Hoover Book Club: Bruce Caldwell On Mont Pèlerin 1947

Talks from the Hoover Institution

Tuesday, April 12, 2022 Hoover Institution, Stanford University

Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges.

In our latest installment, watch a discussion with Bruce Caldwell, editor of Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, published by the Hoover Institution Press and John B. Taylor the George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics at the Hoover Institution. The discussion is moderated by Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism, and a Hoover Institution research fellow.

ABOUT THE EDITOR
Bruce Caldwell was a distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution. A historian of economic thought, he is a research professor of Economics and the founder and director of the Center for the History of Political Economy at Duke University. His latest works is as the editor of Mont Pèlerin 1947: Transcripts of the Founding Meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, published by the Hoover Institution Press.

ABOUT THR BOOK
Marking the 75th anniversary of the first meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society, in 1947, this volume presents for the first time the original transcripts from this landmark event. The society was created by Friedrich Hayek as a forum for leading economists and intellectuals to discuss and debate classical liberal values in the face of a rapidly changing world and political trends toward socialism. Bruce Caldwell, a major scholar of Hayek, provides an informative introduction and explanatory notes to the source documents, drawn from the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, where they have been available to scholars. Now accessible to all, the transcripts reveal what was said on a wide range of topics, including free markets, monetary reform, wage policy, taxation, agricultural policy, the future of Germany, Christianity, and liberalism, and more. They provide insights into the thinking of men such as Hayek, Milton Friedman, Aaron Director, Frank Knight, Walter Eucken, Karl Popper, and other leading figures in the classical liberalism movement, illuminating not only their ideas but also their distinctive personalities. A photo section shows rarely seen images from the meeting.