Word: galbraith
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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John Kenneth Galbraith describes a return visit to his alma mater, the Ontario Agricultural College, about 30 years after his graduation to receive the first honorary degree the university had ever bestowed. A former professor recognized the returning honoree, stopped, shook hands, and said 'I see by the newspapers, Galbraith, that they are awarding you one of those honorary degrees...
This is why Galbraith endures, or, in the view of others, why he refuses to go away. Of course, he is an economist--possibly the most notable of his generation--but he long ago transcended the dismal circle of his colleagues. Galbraith is, above all, a student of human nature, and his memoirs are the culmination of that study. Written in the polished style for which he is reknowned, Galbraith's recollections yield an unending series of anecdotes and observations both entertaining and enlightening...
...there is something a little too clean about Galbraith's life, the unwanted fat comes away from the meat with too much precision. We learn much of Galbraith's political struggles but little about what he was ultimately fighting for; it seems almost as if he were trying to distinguish his work from the memoirs of another occasional Harvard professor, The Education of Henry Adams, published publicly in 1918, dwelt perhaps excessively on the soul of the nation it portrayed, but from Galbraith comes too little about that nation's--and his own--soul...
...Galbraith's diffidence on these matters can be overlooked with minimum difficulty, for the view of his biolographical landscape proves relentlessly fascinating. The journey begins on the Ontario farm where young Ken grew up, proceeds to the aforementioned dubious triumphs at OAC, then to the more highfalutin precincts of graduate study at the University of California at Berkeley (which he loved), Princeton (hated) and, eventually, in 1934, Harvard...
...description of Harvard, and the author's nearly half-century association with it, comprises one of the highlights of the book. The professor undoubtedly holds many warm feelings toward the old school; they have served each other's purposes long and well. But Galbraith's unfailing eye zeroes in on the excessive self-importance and overzealous self-taking that distinguishes Harvard from any another institution. His relationship with the university has not always been cordial. In 1948, the board of overseers attempted to block his tenure appointment--the first (and last) time it tried to intervene in a tenure decision...