Jennifer Burns: evaluation

Transcript context

…A deep psychological way in which this all fits together. Clearly, they wrote things together. You mentioned she shaped or maybe even edited a lot of his Newsweek columns. At the margin, was she telling Milton, “Be more out there,” or “Retreat to your academic life,” or what’s she doing? She was definitely telling him to be more out there. I don’t think we’d have Milton the public intellectual without Rose, and that is specifically putting together Capitalism and Freedom. I was never able to untangle exactly what she did because that portion of the archive is missing — I think, not coincidentally. But both of them said she’s the one who put this book together. She went into the notes and made it into a book. I don’t think he would’ve done that. She and his son, David, also convinced him to do Newsweek. They said, “You owe it to yourself, to the country. You’ve got to do this.” They really pushed him. I think he would not have been so prominent in the public eye without her. I think there are other contributions just allowing him to be really singularly focused on his work because she took care of everything else. How else did David Friedman, Milton’s son, influence him?…

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