What do you think?
Rate this book
Liberdade: 100 Conversations Starters on Liberalism, Latin America, and Brazil
238 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
3 people want to read
About the author
Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
62 books317 followersDeirdre Nansen McCloskey has been distinguished professor of economics and history and professor of English and communications at the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is the author of numerous books, including Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
January 22, 2026
This work is “100 little essays originally published in Portuguese in Folha de Sao Paulo,” about 400 words each to advocate for “essential liberalism,” to “have a go” in the British idiom, improve their lives and immensely improved the world around them.
How immensely? Since 1776, a fully three thousand percent explosion of the average real income per person in the world. Nothing earlier came remotely close. Not caused by investment or exploitation, but by liberty inspiring a flowering of human creativity.
As always, McCloskey is endlessly quotable. There is so much wisdom in this book I cannot do it justice. I have many highlights on nearly every page. Just one example:
"Since 1700 only three new ideas about politics: Liberalism, invented during the 18th century in the Netherlands and in Britain and some of their offshoots. Nationalism and socialism, both born in the 19th century and growing vigorously in the 20th. If you think you like nationalism and socialism, maybe you’ll like national socialism? The desire to be a liberated adult is universal, so is being led like a little child. We grow up in families, which are like the ideal of socialism. What is possible is not equality of outcome, or even equality of opportunity, but true liberal equality of permission."
If you’re not familiar with her work, this is a good starting book, which will lead to her many other works that are far more substantial, especially her Bourgeois Trilogy, which deserves a Nobel Prize on its own.
How immensely? Since 1776, a fully three thousand percent explosion of the average real income per person in the world. Nothing earlier came remotely close. Not caused by investment or exploitation, but by liberty inspiring a flowering of human creativity.
As always, McCloskey is endlessly quotable. There is so much wisdom in this book I cannot do it justice. I have many highlights on nearly every page. Just one example:
"Since 1700 only three new ideas about politics: Liberalism, invented during the 18th century in the Netherlands and in Britain and some of their offshoots. Nationalism and socialism, both born in the 19th century and growing vigorously in the 20th. If you think you like nationalism and socialism, maybe you’ll like national socialism? The desire to be a liberated adult is universal, so is being led like a little child. We grow up in families, which are like the ideal of socialism. What is possible is not equality of outcome, or even equality of opportunity, but true liberal equality of permission."
If you’re not familiar with her work, this is a good starting book, which will lead to her many other works that are far more substantial, especially her Bourgeois Trilogy, which deserves a Nobel Prize on its own.
Displaying 1 of 1 review