John Kenneth Galbraith - Hardcover

Parker, Richard

4.16

128 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0002007010 ISBN 13: 9780002007016

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers, 2005

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"Today, more than a half century since his writing first won him widespread acclaim, Canadian-born Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith remains the world's most famous living economist. The author of four dozen books and more than eleven hundred articles, recipient of nearly fifty honorary degrees, a former ambassaor and presidential advisor, he has continued writing, traveling, and lecturing into his nineties...And he has, in innumerable ways, left his mark upon our times."

YET, AS BIOGRAPHER Richard Parker explains, Galbraith remains a disputed figure. His eloquently liberal views have often been out of sync with prevailing political winds, and other economists have disparagingly called him "America's foremost economist for non-economists." How did an Ontario farm boy grow up to be this provocative, iconic thinker? Who is the man behind the quietly controversial ideas? With the recent fallout from deregulated markets, corporate greed and the cost of military might - all dangers Galbraith warned against - are his theories more relevant than ever?

Richard Parker, an Oxford-trained economist and well-known writer on American politics and economics, assesses Galbraith's wide-ranging legacy in a much-anticipated biography that is not only exhaustive in its research and scope but a delight to read. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews with Galbraith and many of his contemporaries - including Arthur Schlesinger, as well as prominent economists, such as Nobel winners Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz - Parker reveals the man and the thinker, tracing a fascinating career and a life. A book for all those interested in the influence of economics on our politics and culture, and a must-read for biography fans, John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics is one of this year's most important books.

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Review:

John Kenneth Galbraith has led an extraordinary life. The world's most famous living economist started teaching at Harvard when he was just 25 years old and has sold seven million copies of his four dozen books. One reviewer said Galbraith wrote "history that reads like a poem." During World War II, at age 32, he was named "tsar" of consumer-price controls in the United States, and he later advised three American presidents and served as ambassador to India. Now in his 90s, Galbraith is still active and has received 50 honorary degrees. All this was accomplished by a Canadian born in a tiny Ontario farming hamlet, whose major at an obscure agricultural college wasn't even economics but animal husbandry. Such an irony is typical of Galbraith's renowned iconoclasm, writes Richard Parker in his 820-page biography John Kenneth Galbraith.

Parker shows how Galbraith's irreverent views were shaped by the Depression, which helped turn him into a passionate advocate of Keynesian economics, the philosophy that inspired FDR's New Deal. Galbraith later became one of the architects of the expansion of federal social services after World War II. Because of his influence in successive administrations, readers get a fascinating fly-on-the-wall picture of debates and intrigue inside the White House during many of the major crises of the Cold War. Galbraith frequently played crucial behind-the-scenes roles that went beyond the duties of an economist: advising President Kennedy during the Cuba missile crisis, helping Lyndon Johnson write his first speech after Kennedy was assassinated, and opposing the Vietnam War, which became his most passionate cause. He later criticized the dismantling of government programs under Ronald Reagan and seemed to love clashing with conservative economists. Parker managed to sift through a mountain of material from Galbraith's long and lively years to distill an engaging narrative that, like Galbraith's own books, is easily accessible to non-economists. --Alex Roslin

About the Author:

RICHARD PARKER, Senior Fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, is an Oxford-trained economist who writes extensively on economics and public policy. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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