The Great Persuasion

By Angus Burgin,

Book cover of The Great Persuasion: Reinventing Free Markets since the Depression

Book description

Just as today's observers struggle to justify the workings of the free market in the wake of a global economic crisis, an earlier generation of economists revisited their worldviews following the Great Depression. The Great Persuasionis an intellectual history of that project. Angus Burgin traces the evolution of postwar economic…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Great Persuasion as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

For myself, one of the most remarkable and fascinating aspects of the recent history of economics has been the resurgence of free-market advocacy opposed to the more interventionist institutionalist and Keynesian policy ideas that dominated economics from the New Deal on through to the post-World War II period. 

Burgin’s excellent book charts this revival of pro-market thinking, focusing particularly on F. A. Hayek, the Mont Pelerin Society, the Chicago School of Economics, and gives an especially important role to Milton Friedman whose work was to influence both Reagan and Thatcher.    

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