Description: This book examines the rise and diffusion of free-market thinking, from the early 20th century through to the age of Obama. It tracks the ascendency of neoliberalism, its key players and decisive moments of reconstruction, including the Chicago School of economics, New York City's bankruptcy, Hurricane Katrina, and the Wall Street crisis of 2008.
Review Quotes: "Constructions of Neoliberal Reason is destined to become a classic. In it, Jamie Peck provides a masterful account of an infinitely adaptive free-market project. I know of no other text that is able to tell such a robust social history of neoliberalization; I know of no other scholar so attentive to the 'mongrel' character of market fundamentalism. By foregrounding the creativity of neoliberal reason, Peck is able to demonstrate how this global common sense requires of us all constant analytical and political vigilance. Social science scholars and students will long be grateful to Peck for this much-needed intervention." --Ananya Roy, Professor, Department of City and Regional Planning, Friesen Chair in Urban Studies; Co-Director, Global Metropolitan Studies Center; and Education Director, Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley
"Most critics of neoliberalism leave the reader mystified at to how such flawed ideas could ever have become so powerful. Jamie Peck is the rare exception; his new book eviscerates neoliberal claims while simultaneously revealing the intellectual tricks and political maneuverings by which an always changing and deeply contradictory doctrine established its hegemony." --Fred Block, Research Professor of Sociology, University of California at Davis
"It is a daunting task to write a history of neoliberalism that also illustrates the complexity and diversity of present-day neoliberal ideas and strategies in under 300 pages... those historians who are interested in the social and historical context of economic knowledge will find a very good synthesis of a wide range of research that has been published in the last ten years, as well as thought-provoking conceptions of neoliberal governance in the present day." --Journal of the History of Economic Thought