Deirdre Nansen McCloskey

A critical examination of economics’s past and future, and how it needs to change, by one of the most eminent political economists of our time The dominant view in economics is that money and government should play only a minor role in economic life. Economic outcomes, it is claimed, are best left to the “invisible hand” of the market. Yet these claims remain staunchly unsettled. The view taken in this important new book is that the omnipresence of uncertainty makes money and government essential features of any market economy. Since Adam Smith, classical economics has espoused nonintervention in markets. The Great Depression brought Keynesian economics to the fore, but stagflation in the 1970s brought a return to small-state orthodoxy. The 2008 global financial crash should have brought a reevaluation of that stance; instead the response has been punishing austerity and anemic recovery. This book aims to reintroduce Keynes’s central insights to a new generation of economists, and embolden them to return money and government to the starring roles in the economic drama that they deserve.

In America we like to think we live in a land of liberty, where everyone can say whatever they want. Throughout our history, however, we have also been quick to censor people who offend or frighten us. We talk a good game about freedom of speech, then we turn around and deny it to others. In this brief but bracing book, historian Jonathan Zimmerman and Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Signe Wilkinson tell the story of free speech in America: who established it, who has denounced it, and who has risen to its defense. They also make the case for why we should care about it today, when free speech is once again under attack. Across the political spectrum, Americans have demanded the suppression of ideas and images that allegedly threaten our nation. But the biggest danger to America comes not from speech but from censorship, which prevents us from freely governing ourselves. Free speech allows us to criticize our leaders. It lets us consume the art, film, and literature we prefer. And, perhaps most importantly, it allows minorities to challenge the oppression they suffer. While any of us are censored, none of us are free.