In this atmosphere the publication of a book that could capture some portion of the pop u lar imagination was a potentially transformative event. Upon the publication of The Good Society, Röpke wrote directly to Lippmann to herald its appearance as a moment of transition. “I state with unmitigated enthusiasm that you have given masterful expression to ideas which are in the minds of that all too small circle of thinking Liberals and that you have added new and weighty ideas.” Lippmann, in publishing The Good Society, heralded the possible emergence of a new moment for those who had committed themselves to a revitalized liberalism: a time when what seemed to have been a desperate errand into the wilderness began to yield precursory results.

Angus Burgin, The Great Persuasion, loc. 166