Icons we mourn: JK Galbraith

Everyone who studied politics, economics or history has (or ought to have) read at least one article, if not an entire book, by John Kenneth Galbraith. The man who was too tall (at 6 foot 8) to enlist in the US army during WWII died yesterday in Cambridge, MA.

Amartya Sen, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, maintains that Mr. Galbraith not only reached but also defined the summit of his field. In the 2000 commencement address at Harvard, Mr. Parker's book recounts, Mr. Sen said the influence of "The Affluent Society," was so pervasive that its many piercing insights were taken for granted.

"It's like reading 'Hamlet' and deciding it's full of quotations," he said.