"A carefully researched work of intellectual history, and an urgently
needed political analysis." --Jane Mayer
"[A] scorching indictment of free market fundamentalism ... and how
we can change, before it's too late."-Esquire, Best Books of Winter
2023
The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound,
startling history of one of America's most tenacious--and
destructive--false ideas: the myth of the "free market."
In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt, Naomi Oreskes and Erik
M. Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial. Now, they
unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma: the "magic of the
marketplace."
In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy
powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American
orthodoxy: down with "big government" and up with unfettered markets.
With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns
to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail
the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton
Friedman into household names; recount the libertarian roots of the
Little House on the Prairie books; and tune into the General
Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions
and launched Ronald Reagan's political career.
By the 1970s, this propaganda was succeeding. Free market ideology would
define the next half-century across Republican and Democratic
administrations, giving us a housing crisis, the opioid scourge, climate
destruction, and a baleful response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Only by
understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will
serve, not stifle, democracy.
