Name-Dropping: From FDR On

In this collection of anecdotes of the "famous people I have known" variety, John Kenneth Galbraith lets his hair down--well, as much as a Harvard economist in his 90s might be expected to, anyway. Despite the informality, Galbraith's prose is suffused throughout with dignified precision, even at its most profane (as in his recollection of his extemporaneous evaluation of incomplete returns from the 1948 presidential election: "I think Thomas E. Dewey may well be shitting in his blue serge pants"). For the most part, Name-Dropping concerns itself with the major American statesmen from the Democratic party of the mid-20th century--Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, and Johnson--but Galbraith also shares his reminiscences of working on Adlai Stevenson's two failed campaigns against Eisenhower ("no modern politician," he writes of the experience, "had a more faithful coterie of supporters") and of Eleanor Roosevelt, "who, but for the accident of history and the prevailing constraints of gender, could have been President in her own right." On the international front, there's a brief encounter with Albert Speer, Hitler's architect and economic director, and more extended contact with Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister (Galbraith served as ambassador to India in the Kennedy administration). Name-Dropping is a slim connection of anecdotes, held together by little more than Galbraith's presence, but that is more than enough to make its behind-the-scenes history cohesive and, in its way, quietly entertaining. --Ron Hogan