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Book Breaks with Jacob Soll on “Free Market: The History of an Idea”

The Gilder Lehrman Institute’s weekly program Book Breaks features the most exciting history scholars in America discussing their books with host Gena Oppenheim live, followed by a Q&A with home audiences.

Join us online on Sunday, January 29 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. PT) with Jacob Soll as he discusses “Free Market: The History of an Ideal.”

After two government bailouts of the US economy in less than twenty years, free market ideology is due for serious reappraisal. In Free Market, Jacob Soll details how we got to this current crisis and how we can find our way out by looking to earlier iterations of free market thought. Contrary to popular narratives, early market theorists believed that states had an important role in building and maintaining free markets. But in the eighteenth century, thinkers insisted on free markets without state intervention, leading to a tradition of ideological brittleness. That tradition only calcified in the centuries that followed. Tracing the intellectual evolution of the free market from Cicero to Milton Friedman, Soll argues that we need to go back to the origins of free market ideology in order to truly understand it.

Jacob Soll is a professor of philosophy, history, and accounting at the University of Southern California.

For more information, please contact us at bookbreaks@gilderlehrman.org or visit us at gilderlehrman.org/bookbreaks.

Purchase books for Book Breaks at https://bookshop.org/lists/book-breaks-featured-guests. We receive an affiliate commission from every purchase through the link provided. Thank you for supporting our programs and independent bookstores!

Everyone who registers will be sent a Zoom meeting link and instructions in the confirmation email.

For more information, please contact us at bookbreaks@gilderlehrman.org or visit us at gilderlehrman.org/bookbreaks.

Jan 29, 2023 02:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)