Virginia Postrel begins her latest effort for the Boston Globe with the following:

AT A RECENT think-tank luncheon in Raleigh, economist Bruce J. Caldwell chatted with a local lawyer active in Democratic party circles. The man asked Caldwell what his new book was about. “It’s an intellectual biography of Friedrich Hayek,” replied Caldwell, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He got a blank look. “He was an economist. A libertarian economist.”

What follows is a nice backgrounder on Friedrich Hayek and his ideas. More to come on this subject when Roy Cordato speaks to the subject in February.