The Age of Uncertainty

John Kenneth Galbraith tells the story of the men who laid the foundations of economics, including Adam Smith, David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. What they made of the world of their time profoundly affects our world.

Professor Galbraith looks at the ideas that sustained the rich in the 19th century and how they still affect our attitudes today. Herbert Spencer justified the moneymaking in straight Darwinian terms as 'survival of the fittest'. Thorstein Veblen thought a parallel with Papuans a more appropriate one.

JK Galbraith investigates the impact of Karl Marx on our economic interpretation of society. The life and work of Marx set the pattern for a socialist future, but the revolution he so much wanted did not materialise in his lifetime.

Professor Galbraith traces the colonial adventure, from the Crusades to the present, from the fall of Acre to the fall of Saigon. He looks at the potent myths that sustained colonialism and the real motives behind them.

JK Galbraith examines WWI as an instrument in changing the old social order, and especially Lenin, who spent most of the war exiled in Switzerland urging soldiers to start a world revolution. A revolution did come, but Lenin nearly missed his chance to be part of it.

From the elegant banks of 17th-century Amsterdam to the dark days of the Great Depression, Prof Galbraith traces the history of money - its uses and abuses, the grand successes and the spectacular disasters.