The Age of Uncertainty

The Age of Uncertainty is one of the representative works of John Kenneth Galbraith, the renowned American economist and leading figure of the New Institutionalist school. Originally titled The Age of Uncertainty, it was written to accompany the BBC television series on economics that he produced and presented, and is therefore lucidly written for a general audience rather than a scholarly one. The book takes as its central thread how ideas shape society. It begins with the pioneers of eighteenth-century classical capitalism—Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus and others—and how they sketched the first theoretical outlines of the market economy; it then turns to the behavior and moral outlook of advanced capitalist society, before moving on to Karl Marx's critical dissent. The latter half broadens the scope further, taking in the ideas and violence of the colonial era, Lenin and the disintegration of political alliances, the rise and fall of money and banking, the arms race of the Cold War, the rise of the great corporation, the relationship between land and people, the swelling of the metropolis, and such questions as democracy, leadership and personal commitment. Galbraith seeks to show that the uncertainties people feel today did not appear out of nowhere but are closely bound up with two centuries of economic thought, institutional change and political events. Interweaving biography, period anecdote and dry irony, he makes the history of economic ideas—a subject that ought to be covered in curves and equations—feel effortless. The 2023 Chinese edition from CITIC Press is translated by Bai Tianhui and includes an introduction and a biographical sketch of Galbraith.