The Illusion of Free Markets: Punishment and the Myth of Natural Order

(Harvard University Press) The author traces the birth of the idea of natural orderliness to 18th-century economic thought and its gradual evolution into today’s myth of the free market, and explores how it has produced the largest government-run penal sphere on the globe. Harcourt is the Julius Kreeger Professor of Law and professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

Paw in print

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Tod Williams ’65 *67 stands in front of the Brooklyn Bridge.
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July 2026

Architect Tod Williams ’65 *67 reflects on the Obama Presidential Center; rain and revelry at Reunions.