MILTON FRIEDMAN

The first full-length biography of the 20th century's free market champion.

To call this book merely a biography of Milton Friedman (1912-2006) is a disservice. It would be difficult to imagine a more comprehensive portrait of the influences, hard economics, and personal struggles and triumphs that shaped his life. From Friedman’s upbringing in New Jersey as the son of Jewish immigrants to his work on economic policy in the federal government during the New Deal, his scholarship at the University of Chicago, and the Nobel Prize in economics, Stanford history professor Burns sets Friedman's story within the context of the evolution of 20th-century economic theories and the individuals who influenced them, including luminaries such as John Maynard Keynes and Friedrich Hayek. The author examines Friedman's work with the concepts of monetarism, price theory, and free market capitalism; his conservatism and reliance on tradition and first principles in the development of new economic interpretations; and his association with the American conservative political movement. Burns briefly touches on Friedman's popular TV series Free to Choose, which gave him an even wider audience. The program, notes the author, “proved a major platform for Friedman’s views, dovetailing with the emergent anti-government, tax-cutting sentiment the Reagan campaign was built on.” Burns also delivers a wonderful profile of the central figure in Friedman's life, his wife, Rose, a formidable intellect and economist in her own right, in addition to discussing the role several other women economists played in his career. The author is evenhanded throughout and unafraid to critique. Her analysis of Friedman's work and interests, the descriptions of his wrangles with antisemitism, and her exploration of the role of women in the field of economics are sharp and illuminating. The book, both demanding and thorough, is not for casual readers, but it is required reading for anyone interested in the history of academic and applied economics, the principles of free market capitalism, and one of its most celebrated defenders.

A masterful profile of a most consequential American.