Multitudes of major national and international dailies featured full-length obituaries for John Kenneth Galbraith, an economics philosopher, political adviser, ambassador, prolific best-selling author and, after his retirement, TV host.

Canadian-born and educated at the University of California-Berkeley, Galbraith maintained a ubiquitous presence through multiple U.S. administrations, according to the New York Times. Among those subject to his political influence were Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson, Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, Roosevelt and Clinton, and Senator Eugene McCarthy. However Galbraith may be best remembered for his unabashedly liberal economic arguments that favored intervention by the government to rein in corporate power and distribute more tax money to public services.

His 1958 landmark publication “The Affluent Society” argued that consumer sovereignty was a myth, and that giant American corporations essentially manufactured the desires they then satiated with consumer products, said the Guardian. The book’s thesis became so indoctrinated into later thinking, its subversive insights began to blur with common knowledge. It was translated into a dozen languages, sold more than 1 million copies and, in 1999, was ranked among the top 100 best English-language works of non-fiction by the Modern Library, a publisher.

Revered as an effective communicator and progressive thinker by some and criticized as arrogant and misguided by others, Galbraith was no less diminished by controversy than was his characteristic wit with advanced age.

“Even…in his 90s he was never slow to give me advice,” British Finance Minister Gordon Brown told the Associated Press.

Long overlooked for a Nobel Prize, the Washington Post reported that Galbraith was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton in 2000, the U.S. government’s highest civilian honor.

A colorful portrait of Galbraith in the Independent called him one of the “action intellectuals” of mid-century America, and highlighted his talent as a teacher who drew upon both his remarkable intellect and his breadth of experience.

Galbraith was an emeritus professor of economics at Harvard University when he died on April 29, 2006 of complications from pneumonia at Mt. Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts.