Based on archival research and interviews with leading participants in the movement, this book traces the ascendancy of neoliberalism from the academy of interwar Europe to supremacy under Reagan and Thatcher and in the decades since. It argues that there was nothing inevitable about the victory of free-market politics.
"Daniel Stedman Jones has an unusual talent--making the history of economic thought fascinating and significant. In tracing the evolution of neoliberal ideas and their implementation in public policy in Britain and the United States, he does a superb job of helping us understand both the last half-century of Atlantic history and the origins of the current crisis. No book could be more timely."--Eric Foner, Columbia University
"Daniel Stedman Jones captures brilliantly the interaction between ideas and events in this compelling history of the rise of Thatcherism and Reaganism. He displays a willingness, unusual in a historian, to treat economic ideas seriously, and not just as weapons in a political struggle. In the light of the economic collapse of 2007-2008, the intellectual debates of the 1970s and 1980s, brought so vividly to life here, are as fresh as they were at the time."--Robert Skidelsky, author of Keynes: Return of the Master
"Daniel Stedman Jones shows how neoliberalism gained ascendancy in both the United States and the United Kingdom. This timely book is a model of calmness, lucidity, and reasoned argument, intent on understanding neoliberalism rather than celebrating or condemning it out of hand."--Sean Wilentz, author of "The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008"
"Jones provides a readable and laudable account of the history of neoliberalism and its political ascendancy. Besides containing the potential for a good documentary. . . . His book also showcases heretofore unacknowledged archival material and scholarly synthesis. I recommend this book to not only historians of economics, but all policy historians and political theorists who are interested in the postwar history of the New Right."
---Robert Van Horn, History of Economic Ideas
