Would you recommend that the Road to Serfdom be published?Mike Rappaport

Suppose that you were asked whether to recommend publication of a book that would become a classic?   Would you recognize it or give it a thumbs down?

Here are two readers reports on whether the University of Chicago Press should publish the Road to Serfdom from 1943.  Frank Knight, a famous economist who I have never been able to appreciate (Tom, I believe, likes him) panned the book, writing:

In sum, the book is an able piece of work, but limited in scope andsomewhat one-sided in treatment. I doubt whether it would have a verywide market in this country, or would change the position of manyreaders.

Oops!  (I wonder whether Knight’s view helps to explain why Hayek, who would win the Nobel Prize in economics, could not get a job at the University of Chicago Economics Department in the 1950s, when Chicago was a free market place.  Just unbelievable.

Happily, the review from Jacob Marschak was more favorable.

Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip: Marginal Revolution).