Writing a book is a long process, and you never know what political landscape it will land in. It’s important not to write something that only echoes a specific moment, since the life cycle of books and politics are often disconnected.

The book explores how we — particularly in the US, but also much of the modern world — came to view freedom as the ability to choose from various options, whether in consumer culture or in democratic and human rights discourse. We’ve come to associate freedom with selecting people to love, ideas to hold, political platforms to support, or products to buy. We imagine that having and making choices is a source of both personal fulfillment and public recognition of ourselves as autonomous individuals. I had two main questions: How did this concept of freedom develop, and what are its pros and cons? It’s clear that freedom and choice are not timeless ideas; they’ve evolved. I wanted to explore how this view of freedom emerged and its impact on our lives.

I started the project before [Donald] Trump’s presidency, during the late [Barack] Obama years, and believed that the political trajectory at the time would likely continue. Clearly, the situation changed. During the first years of Trump’s administration, I paused work on this book to write Democracy and Truth: A Short History, which addressed the political polarization and conflicts around truth that became more pronounced during Trump’s tenure. That book, which focused on the divide between technocracy and populism, ended up resonating with subsequent developments, especially around issues like misinformation.

When I returned to The Age of Choice, I had a different perspective, shaped by the political shifts under both Trump and [Joe] Biden. The concept of choice was mobilized differently by both administrations, from reproductive choice to school choice, which reflects broader changes in political discourse.

As for the reception of The Age of Choice, it’s still early, but it has already received positive attention both in the US and internationally, including in France, Italy, and Brazil. The book offers insight into the political dynamics of the current moment, though I’m still reflecting on how the new Trump era specifically intersects with the book’s arguments.

It’s important to note that the US is not the first country to experiment with a form of authoritarian democracy tied to a capitalist economy. Leaders like Silvio Berlusconi, Viktor Orbán, and Jair Bolsonaro set precedents for Trump, who has already incorporated choice-based language into his policies, particularly around consumer goods and education. But this “freedom of choice” rhetoric largely operates in the consumer sphere, emphasizing individual autonomy while also consolidating power in the hands of the state.

In this new political environment, choice has mutated. What we have is a blend of libertarianism in the consumer realm, where businesses and individuals are encouraged to make choices, and authoritarianism in politics, where the state controls the options available. This hybrid model can be seen in other countries as well, including China, which combines consumer capitalism with an authoritarian state. As I mentioned before, it’s challenging to predict how things will unfold politically in the next six months. As a historian, I try to identify larger patterns that transcend political cycles, rather than making claims too specific to the current moment.

The book draws on a broad history across centuries and places, but not much of that history is specifically about choice. While historians certainly study how people make choices within given conditions, the idea of “choice” itself is rarely treated as a historical category. My book is, in that sense, pioneering in its exploration of choice as a concept and its consequences. The archive I use is diverse, including catalogs, ballots, advertising circulars, and instruction manuals — sources that reflect how people were taught to make choices — as well as texts about the meaning of choice. I also examine novels from the past 300 years to understand the psychology of choice, not just the practice. Novels offer insights into the pleasures, anxieties, and responsibilities of choice, which can’t be easily captured in more utilitarian sources. Together these sources helped me to explore the full range of choice and its historical impact.

In terms of capitalism, this book isn’t an anti-capitalist polemic. It’s more about encouraging self-awareness of how our conceptualization of freedom through choice has led to both liberation and constraint. While choice has been liberating — central to movements like abolitionism and feminism — it’s not always empowering. For example, choosing between many similar consumer goods doesn’t truly enhance freedom. In some cases, choice can even be harmful, such as when people are given bad options and punished for making a “wrong” choice, like getting ill without having opted for a good health care plan.

Capitalism has been a key driver of our investment in choice, but not the only one. The post-Reformation rise of intellectual pluralism also contributed to the idea of choice. Over time, these two sources — capitalism and democracy or human rights ideals — merged, especially after World War II when the US promoted “freedom of choice” as a distinction from fascist and communist systems. Today, however, we might be seeing this synthesis unravel, though it won’t likely happen without resistance.

I chose the automat for the cover because it symbolizes the post–World War II culture of choice, something many feel nostalgic about. The automat marks the beginning of the self-serve model that eventually became global, like the modern supermarket experience. People remember it as a high point of choice, where you could pick directly from the menu, much like today’s online shopping experience — think of Amazon, where you scroll through hundreds of options, click on what you want, and check out. However, shopping online lacks the physicality of an actual marketplace, and the overwhelming number of options can lead to frustration or paralysis. On Amazon, for example, you might find 6,000 options in one category. Shopping online is metaphorically like earlier shopping experiences, but it has evolved into something quite different.

The idea of choice has been gradually developing since the late seventeenth century, touching on consumer goods, ideas, religious values, partners, sexual choices, and politics. Political choice is a recent development, emerging in the late nineteenth century when people began to imagine politics as a series of private, individual decisions, best realized through secret voting. The twentieth century solidified this cultural shift, as new fields like advertising, psychology, psychiatry, and economics began to study how and why people make choices.

These fields naturalized the idea that people are choice makers, framing it as a universal truth. This individual autonomy, rooted in the social sciences and politics, now defines how we conceptualize ourselves. However, not everyone has always viewed life as a series of individual choices based on personal preferences. Many people, both historically and today, push back against this idea. The automat represents both the peak of this idea of freedom and the beginning of a reduced notion of freedom. Today we would do well to question how much of our so-called freedom is truly liberating. The book explores this paradox, showing that the automat was both a symbol of freedom and a sign of a more limited view of choice that persists today.

I want to highlight that choice can both produce inequality and create opportunity. In the nineteenth century, women, and their male allies, embraced the idea of choice as a form of empowerment. They argued that if they could make choices in areas concerning family life, why not in politics or other spheres? Feminism, especially in its liberal form, capitalized on this idea of choice. Despite being seen as irrational choosers in the past, especially in their role as consumers, women saw embracing increased choice as a path to greater equality.

By the 1970s, with the rise of what you are calling neoliberalism, this idea reached its peak, particularly after Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the US. Feminists saw choice as a solution to the problem of how to make abortion not just legal but socially acceptable because it allowed every woman to decide what was best for her without forcing anyone else to like that choice. This aligned well with capitalist and democratic values, promoting individual choice as a fundamental right.

However, women quickly found that choice also produces inequality. The “right to choose” was challenged both from the Right, with the “right to life” countering choice as morally shallow, and from the Left. The critique from the Left focused on the material realities of choice: What does it mean to give people a choice when they lack the means to act on it? If someone can’t afford an option or doesn’t have the time or support for a stated option to be viable, is it really a choice? This critique, particularly from black feminists, highlighted the limitations of choice in practice.

This critique extends to human rights. While human rights emphasize the right to choose in areas like where to live, who to marry, or what profession to go into, they often don’t guarantee access to these choices. You may have the “right” to choose your residence or career, but without the means to access these choices, the right itself is hollow.

Similarly, in the commercial sphere, the freedom to choose a school may seem empowering, but it can be less freeing than having an effective public school system available to all, even if that means limits on individual choice. Ultimately, choice can perpetuate inequality, as people are often blamed for making “bad” choices, even when they lack the structural support to make better ones. We must be careful not to treat choice as a simple solution in a world marked by inequality and limited opportunity.