An unimpeachable classic work in political philosophy, intellectual and
cultural history, and economics, The Road to Serfdom has inspired and
infuriated politicians, scholars, and general readers for half a century.
Originally published in 1944—when Eleanor Roosevelt supported the efforts
of Stalin, and Albert Einstein subscribed lock, stock, and barrel to the
socialist program—The Road to Serfdom was seen as heretical for its
passionate warning against the dangers of state control over the means of
production. For F. A. Hayek, the collectivist idea of empowering government
with increasing economic control would lead not to a utopia but to the
horrors of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. First published by the
University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944, The Road to Serfdom
garnered immediate, widespread attention. The first printing of 2,000
copies was exhausted instantly, and within six months more than 30,000
books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed
version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club
distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best
seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has
been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one
of the most important and influential books of the century. With this new
edition, The Road to Serfdom takes its place in the series The Collected
Works of F. A. Hayek. The volume includes a foreword by series editor and
leading Hayek scholar Bruce Caldwell explaining the book's origins and
publishing history and assessing common misinterpretations of Hayek's
thought. Caldwell has also standardized and corrected Hayek's references
and added helpful new explanatory notes. Supplemented with an appendix of
related materials ranging from prepublication reports on the initial
manuscript to forewords to earlier editions by John Chamberlain, Milton
Friedman, and Hayek himself, this new edition of The Road to Serfdom will
be the definitive version of Friedrich Hayek's enduring masterwork.