As I write in the introduction to a Southern Economic Journal symposium (commemorating the anniversaries of Ludwig von Mises’s “Economic Calculation in the Socialist Commonwealth” and F.A. Hayek’s “The Use of Knowledge in Society”): “the roaring (20-)20s are a decade of anniversaries and milestones. Last year was the 60th anniversary of The Calculus of Consent by James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock. This year, for example, will be the fiftieth anniversary of Israel Kirzner’s Competition and Entrepreneurship, and we will celebrate at the Association of Private Enterprise Education conference in April.
It’s also the 25th anniversary of another book that has not gotten the attention it deserves in either academic or popular circles: Virginia Postrel’s The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict over Creativity, Enterprise, and Progress. It appeared in 1998, toward the end of her time as editor-in-chief of Reason magazine.