A Financial Times Best Economics Book of 2021 From the author of Keynes Hayek, the next great duel in the history of economics. In 1966 two columnists joined Newsweek magazine. Their assignment: debate the world of business and economics. Paul Samuelson was a towering figure in Keynesian economics, which supported the management of the economy along lines prescribed by John Maynard Keynes’s General Theory. Milton Friedman, little known at that time outside of conservative academic circles, championed “monetarism” and insisted the Federal Reserve maintain tight control over the amount of money circulating in the economy. In Samuelson Friedman, author and journalist Nicholas Wapshott brings narrative verve and puckish charm to the story of these two giants of modern economics, their braided lives and colossal intellectual battles. Samuelson, a forbidding technical genius, grew up a child of relative privilege and went on to revolutionize macroeconomics. He wrote the best-selling economics textbook of all time, famously remarking "I don’t care who writes a nation’s laws—or crafts its advanced treatises—if I can write its economics textbooks." His friend and adversary for decades, Milton Friedman, studied the Great Depression and with Anna Schwartz wrote the seminal books The Great Contraction and A Monetary History of the United States. Like Friedrich Hayek before him, Friedman found fortune writing a treatise, Capitalism and Freedom, that yoked free markets and libertarian politics in a potent argument that remains a lodestar for economic conservatives today. In Wapshott’s nimble hands, Samuelson and Friedman’s decades-long argument over how—or whether—to manage the economy becomes a window onto one of the longest periods of economic turmoil in the United States. As the soaring economy of the 1950s gave way to decades stalked by declining prosperity and "stagflation," it was a time when the theory and practice of economics became the preoccupation of politicians and the focus of national debate. It is an argument that continues today.

Second in a two-volume study of the Nobel Prize winner’s long career: “Nelson knows more about Milton Friedman’s economics than anyone else alive.” —Business Economics This study is the first to distill Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman’s vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. With this ambitious new work, Edward Nelson closes the gap: Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed economist, the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman’s research output, economic framework, and legacy. This two-volume account provides a foundational introduction to Friedman’s role in several major economic debates that took place in the United States between 1932 and 1972. This second volume covers the years between 1960 and 1972—years that saw the publication of Friedman and Anna Schwartz’s Monetary History of the United States. The book also covers Friedman’s involvement in a number of debates in the 1960s and 1970s, on topics such as unemployment, inflation, consumer protection, and the environment. As a fellow monetary economist, Nelson writes from a unique vantage point, drawing on both his own expertise in monetary analysis and his deep familiarity with Friedman’s writings. Using extensive documentation, the book weaves together Friedman’s research contributions and his engagement in public debate, providing an unparalleled analysis of Friedman’s views on the economic developments of his day. “No previous biographer has Nelson’s deep and sophisticated understanding of monetary economics.” —Economic History

First in a two-volume study of Friedman’s long career: “No previous biographer has Nelson’s deep and sophisticated understanding of monetary economics.” —Economic History This study is the first to distill Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman’s vast body of writings into an authoritative account of his research, his policy views, and his interventions in public debate. With this ambitious new work, Edward Nelson closes the gap: Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States is the defining narrative on the famed economist, the first to grapple comprehensively with Friedman’s research output, economic framework, and legacy. This two-volume account provides a foundational introduction to Friedman’s role in several major economic debates that took place in the United States between 1932 and 1972. This first volume in the two-volume account takes the story through 1960, covering the period in which Friedman began and developed his research on monetary policy. It traces Friedman’s thinking from his professional beginnings in the 1930s as a combative young microeconomist, to his wartime years on the staff of the US Treasury, and his emergence in the postwar period as a leading proponent of monetary policy. As a fellow monetary economist, Nelson writes from a unique vantage point, drawing on both his own expertise in monetary analysis and his deep familiarity with Friedman’s writings. Using extensive documentation, the book weaves together Friedman’s research contributions and his engagement in public debate, providing an unparalleled analysis of Friedman’s views on the economic developments of his day. “Magisterial . . . For anyone wanting to understand the ideas that Friedman generated over his research career, this book is, and will remain for some time, the essential guide.” —Financial World

Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was one of the most important 20th century advocates of libertarian and conservative ideas in academia and amongst the wider public. He made a critical contribution to the development of the free market and monetarist economics that challenged the dominant interventionist and Keynesian paradigm throughout the developed world. His books, popular writings, and television programmes, were crucial to the public understanding of the role of the market in the promotion of human freedom and well-being. This outstanding sets out Friedman's intellectual contribution to economic methodology and our understanding of a host of economic phenomena, including the relationship between consumption and income, the workings of flexible exchange rates, and the relationship between inflation and the supply of money in the economy. Dr Ruger also sets out Friedman's contribution to political theory, discussing Friedman's work on the relationship between economic and political freedom, the social responsibilities of business, and the proper relationship between the individual and the state, particularly in the context of conscription, drug prohibition and discrimination.