“This is a book of astonishing insight by one of America’s most talented historians. Rosenfeld has that rare capacity to remove scales from our eyes and compel us to confront what we had failed to see. Readers will have no choice but to be enthralled.”

“This magnificent and original book is a mirror revealing who we are and how we got that way, in how we think about markets and politics, beauty and love, indeed being human itself. For holding the mirror up—and proposing that the alternative to choice is not necessarily constraint but a different kind of freedom—Sophia Rosenfeld deserves our deepest thanks.”

“A fascinating exploration of how Western society has come to prioritize the freedom to choose everything from our leaders to our meals to what happens to our bodies. Rosenfeld’s insightful analysis is sure to change the way you think about having options.”

“Sophia Rosenfeld’s elegantly written, accessible, and compelling new book traces how the concept of choice came into being and became central to self-making in our time. Through varied accounts of how people decided what to buy, how voting became a protected form of choosing, and how reproductive rights became a matter of choice, The Age of Choice illuminates the link between selfhood and freedom that we take to be self-evident. It offers a fresh and insightful account of how modern liberalism came to be.”

“Every so often a book comes along that suddenly makes you realize that what you thought was a simple given is actually a phenomenon with a complex and problematic history. The Age of Choice is just that kind of book.”

“Combining philosophical sophistication with ingenious social history, Sophia Rosenfeld has given us a tour de force on the modern history of the changing relation between ideas about choice and freedom. ”