the right place at the right time, for three main reasons:

“Macroeconomic time series from the 1940s through the 1960s conformed
qualitatively to patterns predicted by the General Theory
(even though the driving forces behind the US economy at this time may
have been very different than the forces stressed by the Keynesian
model);

Simultaneous equation econometric developments made around this time
elevated the Keynesian model to a quantitative enterprise;

And perhaps most important, the General Theory was
published during the Great Depression when there was enormous demand for
new ideas to understand chronic depression.”

I remember, the one time I tried to read it cover to cover, struggling to make sense of the book. Although it's written in beautifully clear English, I could only speak the language of the neoclassical synthesis of the 1970s, and the concepts were alien. Looking back at it now – although not re-reading it cover to cover – the striking thing is how much of its time the book is. The international trade sector and global capital markets are absent. So although the vox column concludes, rightly, that the concept of aggregate demand management will always be with us now, at least in times of recession, I'm sceptical about the modern relevance of The General Theory.

However, as economists need to become much better educated about the intellectual history of their own discipline, that's no excuse for not reading it if you haven't already.