The Affluent Society
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Edition: 6th pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: price clipped dj
In an era of postwar prosperity, John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society issued a bold and uncomfortable challenge to the economic orthodoxies of the twentieth century, arguing that America's celebrated private wealth stood in stark and shameful contrast to its neglected public squalor. Galbraith chronicles the rise of a consumer culture intoxicated by the production of private goods — cars, appliances, and gadgets — while roads crumble, schools decay, and public services wither, coining the now-legendary term the dependence effect to illustrate how corporations manufacture the very desires they then satisfy. The result is a devastating portrait of an economy that has confused abundance with well-being and mistaken the accumulation of things for the advancement of society. Written with the wit and authority of a man equally at home in academia and public life, The Affluent Society belongs to that rare class of economic texts that reshape the terms of political debate. Galbraith's prose is elegant and acerbic in equal measure, accessible enough for the general reader yet rigorous enough to unsettle professional economists. First published in 1958, the book's central argument — that a civilised society must invest as boldly in public goods as it does in private ones — has only grown more urgent with time, leaving the reader to wonder whether Galbraith's critique was a warning heeded or a prophecy ignored.
Author: John Kenneth Galbraith
Format: Hardback
Published: 1960, Hamish Hamilton
Genre: Business & economics
Edition: 6th pr.,
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Wear and tear with damage
Pages: Tanning and foxing
Markings: Previous owner
Condition remarks: price clipped dj
In an era of postwar prosperity, John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society issued a bold and uncomfortable challenge to the economic orthodoxies of the twentieth century, arguing that America's celebrated private wealth stood in stark and shameful contrast to its neglected public squalor. Galbraith chronicles the rise of a consumer culture intoxicated by the production of private goods — cars, appliances, and gadgets — while roads crumble, schools decay, and public services wither, coining the now-legendary term the dependence effect to illustrate how corporations manufacture the very desires they then satisfy. The result is a devastating portrait of an economy that has confused abundance with well-being and mistaken the accumulation of things for the advancement of society. Written with the wit and authority of a man equally at home in academia and public life, The Affluent Society belongs to that rare class of economic texts that reshape the terms of political debate. Galbraith's prose is elegant and acerbic in equal measure, accessible enough for the general reader yet rigorous enough to unsettle professional economists. First published in 1958, the book's central argument — that a civilised society must invest as boldly in public goods as it does in private ones — has only grown more urgent with time, leaving the reader to wonder whether Galbraith's critique was a warning heeded or a prophecy ignored.