A Life In Our Times

Well, here's a book I can't wait to read -- Richard Parker's JOHN KENNETH GALBRAITH:His Life, His Politics, His Economics. It's coming out in February from Farrar, Straus & Giroux. OK, so you may wonder why I'm so eager to read it. After all, what can there possibly be left to say about Ken Galbraith that . . . he hasn't said himself? Has ever an economist written more about himself? Not about personal "affairs," of course (Angie Dickinson, anyone?). But I've always thought you can tell a lot about a Great Man by the way he treats those he thinks aren't important. Which takes me back to a little anecdote about the great Harvard economist that hasn't been told -- and which certainly won't appear in Mr. Parker's volume. Allow me to blog it for you here . . .
In 1982, when I was working on my first book -- a nonfiction book called RED CARPET, about the most powerful American businessmen who had personal connections to the leaders of the Soviet Union -- I wrote to Galbraith to ask his help. Galbraith was then retired from Harvard but kept quite busy. He was on the board of an organization called The Committee on East West Accord whose purpose was to lobby for increased trade between the U.S. and the Soviets, on the notion (false, as history has shown) that the more a country trades with another country, the less likely it is to go to war. This theory was really popular immediately before the First World War. And of course, all that trade between American bankers and the Nazis in the 1930s didn't do a whole lot to moderate Adolf Hitler. But I digress. . .
Anway, Galbraith was on this committee along with Dr. Armand Hammer and Donald Kendall (the chairman of Pepsi, an impressive guy who did much to make Pepsi an international brand, and also introduced Pepsi to the Russians. Galbraith knew these guys, whom I was writing about, and I figured he could shed some light on them.
But Galbraith wrote back to say, no, he really knew nothing about East-West trade, that wasn't his area of his expertise. I persisted, wrote to him again (this was before e-mail, after all). And he wrote back saying, I'm afraid I really won't be of use to you -- I know nothing about the subject.
So three guesses as to who reviewed my book for the New York Times Book Review.
Yep: old Ken. And he trashed it. Really a hilarious review, actually, filled with such pomposities as "Still, truth has its claims" and "I, sir, was there." He insisted my book was full of mistakes (for instance, that I got the details of a meeting that David Rockefeller had with Nikita Khrushchev -- not knowing that my sources for that meeting were the only two people who were at the meeting, David Rockefeller and his daughter Neva). He even lambasted me for writing that Henry Ford was the father of the assembly line -- which I never said in the book. (I think maybe Galbraith skimmed the book, clearly didn't read it;)
The Times Book Review was quite apologetic when I called to complain -- I had the chutzpah to call and talk to the editor himself. They told me that Galbraith had requested to review the book, which is quite unusual at the Times, where they normally assign books. And why did he request it? Because he considered himself an expert in the subject -- and he was friendly with the men I wrote about, knew some of them well.
Galbraith, it turns out, was put up to this by Dr. Hammer, who was furious that I had revealed Hammer's ties to the KGB. Hammer threatened to sue me for libel, then tried to get my publisher to kill the book, and when that didn't work, he bought up all the copies he could. Then he got Galbraith to serve as his literary hit man.
So there I was, 23 years old, and I'm attacked in the New York Times Book Review by John Kenneth Galbraith. Ken probably figured I'd never find out why he asked to review the book -- or, if I did, that wouldn't tell anyone.
In the letter I eventually wrote to the Book Review, I was tempted to quote President John F. Kennedy on the subject of John Kenneth Galbraith: "If you gave Ken a good enema," the president wrote, "you could bury him in a cigar box."
I'm wondering whether I'll find that quote in Richard Parker's book . . .