ABSTRACT
This is an honest introduction. Thanks to the editors of the present book, I went and properly read Milton Friedman. I was hoping to make a joke out of him—after all, this is a book about humor—by taking a few inflammatory extracts and shredding them to pieces, in the way that some overly casual referencing in our scholarship (and in some student essays) has done over the years. Was I wrong. . . Instead, I discovered a precise and honest thinker—more so than many authors that I admire and agree with. As a result, I had to question myself and dig deeper to find something to make my way back to my comfort zone. For that intellectual journey, I start this chapter with something unusual: absolutely no thanks to the editors for the emotional and intellectual distress this caused me.
