Justin Lahart over at the Wall Street Journal Economics blog details the renewed interest in Frederich Hayek’s classic The Road to Serfdom, the recent sales surge spurred by Fox News personality Glenn Beck’s discussion of the book last week.

On Tuesday last week, customers at Deb’s Books in Cullman, Ala. started coming in and calling with an odd request: They wanted copies of “The Road to Serfdom,” a book economist Friedrich Hayek wrote 65 years ago.

Customers at Schuler Books, in Grand Rapids, Mich. were also looking for Hayek’s book. Same with the Book Shop in Green Valley, Ariz. On Amazon, it shot to number one where it remained for a week. The reason: Fox News host Glenn Beck, whose recommendations have lately had an Oprah Winfrey-like effect on book sales, had just devoted a section of his show to the Road to Serfdom.

But Mr. Hayek’s book is no beach read. Rather, it’s dense polemic against socialism that argues centralized planning by the government will inevitably lead to an oppressive state.
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A member of the so-called Austrian school of economics, Mr. Hayek believed that the economy was simply too complex for the government to attempt to manage its ups and downs. He argued that economist John Maynard Keynes’s recommendation that government spend money to allay an economic downturn could actually make the downturn worse, as well as lead to an inflation problem later. With many people angry over the financial crisis, the recession and the government’s large-scale response to both of those things, Mr. Hayek’s ideas are striking a chord.

Until about a week ago, you’d be more likely to hear the phrase “The New Road to Serfdom” as it has been used quite liberally to characterize the aftermath of the housing bubble, first appearing in a Harper’s article a few years ago. As for the original road to serfdom, I’d be shocked to hear that more than one-out-of-ten recent buyers of the book make it through the first chapter. I don’t think I ever did…