What is “free enterprise” and how has it shaped American politics? That’s the topic of today’s episode with Lawrence Glickman, author of Free Enterprise: An American History. He spends the hour unpacking the history, narrative, and myth of free enterprise—and how it has shaped our common sense and political attitudes since the New Deal—with guest host Nan Enstad.
Lawrence Glickman is a professor of history at Cornell University and the author of A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society (Cornell University Press, 1997), Buying Power: A History of Consumer Activism in America (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and the newly-released Free Enterprise: An American History (Yale University Press, 2019).