The Mont Pelerin Society is an august, admired, yet strangely enigmatic organisation. Perhaps that’s because it holds no official views, formulates no policies and publishes no manifestos. Or because it doesn’t publicise the results of its discussions – and doesn’t even seek agreement among its members. So why does this singularly low-profile organisation attract distinctly high-profile members – including distinguished politicians, Pulitzer Prize–winning writers and journalists and Nobel Prize–winning economists? Perhaps because, for three quarters of a century, it has played a crucial role in the battle of ideas – expanding and deepening liberal philosophy and spreading liberal thought around the world. In Scaling the Heights, Eamonn Butler traces the history of the Mont Pelerin Society. He tracks its formation in the wake of World War II, explores its many internal debates about how ‘activist’ it should become and explains how it has come to provide a unique forum for debate, discussion, study and self-education. But, above all, he celebrates a Society that, for 75 years, has remained unwaveringly true to its initial vision: to bring together individuals who seek to defend, support and promote liberal values – and to keep the intellectual flame of liberalism burning brightly across the globe.
Circa l’autore
Eamonn Butler is Director of the Adam Smith Institute, one of the world’s leading policy think tanks. He holds degrees in economics and psychology, a Ph D in philosophy and an honorary DLitt. In the 1970s he worked in Washington for the US House of Representatives, and taught philosophy at Hillsdale College, Michigan, before returning to the UK to co-found the Adam Smith Institute. He has won the Freedom Medal of Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge and the UK National Free Enterprise Award; his film Secrets of the Magna Carta won an award at the Anthem Film Festival; and his book Foundations of a Free Society won the Fisher Prize. Eamonn’s other books include introductions to the pioneering economists Adam Smith, Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises. He has also published primers on classical liberalism, public choice, capitalism, democracy, trade, the Austrian School of Economics and great liberal thinkers, as well as The Condensed Wealth of Nations and The Best Book on the Market. He is co-author of Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls, and of a series of books on IQ. He is a frequent contributor to print, broadcast and online media.