The book was released in late 1919 and became an immediate best-seller on both sides of the Atlantic: it was released in the US in 1920. The scathing sketches of Wilson, Lloyd George and Clemenceau proved to be very popular and the work established Keynes' reputation with the public as a leading economist. In six months, the book had sold 100,000 copies with translations into 12 languages. It restored Keynes' reputation with the Bloomsbury Group which had been tarnished by his work for the Treasury during the war. Keynes returned to Cambridge to work as an economist where he was regarded as the leading student of Alfred Marshall.

First published in 1919, the book achieved great notoriety due of its contemptuous critique of the French premier as well as President Woodrow Wilson. Keynes criticized the Allied victors for signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1920, which would have ruinous consequences for Europe. At the time, few world and economic leaders appreciated his criticisms as Keynes saw his worst fears realized in the rise of Adolf Hitler and the resulting devastation of World War II. This work is generally regarded as perhaps the most influential social science treatise of the 20th Century, as it quickly and permanently changed the scope of economic thought.

John Maynard Keynes,( 5 June 1883–21 April 1946), was a British economist whose ideas have fundamentally affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics and informed the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and he is widely considered to be one of the founders of modern macroeconomics and the most influential economist of the 20th century. His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics and its various offshoots.