Snapshots in History: October 15: Remembering John Kenneth Galbraith

On October 15 and beyond, take a moment to remember the contributions of Canadian-American economist John Kenneth Galbraith (Born: October 15, 1908 at Iona Station, Ontario, Canada; Died: April 29, 2006 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States). Galbraith was a long-time professor of economics at Harvard University and wrote popular and readable books such as American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). He also served several American Democratic Party Presidents such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, including serving as United States Ambassador to India during the Kennedy Administration. Galbraith approached economics from a post-Keynesian lens within an institutional perspective. He saw trade unions as a countervailing (or opposing) force to the influences of big business and government and visa versa.

J.K. Galbraith received a Bachelor of Science in agricultural economics from the Ontario Agricultural College (affiliated to the University of Toronto), followed by Master of Science and Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

J.K. Galbraith received many awards and honours during his illustrious life, including the United States’ Medal of Freedom in 1946 and its Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000, the Lomonosov Gold Medal in 1993, and the Order of Canada (Officer Level) in 1997.

Consider the following titles for borrowing from Toronto Public Library collections:

Non-Fiction Books: