"Milton Friedman is one of the nation's outstanding economists, distinguished for remarkable analytical powers and technical virtuosity. He is unfailingly enlightening, independent, courageous, penetrating, and above all, stimulating."

--Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek

"It is a rare professor who greatly alters the thinking of his professional colleagues. It's an even rarer one who helps transform the world. Friedman has done both."

--Stephen Chapman, Chicago Tribune

University of Chicago Press Web Site, December, 2002

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In his classic book, Capitalism and Freedom, Milton Friedman presents his view of the proper role of competitive capitalism--the organization of the bulk of economic activity through private enterprise operating in a free market--as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom. He also outlines the role that government should play in a society dedicated to freedom and relying primarily on the market to organize economic activity.

Friedman begins with a discussion of the principles of a truly liberal society. He then applies those principles to a range of pressing problems, including monetary policy, discrimination, education, income distribution, welfare, and poverty. The result is a book that has sold well over half a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and has become increasingly influential in recent years as more and more governments have moved from highly planned economies to embrace free market economics.