Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative
by Jennifer Burns
592 pages
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: Nov 2023

Released two weeks ago, Jennifer Burns’s “Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative” is the most significant biography of Friedman ever published. Burns is an associate professor of history at Stanford and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is also the author of “Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.” 

Milton Friedman (1912-2006) was a Nobel Prize-winning economist, advisor to several world leaders (including Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher) and one of the most influential economists of the 20th century. Friedman’s economic tenets were centered around limited government, free trade and individual rights.

Born just a dozen years after the Gilded Age, Friedman’s interest in economics spanned nearly eight decades and was catalyzed by the most substantial economic shock of his life – the Great Depression. A sophomore at Rutgers in 1929, his flirtation with actuarial sciences was quickly directed toward more urgent pursuits: trying to understand and model economic forces.

In this remarkably scholarly and thoughtful biography, Burns traces Friedman’s life from humble New Jersey roots to academia and government and, eventually, to the top of his field. Based on nearly a decade of research and with impressive historical context and detail, this biography overpowers the other notable work on Friedman’s life: Lanny Ebenstein’s 2007 “Milton Friedman: A Biography.”

Throughout the 482-page narrative, Burns rigorously explores Friedman’s fascination with economics as well as the evolution of prevailing economic theories and public policy during his life. Important supporting characters such as Arthur Burns and George Shultz receive much-deserved attention as do the intellectual discussions and debates Friedman conducted with his colleagues. And because the underlying subject matter can be abstruse, it is fortunate that Burns is skilled at explaining economic concepts in “plain English.”

Particularly compelling is the book’s Epilogue which reviews Friedman’s life and legacy while also considering the Great Recession of 2007-8 and the unprecedented fiscal policy measures which were enacted to stabilize the US economy. Friedman died in 2006 so his reaction to the financial crisis can only be the subject of speculation. But the dramatic economic and fiscal events of the ensuing decade have called into question some of his most strongly-held beliefs.

Readers will quickly discover this is not a traditional biography with dramatic storytelling and a healthy mix of Friedman’s personal and professional lives. Instead, it is an intellectual biography designed to explore and articulate Friedman’s economic philosophy and career within the broader context of his era. And from that perspective the book is an absolute success.

But there is no escaping the fact that many readers will find this biography difficult to navigate and impossible to enjoy. While any attentive reader can follow the plot and understand most of the content, much of the narrative feels like inside baseball – so focused on an esoteric field of study that the life of the subject is overwhelmed.

In addition, almost none of Friedman’s personal life is revealed. His wife was also a trained economist – and a frequent collaborator – so dinner conversation may have never veered far from topics such as price theory and Keynesian economic models. But his personal interests (to the extent he had any) are never revealed and his children are almost unmentioned.

Overall, Jennifer Burns’s biography of Milton Friedman is a meritorious book with a distinctly narrow natural audience. Anyone fascinated by Friedman’s public life and legacy, or by the evolution of economic theory during the 20th century, will find this book uncommonly revealing and well-written. But readers uninterested in the intricacies of macroeconomics and monetary policy are likely to find it unavoidably tedious and dull.

Overall rating: 3½ stars