The Economists’ Hour: How the False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society

The Economists' Hour by Binyamin Appelbaum is the biography of a revolution: the story of how economists who believed in the power and the glory of free markets transformed the business of government, the conduct of business and, as a result, the patterns of everyday life. In the four decades between 1969 and 2008, these economists played a leading role in reshaping taxation and public spending and clearing the way for globalization. They reshaped the US government's approach to regulation, assigning a value to human life to determine which rules are worthwhile. Economists even convinced President Nixon to end military conscription.

The United States was the epicentre of the intellectual ferment, but the embrace of markets was a global phenomenon, seizing the imagination of politicians in countries including the United Kingdom, Chile and New Zealand.

The revolution failed to deliver on its central promise of increased prosperity. In the United States, growth...