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Bloomsbury presents The Big Myth by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway read by Liza Seneca

A carefully researched work of intellectual history and an urgently needed political analysis Jane Mayer

A scorching indictment of free market fundamentalism and how we can change before its too lateEsquire Best Books of Winter 2023

The bestselling authors of Merchants of Doubt offer a profound startling history of one of Americas most tenaciousand destructivefalse ideas the myth of the free market

In their bestselling book Merchants of Doubt Naomi Oreskes and Erik M Conway revealed the origins of climate change denial Now they unfold the truth about another disastrous dogma the magic of the marketplace

In the early 20th century business elites trade associations wealthy powerbrokers and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy down with big government and up with unfettered markets With startling archival evidence Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks combat unions and defend child labor They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names recount the libertarian roots of the Little House on the Prairie books and tune into the General Electricsponsored TV show that beamed freemarket doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagans political career

By the 1970s this propaganda was succeeding Free market ideology would define the next halfcentury across Republican and Democratic administrations giving us a housing crisis the opioid scourge climate destruction and a baleful response to the Covid19 pandemic Only by understanding this history can we imagine a future where markets will serve not stifle democracy