Milton Friedman was the most influential economist in policy circles since John Maynard Keynes. Friedman almost single-handedly resuscitated the importance of monetary policy to academic and policy thinking while leaving his mark in such areas as the natural rate of unemployment and the long-run Phillips curve, the choice of exchange rate regimes, the destabilizing effects of discretionary policies, the benefits of monetary policy rules, the determinants of consumption, the demand for money, the effects of inflation expectations on nominal interest rates, and the narrative approach to monetary history. The objective of Ed Nelson's two-volume book, Milton Friedman and Economic Debate in the United States, 1932–1972 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), is to provide an account of Friedman's views in major monetary policy debates during the period identified in the book's title, although Nelson frequently draws on Friedman's works after 1972. The sweep of the book is astonishing, both in...
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