Last seen rapping about free-markets, F. A. Hayek is enjoying a popularity resurgence. Not only has his hip hop video been viewed three-quarters of a million times (and with a new recommendation from Boing Boing, hits are bound to keep rising), but he (or at least his legacy) has been appearing everywhere from John Stossel’s Fox Business Channel show to our very own bestseller lists. Not too shabby for an economist who has been dead for nearly twenty years and whose theories have been overshadowed in the era of the stimulus by his rival Keynes.
We asked Bruce Caldwell, editor of Hayek’s collected works, why this is Hayek’s moment and why his 1944 book The Road to Serfdom is finding new audiences. His response was published today on the Washington Post‘s Short Stack blog. Check it out for the story behind the book, and be sure to read up on the book’s publishing history (which Caldwell essentially extends in his WaPo piece) here, as well as our library of all of Hayek’s titles.