Hayek: A Life is the first volume of a definitive biography of one of the last century's most important thinkers, co- authored by Bruce Caldwell, the general editor of Friedrich Hayek's general works. It ends in 1950 and leaves the reader waiting (impatiently) for the second volume, which will cover the half of Hayek's career that produced The Constitution of Liberty, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Denationalisation of Money, A Tiger by the Tail, The Fatal Conceit, and his 1974 Nobel Economics Prize. It is easy to lionize great thinkers like Hayek and see them as something approaching superhuman. However, as Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger show in heartbreaking detail, Hayek was all too human. Formative years / Hayek was a member of Austria's lesser nobility--hence Friedrich August von Hayek--and the son of a highly educated father who loved botany and took his family on weekly hikes in the countryside. It would be generous to describe him as a "mediocre student"--his brilliance was anything but evident from his shoddy schoolwork--and he dove into political activism at the University of Vienna after his stint in the military.
Authors
- Published in
- United States of America
