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The Essential Galbraithby John Kenneth Galbraith

• Introduction• Also by John Kenneth Galbraith • Select reviews of Name-Dropping

Selections from the Writings of the Economist of the Century

Introduction

John Kenneth Galbraith is a legend. His writing, interpreting the nature of economic life, has defined a century that encompassed profound changes in technology, communications, and business. The Essential Galbraith celebrates his contribution to our economic and cultural life by making available in one volume some of his most notable writing.

In this volume you will find such seminal essays as "The Myth of Consumer Sovereignty," "The Technostructure," and "The Crash." For all twenty-one essays and excerpts, Mr. Galbraith has written a new introduction that helps place them in proper context and link them into a unified whole. The result is a fitting summation and a tribute to a rare intellectual life. The hallmark of this collection, and Galbraith's entire life's work, is his insistence that an economy be judged by the effect it has on the quality of life of current and future generations.

Houghton Mifflin Company is also pleased to be able to re-release two works by Galbraith in companion trade paperback editions. Name-Dropping: From FDR On was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book. Drawing on a lifetime

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of access to many of the greatest public figures, Galbraith creates a rich and uniquely personal history of the century — a history he helped to shape. We are invited to hear FDR on the Great Depression and World War II; Albert Speer, the Third Reich's architect and armaments minister, on the boorishness and incompetence of the Nazi leadership; John F. Kennedy, from youth to the presidency; Jacqueline Kennedy's shrewd judgments of the White House inner circle. In this clear-eyed, unsparing, and amusing look back at the world and the people he has known, Galbraith tells what these leaders did — how they looked to him then and how they look to him now — with unforgettable reminiscences and a rich infusion of engaging anecdotes. Name-Dropping charts the political landscape of the past sixty-five years with the dazzling insight, humor, and literary skill that mark Galbraith as one of the most distinguished writers of our time.

In addition, Houghton is re-releasing Galbraith's third novel, A Tenured Professor. When America's most distinguished economist turned his observant eye and celebrated brilliance to fiction, the result was hailed by the New York Times as "his wisest and wittiest" novel yet. A respected Harvard professor creates an economic forecasting model identifying speculative folly, enabling him to uncover society's hidden agendas. It is at once a morality tale and a comic delight.

John Kenneth Galbraith, born in 1908, is the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus at Harvard University and a past president of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Economic Association. He is the author of thirty-one books spanning five decades, including The Affluent Society (recently reissued by Mariner books in a fortieth anniversary edition), The Good Society, and The Great Crash. He has honorary degrees from, among others, Harvard, Oxford, the University of Paris, the University of Toronto, and Moscow University. He is Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur, and in 1997 he was inducted into the Order of Canada.

Also by John Kenneth Galbraith

• NAME-DROPPING: FROM FDR ON (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1999)• A JOURNEY THROUGH ECONOMIC TIME (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1994; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1995)• A TENURED PROFESSOR (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1990; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1991)

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• A VIEW FROM THE STANDS: OF PEOPLE, POLITICS, MILITARY POWER AND THE ARTS (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1986)• CAPITALISM, COMMUNISM AND COEXISTENCE: FROM THE BITTER PAST TO A BETTER PROSPECT (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1988)• ECONOMICS IN PERSPECTIVE (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1987; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1988)• TRIUMPH, 1993 ANNIVERSARY EDITION (Houghton Mifflin paper, 1993)• THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1984; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1998)• THE ANATOMY OF POWER (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1983; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1985)• THE CULTURE OF CONTENTMENT (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1992; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1993)• THE GOOD SOCIETY: THE HUMANE AGENDA (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1996; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1997)• THE GREAT CRASH (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1979; Houghton Mifflin paper, 1988, rev. 1997)• THE NEW INDUSTRIAL STATE (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1985)• THE SCOTCH (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1985)• A LIFE IN OUR TIMES (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1981)• INDIA NOW AND THROUGH TIME (Houghton Mifflin cloth, 1980)

Select reviews of Name-Dropping

"Name-Dropping is the most delightful book of the year — shrewd, irreverent, penetrating and hilarious." — Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

"Name-Dropping: From FDR On is mischievously and merrily unrepentant." — Boston Globe

"It is not usual for a man past his ninetieth birthday to write a book that is as fresh and lively as the work of a thirty-year-old. But John Kenneth Galbraith is not a usual man, and he has done it." — New York Times

"[Galbraith's] impressionistic sojourn through his astounding career provides glimpses of some of the century's most remarkable personalities — including his own." — Publishers Weekly

"Galbraith never pretends to greater intimacy than he achieved with the public figures he describes in these brief essays, but each portrait tells us

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something we wouldn't have otherwise known." — The New Yorker

"Name-Dropping is a look at prominent people the former ambassador to India and famed economist has known, from FDR on." — Larry King, USA Today

"Names? You want names? No one knows better ones than John Kenneth Galbraith." — San Diego Union-Tribune

"If the title of John Kenneth Galbraith's latest and most charming memoir turns you off, wait a moment . . . This slim book serves to remind us that idealism and trust once existed in the White House and Washington, a fact that may seem unbelievable to the present generation." — Newsday

"A lively and breezy set of essays with flashes of penetrating insight." — Boston Book Review

"Writing with great decorum, and even greater intelligence, Galbraith focuses on personality and politics in his fond but balanced portraits of the powerful." — Boston Magazine

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