A Tenured Professor
A Novel
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
This biting satire of academia and high finance by the Harvard economist “is ingenious and humorous even as it chills and cuts close to the bone” (The New York Times).
John Kenneth Galbraith served in the Kennedy administration before becoming one of the twentieth century’s foremost economists and public intellectuals. In A Tenured Professor, he spins his wealth of knowledge—and knowledge of wealth—into a delightfully comical morality tale.
Montgomery Martin, a Harvard economics professor, creates a stock forecasting model which makes it possible for him to uncover society's hidden agendas. Seeking proof that human folly has no limit when motivated by greed, Martin sets off a mass hysteria that causes investors to believe—despite the lessons of history and physics—that up is the only direction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Twenty years have elapsed since the celebrated Harvard economist's last novel ( The Triumph ) but this succinct parable for our times, a rare comedy of point and precision, is well worth the wait. Harvard professor Montgomery Marvin, a clever, mild-mannered economist whose Ph.D thesis examined arcane aspects of refrigerator pricing, devises an approach to economics that he calls the Index of Irrational Expectations, based on the all-too-apparent notion that there is no limit to human folly when greed is the driving force. Buying stocks of irrationally inflated companies short, selling while the price is still high and replacing them cheap when the inevitable decline comes, Marvin and wife Marjie soon amass a fortune. Liberals at heart, they spend the money by endowing peace professorships at military schools and establishing countervailing PACs--money to support candidates for office opposing those helped by wealthy lobbyists. Only when they buy a major arms manufacturer and turn its efforts to peaceful purposes does the sacred defense establishment turn on them. This rueful tale is embellished with countless delightful asides on matters as various as Harvard academic manners and the proper behavior before Congressional committees.
