that greeted my wife's and my book Free to Choose, a direct
lineal descendant of Capitalism and Freedom presenting the
same basic philosophy and published in 1980. That book was
reviewed by every major publication, frequently in a featured,
lengthy review. It was not only partly reprinted in Book Di-
gest, but also featured on the cover. Free to Choose sold some
400,000 hardcover copies in the U.S. in its first year, has been
translated into twelve foreign languages, and was issued in
early 1981 as a mass-market paperback.

The difference in reception of the two books cannot, we
believe, be explained by a difference in quality. Indeed, the
earlier book is the more philosophical and abstract, and
hence more fundamental. Free to Choose, as we said in its
Preface, has "more nuts and bolts, less theoretical
framework." It complements, rather than replaces,
Capitalism and Freedom. On a superficial level, the difference
in reception can be attributed to the power of television. Free
to Choose was based on and designed to accompany our PBS
series of the same name, and there can be little doubt that the
success of the TV series gave prominence to the book.

That explanation is superficial because the existence and
success of the TV program itself is testimony to the change in
the intellectual climate. We were never approached in the
1960s to do a TV series like Free to Choose. There would
have been few if any sponsors for such a program. If, by any
chance, such a program had been produced, there would have
been no significant audience receptive to its views. No, the
different reception of the later book and the success of the TV
series are common consequences of the change in the climate
of opinion. The ideas in our two books are still far from being
in the intellectual mainstream, but they are now, at least,
respectable in the intellectual community and very likely al-
most conventional among the broader public.

The change in the climate of opinion was not produced by
this book or the many others, such as Hayek Road to Serf-
dom and Constitution of Liberty, in the same philosophical
tradition. For evidence of that, it is enough to point to the call
for contributions to the symposium Capitalism, Socialism
and Democracy issued by the editors of Commentary in

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