James K. Galbraith

James K. Galbraith holds the Lloyd M. Bentsen, Jr., Chair in Government / Business Relations at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.

His latest book is The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too. The Nobel Laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz said The Predator State "[s]hows how to break the spell that conservatives have cast over the minds of liberals (and everyone else) for many years."

Earlier this week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:

Cabezo da Vaca's Adventures in the Unknown Interior of America. Translated and Edited by Cyclone Covey, 1983, University of New Mexico Press. I picked it up by happenstance; a gripping tale.

Earlier this summer I read the Inferno, in the Ciardi translation, amazingly for the first time. It was good to learn what will happen, in due course, to the present architects of the McCain campaign.

Next on the list: the galleys of Edward Fullbrook's Pluralist Economics, forthcoming from Zed books.

And at the top of the to-do pile: Andrew Gelman's brand-new Red State Blue State: Why Americans Vote as They Do. Gelman is an elegant practical statistician, a rare skill.

Read an excerpt from The Predator State, and learn more about the book at the publisher's website.

Learn more about James K. Galbraith's work at his faculty webpage.

--Marshal Zeringue