Saturday, June 01, 2024

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway. Really!

By email, I was just reminded of this book published in February of 2023. The email tried to praise this book and authors.

Don't we all love fantastic fiction, spin and conspiracy literature! Seems to be a book full of propaganda and demagoguery! The big business conspiracy theory!

What is the Big Myth? The content of this book probably! (Caveat: I did not read the book)

The authors appear to be quite the enemies of open societies! They probably don't even know how liberty is spelled nor do they have a clue what it means! 😊

P.S. The second author, Mr. Conway appears to be a little bit like a mystery ghost writer. According to the publisher: "Erik Conway is a historian of science and technology and works for the California Institute of Technology." But CalTech lists him as a past fellow (2019-20). He describes himself among other things as a "rocketeer" "historian".

From the book description:
"... 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 Electric-sponsored TV show that beamed free-market doctrine to millions and launched Ronald Reagan's political career. ..." 

The Big Myth: How American Business Taught Us to Loathe Government and Love the Free Market: Naomi Oreskes: Bloomsbury Publishing



Naomi Oreskes, Henry Charles Lea Professor of the History of Science
Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University (Google Scholar lifetime citation count 34,512, which is not bad)


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