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Outstanding
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Kirkus Reviews
An exemplary intellectual biography. [15 Dec 2004, p.1190]
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Favorable
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The Economist
Doing justice to this life story requires an outsize biography, one that not only tells Mr Galbraith's tale but sets it on the broader canvas of America's political and economic evolution. And Richard Parker's book does just that.
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Favorable
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Booklist Gilbert Taylor
Parker's portrait of the urbane, ironic Galbraith and his fortunes as a liberal diagnostician of American economic problems is a stout biography that will be the standard for years. [15 Feb 2005, p.1040]
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Favorable
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Chicago Tribune Warren Goldstein
Parker possesses the rare ability to make conflicting economic theories and professional battles among economists comprehensible--even worth caring about--to laypeople. As a result, embedded within "John Kenneth Galbraith" is a highly readable history of 20th Century economics and government economic policy since the New Deal. [20 Feb 2005, p.C1]
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Favorable
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Los Angeles Times Steve Fraser
It is richly informative and clearly written, even when treating more recondite matters of economic theory. [13 Feb 2005, p.R8]
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Favorable
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The New York Times Floyd Norris
Engaging and exhaustive.
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Favorable
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The New York Times Book Review Thomas Frank
I will confess that I was initially skeptical about the book's 820 pages of dense type, but every detail is justified and every digression fascinating.
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Favorable
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Washington Post Geoffrey Kabaservice
Readers whose patience will be tried by Parker's densely written 820-page tome will nonetheless appreciate the clarity and insight he brings to this portrait of the outsider as insider.
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Favorable
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The Globe And Mail [Toronto] Stephen Clarkson
Those who do not want to engage with Richard Parker's detailed exposition of the finer points separating Galbraith from his fellow economists may find it too long. Those who expect to understand Galbraith the man will be disappointed as well. [19 Feb 2005, p.D3]
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Favorable
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New York Review Of Books Jeff Madrick
With a strong grasp of complex economic issues that span some sixty years Parker succeeds in placing Galbraith's economic contributions within the intellectual tradition--part Keynesian and part derived from the work of Thorstein Veblen--to which they belong.
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Favorable
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New York Observer James Fallows
This is a rewarding book, with as much drama as many accounts of the Republic’s early days--and a lot more relevance for what lies ahead. [6 Jun 2005]
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Mixed
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Wall Street Journal Dan Seligman
Mr. Parker does a good job covering all these episodes in a busy life.... But a sympathetic biographer of a figure like Mr. Galbraith must do more than inform and entertain his readers. He must also persuade them -- a sizable fraction of them, anyway -- that his subject is an economist who deserves to be taken seriously.
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Mixed
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Publishers Weekly
While Parker, an economist, writes with fluency and expert knowledge, he thinks it essential to write short histories of everything Galbraith was involved in. And that was much. [3 Jan 2005, p.46]
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Mixed
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Boston Globe Joseph Rosenbloom
The book's impressive display of scholarly diligence exacts a cost: tedium.
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Unfavorable
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San Francisco Chronicle G. Pascal Zachary
A sprawling, dense and overly long biography of Galbraith that ultimately loses its way in the many fascinating but best forgotten episodes of his subject's long life.
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