A 2022 Economist Best Book of the Year. The definitive account of the distinguished economist’s formative years. Few twentieth-century figures have been lionized and vilified in such equal measure as Friedrich Hayek—economist, social theorist, leader of the Austrian school of economics, and champion of classical liberalism. Hayek’s erudite arguments in support of individualism and the market economy have attracted a devout following, including many at the levers of power in business and government. Critics, meanwhile, cast Hayek as the intellectual forefather of “neoliberalism” and of all the evils they associate with that pernicious doctrine. In Hayek: A Life, historians of economics Bruce Caldwell and Hansjörg Klausinger draw on never-before-seen archival and family material to produce an authoritative account of the influential economist’s first five decades. This includes portrayals of his early career in Vienna; his relationships in London and Cambridge; his family disputes; and definitive accounts of the creation of The Road to Serfdom and of the founding meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society. A landmark work of history and biography, Hayek: A Life is a major contribution both to our cultural accounting of a towering figure and to intellectual history itself.
Bruce Caldwell is research professor of economics and the director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. He is the general editor of the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
Hansjoerg Klausinger is associate professor emeritus in the Department of Economics at WU Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Table of Contents
Introduction Part I. A Viennese Youth 1. A Fin-de-Siècle Wedding 2. Family Life 3. At School 4. Austrian Politics and Anti-Semitism 5. At War Part II. A Broadening of Horizons 6. Back at Home in Postwar Austria 7. The University of Vienna 8. The Peripatetic Student: Fritz at University 9. Mises and the Geistkreis 10. Changes of Scene 11. The Trip to America Part III. The Making of an Economist 12. Return to Vienna 13. Hella Joins the Family 14. At the Institute for Business Cycle Research 15. The Young Academic Part IV. Hayek in 1930s England 16. Hayek Comes to LSE 17. The Encounter with Keynes 18. Defending Economic Theory and Interpreting Hitler 19. Socialism and Knowledge 20. Academic Life at LSE 21. The Battle for Young LSE Minds 22. Hayek and Austria 23. Domestic Affairs 24. The Hayek Family Debates Politics Part V. Fighting the Spirit of the Age 25. Liberalism: Its Adversaries and Allies 26. Hayek and London Go to War: The Abuse and Decline of Reason 27. Cambridge 28. A Sixpence Penguin Volume: The Road to The Road to Serfdom 29. Scientism and Popper 30. The Publication(s) of The Road to Serfdom Part VI. Changing Worlds 31. War’s End 32. Postwar Austria 33. Mont Pèlerin 1947 34. Hayek Looks for a Job 35. 1949—Hayek’s Annus Horribilis 36. Hayek versus Hayek Acknowledgments References Index
