  Related Video  Assistant editorial page editor James Freeman
on Milton Friedman's legacy. Photos: Getty Images      Friedman
was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for 1976—at a time when
almost all the previous prizes had gone to socialists. This
marked the first sign of the intellectual comeback of free-
market economics since the 1930s, when John Maynard Keynes
hijacked the profession. Friedman's 1963 book "A Monetary
History of the United States," written with Anna Schwartz (who
died on June 21), was a masterpiece and changed the way we think
about the role of money.  More influential than Friedman's
scholarly writings was his singular talent for communicating the
virtues of the free market to a mass audience. His two best-
selling books, "Capitalism and Freedom" (1962) and "Free to
Choose" (1980), are still wildly popular. His videos on YouTube
on issues like the morality of capitalism are brilliant and
timeless.  In the early 1990s, Friedman visited poverty-stricken
Mexico City for a Cato Institute fo