Books for the News

Mr. Hayek’s ideas are striking a chord

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Ever since conservative pundit Glenn Beck discussed the book on his show last week, F.A. Hayek’s classic treatise on free-market economics The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents—The Definitive Edition has seen an explosion in sales, topping Amazon.com’s bestseller list and receiving all sorts of commentary from other journalists, bloggers, and reviewers amazed at the resurgence in demand for a title published nearly seventy years ago. Now that the buzz has died down somewhat (Beck’s own book The Overton Window recently replaced Hayek’s book at the top of Amazon’s bestsellers) the Wall Street Journal blog Real Time Economics ran a story today that offers a interesting analysis of the phenomenon, and the current political climate that is driving such over-the-top sales of Hayek’s book.
Read it online at the Real Time Economics blog.
Also read this excerpt detailing the book’s publication history or check out economist Russell Robert’s Hayek vs. Keynes rap.