Introduction by Rockwell

Introduction

William Peterson is sometimes regarded as among Ludwig von Mises’s most pro-lifi c students. This is a great credit to Professor Peterson because it is not precisely true. Peterson received his Masters degree from Columbia in 1948, and his Ph.D. from New York University (1953) but not from entirely studying under Mises. Instead he met Mises while teaching at New York University.

He was a colleague of Mises’s, not a student as such. Peterson received a conventional education in mainstream theory, and became a Misesian under Mises’s infl uence at Mises’s own seminar led by Murray Rothbard. So it was his willingness to change his mind, to learn from a colleague, to delve into a new research program following his formal education, that led Peterson to be one of the leading spokesmen for the free market during his long career.

These are rare qualities in an academic economist. Rarer still is his capacity for clarity of expression and soundness of principle, which he

1

2 Mises in America has shown throughout his life. The essays con-tained in this book illustrate the point beautifully. Few have written so poetically about the capacity of the market economy to bring social peace and prosperity in a manner that reveals the true preferences of its society’s members. The market is the best and more authentic form of true democracy, a point he has made throughout his life.

In 2005 he was given the Gary G. Schlarbaum Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Cause of Human Liberty. He has taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and Campbell University in North Carolina, where he infl uenced thousands of students. He was chief economist for U.S. Steel and worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce. His articles can be found in the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, Business Week, the Journal of Economic Literature, and many other places. For fourteen years, he wrote regular columns for the Wall Street Journal. He has spoken at every opportunity around the country to students and faculty and businesspeople.

All the while, he has worked to draw people’s attention to Mises and his thought, presenting it in a way that is compelling and persuasive. In many ways, this is an act of great humility and piety—again, a highly unusual combination for an economist of his stature and accomplishment. It is no wonder that he became such a dear friend Introduction 3

of both Ludwig and Margit von Mises, as well as just about every other pro-liberty thinker of the second half of the twentieth century.

Mises was not the only benefactor of Peterson’s work. He has reviewed thousands of books, and celebrated other great fi gures in the history of liberty, from Jefferson to Hazlitt. He has been driven by a passion to get the word out, and somehow make a contribution to alerting the world to great ideas that have been unjustly ignored. In so doing, he has made a great difference.

It is long past time for Peterson to be celebrated in his own right, as both a man and an intellectual force. After a lifetime of drawing attention to others, it is a thrill to see this collection in print, in the hope that it can turn the spot-light on Peterson himself, whose extraordinary gifts to the world will long endure.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

March 2009