The Essence of Friedman: Volume 366 (Hoover Publication) - Softcover

Milton Friedman graduated from Rutgers University in 1932 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics. At the University of Chicago, influenced by Frank Knight and Jacob Viner, he narrowed his focus and received his master's degree in economics in 1933. After completing his doctorate at Columbia University, working in New York for the National Bureau of Economic Research and for the federal government in Washington, D.C., and teaching at several universities, he returned to the University of Chicago, where his teaching career spanned three decades. He retired from active teaching in 1977 as the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor of Economics. Friedman's scholarly and innovative research in economics brought him the Nobel Prize in 1976. in the 1960s and 1970s he also moved into the greater public arena by becoming an informal advisor to Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, and a columnist for Newsweek magazine. In 1981, he was named a member of the President's Economic Policy Advisory Board.

Friedman has authored, alone or with collaborators, many book and literally hundreds of journal articles, research studies, and newspaper and magazine columns. After retiring from the Chicago faculty, he became a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Since then, he also served as the presenter of the ten-part PBS television documentary, "Free to Choose", which first aired in 1980. A book of the same name based on that documentary and written with his wife, Rose, was the best-selling nonfiction book in the United States in 1980. Friedman continues his research, his writing, and his speaking engagements.

Kurt R. Leube is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. He edited, with Thomas Gale Moore, The Essence of Stigler (Hoover Institution Press, 1986) and with Chiaki Nishiyama, The Essence of Hayek (Hoover Institution Press, 1985).

Anna J. Schwartz is an economic historian at the National Bureau of Economic Research in New York. She has collaborated with Milton Friedman for 30 years on a series of books and articles, including the landmark A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960 (Princeton University Press, 1963).