Old Street Publishing Book Details

CONTENTS

BOOK DETAIL

J.K. GALBRAITH A 20th CENTURY LIFE

AUTHOR

Richard Parker

PUBLISH DATE

April 2007

PRICE

£25.00

ISBN

ISBN13: 978-1-905847-09-9

FORMAT

Hardback

EXTENT

840 Pages

“A fine one-volume history of economic thought in the 20th century”

The New York Times Book Review

J K Galbraith, who died in Feb 2006 aged 98, had an expansive career. Arguably America’s best-known economist, he was also a former government official, journalist, public intellectual, presidential confidant, ambassador, anti-war activist and even a successful novelist.

This biography charts all this achievement, but also provides a fascinating account of the US throughout the 20th century. Galbraith was America’s most famous economist for good reason. A witty commentator on America’s political follies and a versatile author of bestselling books that warn prophetically of the dangers of deregulated markets, corporate greed, and inattention to the costs of our military power (among them The Great Crash: 1929, The Affluent Society, and The New Industrial State), Galbraith always made economics relevant to the crises of the day.

This first full-length biography is, in Richard Parker’s hands, an important re-interpretation both of public policy and of how economics is practiced.

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The Critics


	“Parkers biography reads as easily as a novel and is an outstanding piece of work"		THE SPECTATOR

	“What makes Parker’s biography valuable is his ability to place Galbraith in a sweeping and comprehensive history of the evolution of economic thought, and to keep sight of his subject’s continuing relevance to the present day.”		THE WASHINGTON POST

	“Richard Parker's portrait of the dynamic Galbraith excels in both detail and scope. Meticulous in attention to the economic field, it also provides a sweeping, panoramic picture of the intense ideological tides that seethed beneath the surface of a turbulent century.”		ROBERT NASH , The Dallas Morning News

	“When the Right's rigid ideology falters and breaks down, sooner perhaps than people imagine, Americans will need an explanation for what went wrong. They can read Galbraith.”		WILLIAM GREIDER , The Nation

	“Through his parsing of a lifetime's work, Richard Parker makes a strong case that John Kenneth Galbraith has been foresighted - about the role of military spending in national policy, about the power of widespread but inaccurate public beliefs, about the gap between executives' interests and shareholders' or employees', about the nature of bubbles and the permanence of greed - and right more often than wrong (mainly about the ability of major U.S. corporations to squash all competition).”		JAMES FELLOWS, The New York Observer

	“Always heard and never heeded, John Kenneth Galbraith haunts this account of his own life, giving way for much of Richard Parker's text to the powerful men and forces Galbraith sought to guide and failed to steer. Galbraith advised John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, served as ambassador to India and bête noire to Richard Nixon, wrote 40-some books of which at least three earned enduring popularity despite their distinctive prose and complex ideas, taught decades of Harvard undergraduates, yet left little imprint on the public policy or economic theory of our time and what mark he made is fading fast.”		ERIC ALTERMAN an with ERIC RAUCHWAY, Altercation


	"John Kenneth Galbraith projected a towering presence - Richard Parker's rich, fascinating, authorized biography of the most famous economist since John Maynard Keynes tells a terrific story - actually dozens of them - and opens a compelling window on the course of 20th Century American liberalism."		WARREN GOLDSTEIN, Chicago Tribune

The Author

Richard Parker is an Oxford-trained economist and senior fellow of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he also teaches a course on religion and public policy.

A co-founder of the magazine Mother Jones, he writes extensively on economics and public policy.

He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and children.

	Author's web site

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