In the early 20th century, business elites, trade associations, wealthy powerbrokers, and media allies set out to build a new American orthodoxy: down with "big government" and up with unfettered markets. With startling archival evidence, Oreskes and Conway document campaigns to rewrite textbooks, combat unions, and defend child labor. They detail the ploys that turned hardline economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman into household names;...

A look at why the worst economy since the 1930s has brought about the revival of conservatism.

Revered today across the political spectrum, Abraham Lincoln believed in a small but active government in a nation defined by aspiration. He embraced the market and the transportation and communications revolutions beginning to take hold, and helped give birth to the modern industrial economy. Lincoln's vision of an upwardly mobile society that rewards and supports individual striving was wondrously realized. Now, it is under threat. Economic stagnation...