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Followers of economist Milton Friedman—of whom I’m one—ought to depend themselves fortunate that Stanford historian Jennifer Burns has written a detailed biography of him. Based mostly on intensive archival analysis that solely a affected person, first‐charge historian can do, she covers his mental life in its numerous levels from his time in highschool to his dying. Alongside the best way, we see how he struggled within the Thirties and even, to some extent, within the Nineteen Forties to determine his function in academia. Burns additionally exhibits in nice element the essential influences in his life and, later, the various methods he has influenced the economics occupation and the larger world of coverage—on taxes, financial coverage, welfare coverage, and the draft, to call 4 of crucial.
Her ebook is on no account a hagiography. At numerous factors, she criticizes Friedman, generally unfairly. She’s additionally a little unfair to his spouse, Rose Friedman, an economist in her personal proper. However that makes Burns’s many optimistic evaluations of Milton’s work all of the extra credible.
Though she is, as famous, a historian and never an economist, and generally makes little slips in her financial exposition, her huge‐image understanding of economics is spectacular, particularly on one of many hardest points to know: financial coverage. Certainly, she lays out the truth that the Federal Reserve doesn’t immediately management rates of interest higher than many economists I’ve learn.
These are the opening paragraphs of my overview of Jennifer Burns’s ebook Milton Friedman: The Final Conservative, Regulation, Summer time 2024.
As I clarify close to the tip of the overview, I’m not in love with the ebook’s title, to place it mildly. However that’s not crucial a part of my overview. I reward many issues within the ebook and criticize a number of.
Learn the entire thing.
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