In this collection of anecdotes of the "famous people I have known" variety, John Kenneth Galbraith lets his hair down--well, as much as a Harvard economist in his 90s might be expected to, anyway. Despite the informality, Galbraith's prose is suffused throughout with dignified precision, even at its most profane (as in his recollection of his extemporaneous evaluation of incomplete returns from the 1948 presidential election: "I think Thomas E. Dewey may well be shitting in his blue serge pants"). For the most part, Name-Dropping concerns itself with the major American statesmen from the Democratic party of the mid-20th century--Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson--but Galbraith also shares his reminiscences of working on Adlai Stevenson's two failed campaigns against Eisenhower ("no modern politician," he writes of the experience, "had a more faithful coterie of supporters") and of Eleanor Roosevelt, "who, but for the accident of history and the prevailing constraints of gender, could have been President in her own right." On the international front, there's a brief encounter with Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and economic director, and more extended contact with Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (Galbraith served as ambassador to India in the Kennedy administration). Name-Dropping is a slim connection of anecdotes, held together by little more than Galbraith's presence, but that is more than enough to make its behind-the-scenes history cohesive and, in its way, quietly entertaining. --Ron Hogan
From Publishers Weekly
Galbraiths thin, impressionistic sojourn through his astounding career provides glimpses of some of the centurys most remarkable personalitiesincluding his own. In a series of chapters devoted to powerful, compelling individuals (FDR, JFK, LBJ, Nehru, to name a few), Galbraith rehashes much that is already known about these figures while offering his own perspective on their personalities and motivations. An astute observer of personalities, Galbraith, professor emeritus of economics at Harvard, expresses admiration for Nehru, Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt and John and Jackie Kennedy, scorn for Albert Speer and aversion to LBJ for his Vietnam entanglements. Galbraith claims he was ignorant of JFKs philandering, expresses his belief that Nazi leaders he interrogated after WWII were an incredible collection of often deranged incompetents and relates the rebukes he received from FDR concerning price control and rationing decisions. Though Galbraith treads on familiar ground with his defenses of Keynesian economics and occasional forays into liberal, Affluent Society territory, the book never congeals into a coherent whole. It is, instead an anecdotal mlange of first-hand impressions, autobiography and history.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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