READINGS: John Kenneth Galbraith

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith died recently. The Globe and Mail ran a story on what the man read.

Rather late in life, he was introduced to the work of Robertson Davies, which he thereafter avidly consumed. No doubt one reason was that Davies set his Deptford Trilogy -- Fifth Business (1970), The Manticore (1972) and World of Wonders (1975; all three published by Macmillan Canada) -- in rural and small-town southwestern Ontario, not far from where Galbraith had grown up; this, however, was more likely a co-ordinate attraction. Far more powerful, Galbraith insisted, was "the ring of truth" in Davies, embedded in his richly imagined physical, social and moral landscape, and ornamented with what Galbraith found to be "an extraordinary range of wholly unpredictable information."

In case you're tempted, The Deptford Trilogy is truly worth the effort.

Among Galbraith's works are The Affluent Society and The Good Society.