Ambassador's Journal: A Personal Account of the Kennedy Years

Having recently exhumed this 1969 book from my basement, I took time to selectively enjoy some of the diary entries which were written during the Kennedy years, largely from the US Embassy in India. Galbraith was a Harvard economist who worked for the JFK campaign and was given the ambassadorial appointment to India which he had asked for. In his usual witty and sardonic style, he recounts anecdotes from this era, including encounters with JFK, Nehru, and other world leaders. The book closes with the funeral of JFK at which Galbraith meets French President De Gaulle. QUOTE I told him I thought there was a real resilience in our political system; that we could survive the death of John F. Kennedy; that we needed to reflect less on the consequences of this action and more on the wickedness of the violence which struck down a man who so throughly loved life. De Gaulle said he agreed, that we had come to be far too casual abouth death. France and the United States both had a core of violent people at large. UNQUOTESuch is the tenor of this book, which is more mildly humorous than profound. Incidentally, I have reviewed a book by another ambassador to India - from Mexico - whom I believe served at about the same time in New Delhi as Galbraith. The book entitled In Light Of India is by Mexican writer Octavio Paz, and is more focused on culture and history than this diary of the U.S. ambassador who was his contemporary.

Here's a book that deserves to be back in print. Galbaith might not be much of an economist but he's a wonderful writer, and his perspective on people and events of the early Sixties should retain its historical interest as that era falls further astern