Who was Henry Hazlitt?

In 1916, he published his book Thinking as a Science, a guide on how to think. It is a course in logic: a manual to stimulate and manage mental energy.

In the early 1920s, he was a financial writer for the New York Evening Mail; and from 1925 to 1929, he was literary editor of the New York Sun. From 1939 to 1946, he was hired by the New York Times to write unsigned editorials and signed articles. He was published almost every day of the week and covered an extraordinary range of subjects.

In 1938, he reviewed the English translation of Mises's book Socialism for the New York Times. According to his own commentary, it was “The most devastating analysis of socialism ever penned     .” Mises was living in Switzerland, but they corresponded with each other. In 1940, Hazlitt received a call from Mises, who had just arrived in New York. Hazlitt was surprised: “It was as if John Stuart Mill had risen from the dead,” he said.

A refugee from the war in Europe, Mises had had to leave his home in Vienna and a comfortable academic position in Geneva, Switzerland. Hazlitt and Mises became great friends, and “Lu” found a special place in Hazlitt's heart and mind. Around the same time, Hazlitt met Ayn Rand and introduced her to Mises. From that point, the two worked together in the defense of pure capitalism.

Hazlitt was hired by Newsweek magazine, for which he wrote his weekly “Business Tides” column. There he became one of the most influential financial writers in the United States. In 1946, he wrote his great work Economics in One Lesson, which has sold nearly a million copies and has been translated into a dozen languages.