Between Friends: Perspectives on John Kenneth Galbraith [Hardcover]

Helen Sasson (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 1999

Fifteen original essays by eminent personalities in public life, journalism, economics, and the arts, written to honor the ninetieth birthday of one of the world's most famous economists The wide array of contributors to this celebratory volume reflects the richly varied life of John Kenneth Galbraith -- professor of economics and writer, public servant and ambassador, eminent collector of Indian art, and head of a gifted family. Each contributor writes from his or her own highly individual perspective, whether informed by politics, journalism, economics, academe, art -- or just as a good friend. Some of the essays are anecdotal and humorous; others, more serious, show how Galbraith's ideas have influenced the contributors; yet others underscore the contribution his ideas have made to a better understanding of the world by us all. Galbraith is himself present through a collection of his memorable aphorisms compiled as the closing chapter to the book -- not least in his thoughts on writing and the publishing business. The contributors include Derek Bok, Carlos Fuentes, Peter Galbraith, Katharine Graham, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Robert Reich, and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Reflections on the life and work of one of America's preeminent public intellectuals on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Robert B. Reich here describes Galbraith as the ``most buoyant dismal scientist of our age.'' The description seems apt, for Galbraith has always brought to his intellectual endeavors wit, grace, courage, and humanity. Sasson, a governor of the London School of Economics, has gathered essays by a few of Galbraith's friendsamong them Carlos Fuentes, Derek Bok, Daniel Patrick Moynihanexploring the style and substance of this remarkable individual. The books first part looks at Galbraith the person: father, friend, neighbor, mentor. The second examines his work as an economist. Yet the two parts merge; as we come to see, the person is very much in the work. As an economist, Galbraith has always questioned the ``conventional wisdom'' (a phrase he coined) of the discipline, has insisted that economics should have something to do with real economies, with real people and the quality of the lives they lead. Eschewing both the belief in the magic of the pure market and the panacea of rigid socialist planning, he has sought ways to make capitalism work, despite itself, while recognizing the vital role government must play to make it work. Above all, he has deplored the imbalance in our society, as Arthur Schlesinger writes, ``between the opulence of private consumption and the starvation of public services.'' And if there is tragedy in his legacy, it lies in the fact that the few rich no longer care, and the many less affluent no longer can afford to be concerned with the common good. Time may have passed Galbraith by, but that is to time's detriment. The book fittingly concludes with excerpts from Galbraith's own works, separately edited by Andrea Williams. This is a loving tribute, and today that makes for a rare and pleasurable reading experience. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review

"Reflections on the life and work of one of America's preeminent public intellectuals on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Robert B. Reich here describes Galbraith as the 'most buoyant dismal scientist of our age.' The description seems apt, for Galbraith has always brought to his intellectual endeavors wit, grace, courage, and humanity. Sasson, a governor of the London School of Economics, has gathered essays by a few of Galbraith's friendsamong them Carlos Fuentes, Derek Bok, Daniel Patrick Moynihanexploring the style and substance of this remarkable individual. The books first part looks at Galbraith the person: father, friend, neighbor, mentor. The second examines his work as an economist. Yet the two parts merge; as we come to see, the person is very much in the work. As an economist, Galbraith has always questioned the 'conventional wisdom' (a phrase he coined) of the discipline, has insisted that economics should have something to do with real economies, with real people and the quality of the lives they lead. Eschewing both the belief in the magic of the pure market and the panacea of rigid socialist planning, he has sought ways to make capitalism work, despite itself, while recognizing the vital role government must play to make it work. Above all, he has deplored the imbalance in our society, as Arthur Schlesinger writes, 'between the opulence of private consumption and the starvation of public services.' And if there is tragedy in his legacy, it lies in the fact that the few rich no longer care, and the many less affluent no longer can afford to be concerned with the common good. Time may have passed Galbraith by, but that is to time's detriment. The book fittingly concludes with excerpts from Galbraith's own works, separately edited by Andrea Williams. This is a loving tribute, and today that makes for a rare and pleasurable reading experience." (Kirkus Reviews )

Product Details

• Hardcover: 176 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin (March 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395971306
• ISBN-13: 978-0395971307
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,876,945 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sharing a point of view, July 23, 2003

By 

Bruce P. Barten (Saint Paul, MN United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Between Friends: Perspectives on John Kenneth Galbraith (Hardcover)

This is a birthday tribute book, in which a famous author, Harvard professor, economist, former Ambassador to India, and incredible wit is praised in print by people who find themselves honored by the opportunity to detail their links with John Kenneth Galbraith. Many names are scattered throughout the book, which has no index for finding them again. All my life I have wanted to be smart enough to be as witty as JKG, and in the present economic situation, it is a great comfort to find evidence that so many people share that aspiration. Freud is mentioned as a possible source of "a similar remark about individual people in psychoanalysis" needed for a comparison on page 126 with a comment of Karl Marx in CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, originally published in 1859, "Mankind inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve." Conversations between these people can be daunting when it seems to lack any point whatever, and JKG has the kind of courage that it takes not to worry when an interest in political economy puts someone in a spot which requires responses at a level which most people have trouble maintaining at their best, responding to cues about basic conditions that establish who they are in ways that the inquisitive JKG could notice, when it was missing in those who had formerly been powerful, as when he met ex-Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas Home and told Roy Jenkins, "Who was that man? I thought he was Alec Home." (p. 50).

Power is a major consideration in this book, as a factor that was not adequately considered in the mainstream economic theory of motives which were thought classically to drive supply and demand. JKG noticed that the affluent society's maximization of production produced an increased need for public goods like trash collection and police to protect people from being swindled. The friendly tributes at the beginning of the book frequently note how tall and witty JKG was, and pages 161-175 at the end provide examples from books that JKG wrote of his thoughts on Farming, The Scotch, Rules of Academic Life, Economics and Economists, Writing, Politics, Politicians, Family, Places, and The Wisdom of Age. My favorite choice of words, "or a drunken bat," (p. 171) occurs in the section on Politics, and seems less hyperbolically suggestive of the fears that the Scotch possessed and the way everyone felt in 1968 than the kind of comparison which JKG used to describe a government crisis, in addition to "or a drunken bat."

I have not been doing Harvard many favors in recent thoughts which associate it most frequently with the Unabomber, Daniel Ellsberg, or Henry the K., who was repudiated when he might have wished to retain the kind of association with Harvard that JKG maintained for 50 years. Galbraith was a key adviser to JFK, and his book LETTERS TO KENNEDY still makes interesting reading, but JKG did not stay on for the debacle produced by President Johnson, and many in this book considered JKG a leader of the effort to oppose the Vietnam war. Political party was not an overriding consideration for JKG, certainly not in 1981 when he wrote the description of Johnson which is included in this book, that might be applied to Woodrow Wilson or any number of American presidents.

"Johnson sought to compensate for his uncertainty in foreign policy with an outward display of firmness, strength, decisiveness. This made him open to the advice of those who urged the seemingly strong as distinct from the restrained and considered course. Perhaps also his instinct was for an assertively masculine pose, as others have suggested. Combined, these qualities put him at the mercy of those who took pride not in their knowledge but in their will to act. Thus the disaster in Southeast Asia." (p. 173).

Seriously, though, there is a section on Economics in this book and an attempt throughout to present phrases which JKG ought to get credit for adding to the vocabulary of political economy. On the birthday question, if you hurry, you should be able to obtain and read this book prior to October 15, 2003, when John Kenneth Galbraith will be 95 and coincidentally, Friedrich Nietzsche will be 159, though Nietzsche has been dead more than a hundred years. This book starts with, "Thorstein Veblen" (pp. xii, 26, 30-31, 35, 36), "he could see little difference between a communist jungle and a capitalist one." (p. 9). "Galbraith's complaints against atmospheric nuclear testing" (p. 10), "endless meetings and far too many people." (p. 11). "I came to oppose strongly the widely applauded Reagan-Bush policy of reaching out to Saddam Hussein" (Peter Galbraith, appointed United States Ambassador to Croatia in 1993, worked extensively on Iraq in the late 1980s, p. 13). "During World War II, in the very opposite of the Keynesian stereotype, Galbraith and a few others in the Office of Price Administration actually produced a decline in prices during wartime. . . . Inflation dropped from 9.7 percent in 1941 to 2.1 percent in 1944." (p. 18). "his ability to distinguish carefully between real motives and pretense" (p. 23), "sought-after public speaker" (p. 24) "an extremely fluent writer, a quality that journalistic exigencies had fostered in him. From that time onward, I think, he always believed that he had to write something every day." (p. 24). "even truer today than it was then, although today the outstanding gap is that between private affluence and public poverty." (p. 26). "American farmers, today about 1 percent of the population, produce more than they did as 25 percent of the population in 1930." (p. 32). "American Academy of Arts and Letters; from 1984 to 1987 he served as its president." (p. 34). "countervailing power" (p. 37) "he vividly contrasted the `social imbalance' between the opulence of private consumption and the starvation of public services." (p. 37).