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CATO AT LIBERTY

AUGUST 1, 2018 5:04PM

RIP Andrea Rich

By DAVID BOAZ

I am saddened to report that my dear friend Andrea Millen Rich died this morning at her home in Philadelphia at
the age of 79 after a 19-year battle with lung cancer. She was, among many other things, the proprietor of Laissez
Faire Books and the wife for 41 years of Howard Rich, the Cato Institute’s longest-serving Board member.

For more than 40 years Andrea was at the center of the libertarian movement, a mentor, counselor, friend,
supporter, facilitator, networker, and gracious hostess to hundreds of freedom lovers – young, old, well-known,
obscure, successful, down-on-their-luck, didn’t matter. 

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 She was the first chair of the New York Libertarian Party in
1973-74. The vice chair was Howard S. Rich, whom she soon
married. From 1974 to 1977 she was vice chair of the national
Libertarian Party, and in 1980 she played a key role in
developing television advertising for the campaign of Ed Clark,
the Libertarian presidential nominee.

From 1982 to 2005 she was the president of Laissez-Faire Books,

which billed itself as “the world’s largest collection of books on
liberty.” It had a retail location on Mercer Street in Greenwich
Village, described in Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty as
“an important social center for the movement in America’s
biggest city, a place for any traveling libertarian to stop for
company and succor.” But in those pre-Amazon days, it was far
better known for its monthly catalog that reached libertarians
around the world. Through its Fox & Wilkes publishing imprint
it brought many classic libertarian books back into print. (Brian
Doherty’s own reflections, along with those of Nick Gillespie,
can be found at Reason.)

Andrea often negotiated with publishers to make books more affordable, and some books only found publishers
because Laissez-Faire could guarantee an audience beyond the small academic market. She even taught me how to
negotiate with publishers. Through her work with Laissez-Faire she became friendly with leading libertarian
writers including Milton and Rose Friedman, Robert Nozick, Thomas Sowell, Nathaniel Branden, Thomas Szasz,
Charles Murray, Richard Epstein, David Kelley, and Margit von Mises, widow of economist Ludwig von Mises.

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 As president of the Center for Independent Thought, the parent organization of Laissez-Faire Books, she also
launched and managed the Thomas S. Szasz Award for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Civil Liberties and
the Roy A. Childs Fund for Independent Scholars. CIT’s biggest project was Stossel in the Classroom, which
repackaged ABC News and Fox Business videos on economics and public policy by John Stossel for classroom use.
The videos have been viewed by tens of millions of high school students – according to Stossel, reaching more
people than ABC News and Fox News.

Along the way she also helped to found the Center for Libertarian Studies in 1976 and served on the boards of the
Foundation for Economic Education, the oldest free-market think tank, and the Atlas Network, an international
association of think tanks. She traveled as far as Russia and Kenya to meet libertarians and spread the ideas of
freedom.

Andrea Millen was born February 8, 1939, to the late Louis and Vera Millen of Johnson City, Tennessee. She
graduated from Science Hill High School and attended the University of Alabama. After she got a summer job at CBS
answering fan mail for Mighty Mouse and Heckle and Jeckle (“my handwriting was perfect for it, they said”), she
never went back to school. For 18 years, she worked in television, including for Sid Caesar, Joe Pyne, and the NBC
News election unit.

She lived most of her life in Manhattan and Orangeburg, NY, but moved to Philadelphia in 2009.

She is survived by her husband of 41 years, Howard Rich, her sister Elaine Millen of Charlotte, NC, stepsons Joseph
Rich and Dan Rich, Dan’s wife Maureen, and granddaughters Cati and Samantha.

Topics: General

Tags: Andrea Rich, libertarian movement, Laissez Faire Books

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 This work by Cato Institute is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

TOPICS ARCHIVES

Cato Publications • August 2018 • July 2018

Constitution, Law & Civil Liberties • June 2018 • May 2018
Education and Child Policy • April 2018 • March 2018
Energy and Environment • February 2018 • Show More
Finance, Banking & Monetary Policy
Foreign Policy and National Security
General
Government and Politics
Health Care
International Economics, Development & Immigration
Political Philosophy
Poverty & Social Welfare

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 Regulatory Studies
Social Security
Tax and Budget Policy
Telecom, Internet & Information Policy
Trade Policy

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