John Kenneth Galbraith Books
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, and author known for his influential works on economic thought and public policy. He served as a professor at Harvard University and as U.
Known for: The Affluent Society, The Great Crash 1929, The New Industrial State
Books by John Kenneth Galbraith
The Affluent Society
The Affluent Society, first published in 1958, is a landmark work of economic thought by John Kenneth Galbraith. The book critiques the conventional wisdom of postwar economics, arguing that modern in...
The Great Crash 1929
The Great Crash 1929 is John Kenneth Galbraith’s brilliant, unsettling account of how a modern economy talked itself into disaster. More than a simple history of the Wall Street collapse, the book exa...
The New Industrial State
In this influential work, economist John Kenneth Galbraith analyzes the structure and power dynamics of modern industrial economies. He argues that large corporations, rather than market forces, domin...
Key Insights from John Kenneth Galbraith
Historical Context: The Economics of Scarcity
To understand how our economic philosophy went astray, one must look to its origins. Classical and neoclassical economics emerged in an era when scarcity governed life. For thinkers like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill, the central economic question was how to allocate limited resour...
From The Affluent Society
The Concept of Affluence
Postwar America represented a turning point in human history. For the first time, a large industrial society no longer struggled primarily with hunger, disease, or shelter. Automobiles, televisions, and refrigerators filled the homes of the average citizen. This was the age of affluence, and with it...
From The Affluent Society
The False Prosperity of the 1920s
Boom times often hide structural weakness better than hard times do. Galbraith begins by placing the crash in the broader economic atmosphere of the 1920s, a decade celebrated for technological innovation, rising output, consumer credit, and mass prosperity. Automobiles, radios, chain stores, and mo...
From The Great Crash 1929
Speculation Became a National Habit
The most dangerous bubbles begin when speculation stops feeling risky and starts feeling normal. Galbraith shows how, by the late 1920s, the stock market was no longer a specialized arena for financiers. It had become a national obsession. Office workers, small shopkeepers, socialites, and professio...
From The Great Crash 1929
Leverage Turned Optimism Into Fragility
A bubble becomes truly dangerous when rising prices are financed with borrowed money. One of Galbraith’s most important themes is the role of margin buying and other forms of leverage in magnifying both gains and losses. In the 1920s, investors could buy stocks by putting down only a fraction of the...
From The Great Crash 1929
The Market’s Structure Encouraged Instability
Financial disasters are rarely caused by emotion alone; they also require mechanisms that transmit emotion into damage. Galbraith pays close attention to the structure of the market in the late 1920s, showing that it was poorly equipped to absorb stress. Investment trusts, broker loans, opaque finan...
From The Great Crash 1929
About John Kenneth Galbraith
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, and author known for his influential works on economic thought and public policy. He served as a professor at Harvard University and as U.S. Ambassador to India, and wrote extensively on economic power, inequality, and t...
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John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, and author known for his influential works on economic thought and public policy. He served as a professor at Harvard University and as U.S. Ambassador to India, and wrote extensively on economic power, inequality, and t...
John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, and author known for his influential works on economic thought and public policy. He served as a professor at Harvard University and as U.S. Ambassador to India, and wrote extensively on economic power, inequality, and the role of government in modern economies.
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John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) was a Canadian-American economist, diplomat, and author known for his influential works on economic thought and public policy. He served as a professor at Harvard University and as U.
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