In The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order, Gary Gerstle provides a sweeping re-interpretation of the entire era-from the revival of market liberalism in the 1970s to the ruin generated by the 2008 global financial crisis-that places America at the center. For many, “neoliberalism” is a term of opprobrium, and their critique of it is simple: it prioritizes free market principles over people and, under the guise of expanding individual choice throughout the world, has dramatically shifted power toward capital. While sympathetic to the regime’s critics, Gerstle contends that the largely negative conventional wisdom misses the full contours of what neoliberalism was and why its worldview exerted such persuasive hold on both right and left for so long.
