By Ezra
It's my habit, after a thinker I've learnt from and respected passes away, to mark their death by purchasing one of their books. Seems the correct way to honor such lives. So I was disappointed yesterday to find that not a single Barnes and Noble in the Orange County area had any copies of any book by John Kenneth Galbraith in stock. Not one. Borders wasn't much better. But this morning, all the way down in the sunny beach town of Costa Mesa, I found a Borders, tucked near the DMV I was visiting, that carried The Essential Galbraith. I happily snagged it, and leafing through, it looks great.
The book is a collection of crucial chapters from his best works, starting with his theory of countervailing powers and continuing through his insights from The Affluent Society, The Age of Uncertainty, The Great Crash, and many others. It contains some intellectually startling stuff, particularly for those who haven't picked up a PhD in economics, and will, I promise, substantially change how you approach the economic thinking. And so the point of this post, other than my vague annoyance with the buyers at my local bookstores, is to urge you to purchase The Essential Galbraith. There's simply no better way to mark his death than acquainting yourself with the ideas of his life. In fact, if there's enough interest and purchases from you guys, I'd be interested in running a sort of blog-based book club on it over the next few weeks. Thoughts?
Update: Brad DeLong's review of Richard Parker's excellent Galbraith biography remains the finest short introduction to Galbraith that I've read. It's well worth a look.
