Sean McMeekin has won the 22nd annual Hayek Book Prize for his book To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Basic Books). He will receive a $100,000 award and deliver the annual Hayek Lecture in New York City on June 4.
Chair of the jury John Tierney said, "Dr. McMeekin's superb scholarship shows how socialism has failed horrendously every time it has been imposed, just as Hayek predicted. The book draws on new evidence to present a chilling chronicle of the Left's unrelenting willingness to use coercion and violence against its enemies. Given the newfound enthusiasm for socialism, censorship and other authoritarian measures in the West, the book's lessons could not be more timely."
The other finalists were:
Phil Gramm and Don Boudreaux, authors of The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism (Rowman & Littlefield)
Sean McMeekin, author of To Overthrow the World: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism (Basic Books)
Pablo A. Peña, author of Human Capital for Humans: An Accessible Introduction to the Economic Science of People (University of Chicago Press)
Brian Potter, author of The Origins of Efficiency (Stripe Press)
George Selgin, author of False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Recovery, 1933–1947 (University of Chicago Press)
Nicholas Wade, author of The Origin of Politics: How Evolution and Ideology Shape the Fate of Nations (Harper)