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Summary: Mandatory reading for the liberal thinker!
Review: If you wonder why we pay absurdly high taxes in the US, if you're tired of politicians bickering about budgets and programs, if you feel at a loss about for whom you should vote, then read this book! This book will put an end to the confusion about what is right for our country, economy, and most importantly, what is best for YOU as a free-thinking, independent individual. The Friedmans do a wonderful job of explaining the problems eating away at a great nation through plain, accessible English. Meanwhile, they provide realistic, attainable, and pragmatic solutions to various difficult issues ranging from public education to worker's rights. If you consider yourself a compassionate, open-minded, liberal thinker, read this book!
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Summary: OUTSTANDING DEFENSE FOR FREEDOM IN SOCIETY
Review: In this book, Dr Friedman makes the case why freedom, in the economic and social sense, is the best policy. Reading this book is a life changing experience for anyone who has not had much exposure to economics; Dr Friedman, alas, is arguably the top economist of our time.The book offers not only a critique of developments in education, trade policy, workers rights, drug policy, among other economic and social issues, but he also offers solutions. He readily recognizes the difficulties of implementing his solutions (political mainly), but nonetheless he is searching for the best non-utopian alternative. Dr Friedman will also demystify the image that economists are wholly consumed by growth and GDP. He is guided by the rule that each person knows best what they want and should be free to pursue it, within limits (of hurting others, etc.). This is an easy to read book, a great intro to social issues or a great alternative view of the world. I hardly think it can be construed as liberal or conservative, these labels cannot encompass the true spirit of freedom as developed in the book. If I had to classify it, this book is about the rational improvement of society by letting each one pursue their own goals (again, a maxim espoused by the founding fathers and long forgotten). Overall, anyone interested in social issues should read this book; it may not convince you, but it will make you think.
Rating: 
Summary: Old but still topical
Review: It is interesting to think back to 1979 and reflect on what was radical and new then - namely, the frank belief that personal freedom and its corollary, unfettered capitalism, were the only ways to achieve the ideals of the Declaration of Independence.
How much has changed since then: The Republican Party initiated the largest growth in government since the rise of Communism, and Deng Xiao Ping initiated the rise of the world's largest Capitalist country: Red China.
This book describes how The Depression convinced many people that Capitalism was unworkable and unfair, and how the Second World War convinced those same people (the thought leaders of our parents' generation) that government could be an effective force for good for society as a whole. ... and analyzes the problems with those perspectives, contrasted to the power of Adam Smith's invisible hand in a world populated by people free to make their own choices.
Much of what Friedman says here is current dogma. Often ignored or even flouted by "interested sophistry" but no longer particularly radical-sounding, per se.
What this book needs is its sequel because 2004 is so far from 1980 as to make the observations of that prior era something of a naive anachronism, however true and fundamental they may still be. The real question is not what is true, but how to get from where we are to something better; this is called Politics and as such, it makes one's heart sink to think that we are in its grasp ... is there nothing to look forward to but more of the same? We need a new Friedman to tell us.
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Summary: A Secular Saint
Review: It's been more than 20 years since I first became acquainted with Prof. Friedman's work and I only recently came to an understanding of his unique magnetism. Of course, his writing (and that of Mrs. Friedman) is uniquely practical, understandable to the lay reader and, most importantly, non-emotional. Similarly the empirical examples for his ideas are self-evidently logical, for example the comparison between Meiji Japan and post-Independence India, but that doesn't explain the man's attraction. The value of his insights and the fallacies in many opposing viewpoints may only become clear with passage of a good deal of time, but when they do, the truth and falseness is incontrovertable. I have at long last come to the conclusion that Milton Friedman is a kind of non-religious saint who brings a higher level truth to the comprehension of others having only fractional shares of his IQ; he is a sort of economic Acquinas. More importantly, Prof. Friedman manages to cut through so many of the myths of conventional wisdom and explain the true reasons for failures in our society and economy in ways that are heretical to so many of the established interest groups in America (or the UK) such as the public education industry. If the truth be known, much of the current economic bliss we now enjoy results from the espousal of his ideas 15 to 20 years ago here and in Britain and the slow retreat from those principles by government in both countries will gradually revive the messes of the '60's and '70's. This book, and Capitalism and Freedom, ought to be familiar to every thinking person as an innoculation against the opinions held out as truth in the popular media and the mental mildewing that grows around them.
Rating: 
Summary: COPY
Review: look, friedman is obviously plagarizing keynesian principles, why does everyone give such reverance to the man? i dont recommend the book
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Summary: An elegant book, not plagiarism
Review: Milton and Rose Friedman's Free To Choose is an elegant, well-reasoned argument that freedom works better for everyone than do economic systems that call for sweeping government controls. Again and again, the Friedmans demonstrate that market processes not only provide more wealth, but also more security than we get through government control. Far from "plagiarizing Keynesian principles," the Friedmans show that reliance upon Keynesian macroeconomic planning is neither necessary nor desirable. They argue forcefully that the Keynesian explanation for the Depression was mistaken and that the political "solutions" undertaken under Keynesian influence in the Roosevelt administration were counterproductive. To dismiss this carefully written book as "plagiarism" is just the grumpy dishonesty of someone who dislikes the fact that economic interventionism has been taking an intellectual pounding for decades. I do recommend the book.
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Summary: Conscience of a Conservative, Expanded Edition
Review: Milton Friedman has done for the modern conservative what Barry Goldwater had done for the primitive conservative movement in the 1960s. However, unlike Goldwater's brief masterpiece, Friedman has elaborated and expanded upon those things that Goldwater discussed ... and then some. Easy to read and understand. Well documented. An essential part of any conservatives book collection.
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Summary: If Only this Book Was Adopted by Congress -- In Full
Review: Milton Friedman is a Noble-prize winning economist and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George W. Bush. Miltion Friedman poses an interesting question: what are the things we are most unsatisfied with as services or products? Most Americans are very unsatisfied with the post office and schools, for instance. And there's a reason: the post office is a government-run monopoly, which means there is no incentive for improvements, more effeciency, or even happy customers. You have to use the service, and as a result, your happiness is irrelevant to the bureacrats, mostly the postal trade union, who just want job security. The same is true for public schools. Most parents hate their local public school. Milton Friedman talks about how schools in the beginning of our nation were nearly universal, yet most parents paid for the schooling. He asks a really good question: why are taxpayers required to spend tax dollars for everyone's education, when it is only about 5-9% of the population that would not be able to afford to educate their child. Why not ask that most parents pay for their child's education (after all, that will result in market-incentives, such as the desire for competition) and just subsidize the education for children who would not otherwise be able to attend due to the cost. As an alternative, Friedman endorses vouchers, which will allow parents to dictate which schools will succeed and fail. Most schools--public included--will have a huge incentive to improve their programs because they will be in competition with other schools. One theory that comes up over and over again with Friedman is the notion of incentives. If there are no incentives, something will not be done. Thus, we need to have incentives in education to improve teacher quality. We need to have a negative income tax to create incentives for the poor to work rather than receive welfare payments. This is an excellent book for anyone interested in economic policies, those of a libertarian persuasion, and anyone who wants America to be stronger and mightier in economic, political, and social terms.
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Summary: Very persuasive
Review: Milton Friedman knws the way to convince you. He does it well even if I still believe his arguments can be refuted. Moreover, he shows an admiration without any limits for A.Smith, which can be upseting. Finally, keep saying that everybody is free to choose seems pretty insane, but that's all the point of his explication.
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Summary: Oversimplified, though necessary, issues
Review: No one can refuse Friedman's knowledge and persuasive speech. This book shows economic issues in an extremely simplified and simple way, and it makes sense because it is aim to the lay person with no technical knowledge, who would not understand more realistic but complex models that slightly modify Friedman's conclusions. The corollary of this book for those who are not interested in deepening their economic comprehension is that they should not take Friedman's outcomes as their own, since some matters, for instance: exchange rates, are covered in an almost senseless simplified way. Take your own conclusions but just after reading Friedman, Keynes, Samuelson, Marx, Ricardo, von Mises and so on, only after it you may say Friedman is right or not
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