Interpreting Macroeconomics explores a variety of different approaches to macroeconomic thought. The book considers a number of historiographical and methodological positions, as well as analyzing various important episodes in the development of macroeconomics, before during and after the Keynesian revolution. Roger Backhouse shows that the full richness of these developments can only by brought out by approaches which blend both relativism and absolutism, and historical and rational reconstructions. Examples discussed include Hobson, Keynes and Friedman.

Roger E. Backhouse is Reader in the History of Economic Thought at the University of Birmingham. He is the author of A History of Modern Economic Analysis (1985), Economists and the Economy (1994) and two macroeconomics textbooks. He is also a co-editor of Economics and Language (1993) and the editor of New Directions in Economic Methodology (1994).

Chapter 1 Methodology, rhetoric and the history of macroeconomic thought; Part 1 Historiography; Chapter 2 Relativism in the history of economic thought; Chapter 3 Fact, fiction or moral tale? How should we approach the history of economic thought?; Chapter 4 History's many dimensions; Part 2 Macroeconomics before Keynes; Chapter 5 J.A.Hobson as a macroeconomic theorist; Chapter 6 F.A.Walker's theory of 'hard times'; Chapter 7 Keynes, American institutionalism and uncertainty; Part 3 Methodology and macroeconomics; Chapter 8 Macroeconomics Since Keynes: Two Interpretations; Chapter 9 A methodological appraisal of Keynesian economics; Chapter 10 The neo-Walrasian research programme in macroeconomics; Part 4 Rhetoric and macroeconomics; Chapter 11 Rhetoric and implicit methodology in Friedman's macroeconomics; Chapter 12 Rhetoric and persuasion in macroeconomics: a comparison of Muth and Leijonhufvud;