The Affluent Society
Conventional wisdom has it that John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society spawned the neoliberalism we sse in Bill Clinton, Tony Blair & other world leaders. The economist's prose, lofty but still easily manageable, laid down the gauntlet for the post-cold war class struggle that was still far in the future in '58. He saw the widening gap between the richest & the poorest as an emergent threat to economic stability, & proposed significant investment in parks, transportation, education & other public amenities--what we now call infrastructure--to ameliorate these differences & postpone depression & revolution indefinitely. Widely criticized by conservatives & libertarians wary of public expenditures or increased government influence, he still influences liberal & neoliberal thinking. He's acknowledged that his work, like that of most social scientists, contains flaws (like his dire prediction of an out-of-control unemployment & inflation spiral that petered out in the '80s), but much of it remains fresh & true even today. Four years before Silent Spring, he wrote about the consumerist blight that threatened wild lands equally as much as cities; his hoped-for increase in environmental awareness has grown significantly in recent years. Whether you support the political implementations of his views, experiencing his writing is important to put those views in context. More than this, tho, it's an honest pleasure to read such original ideas so well expressed.--Amazon (edited)