autocracies in Russia, Italy and Germany, and World War II – Hayek wrote a memo to William Beveridge, then the director there, to dispute the then-popular claim that fascism represented the dying gasp of a failed capitalist system. The memo grew into a magazine article, and he intended to incorporate elements of the article into a book much larger than The Road to Serfdom. However, he ultimately decided to write The Road to Serfdom as its own book. The book was originally published for a British audience by Routledge Press in March 1944 in the United Kingdom. The book was subsequently rejected by three publishers in the United States, and it was only after economist Aaron Director spoke to friends at the University of Chicago that the book was published in the U.S by the University of Chicago Press on September 18, 1944. The American publisher’s expectation was that the book would sell between 900 and 3,000 copies. But the initial printing run of 2,000 copies was quickly sold out, and 30,000 copies were sold within six months. , the University of Chicago Press estimated that more than 350,000 copies had been sold. A 20-page version of the book was then published in the April 1945 issue of Reader's Digest, with a press run of several million copies. A 95-page abridged version was also published in 1945 and 1946. In February 1945, a picture-book version was published in Look magazine, later made into a pamphlet and distributed by General Motors. The book has been translated into approximately 20 languages and is dedicated "To the socialists of all parties". The introduction to the 50th anniversary edition is written by Milton Friedman (another recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics 1976). In 2007, the University of Chicago Press issued a "Definitive Edition", Volume 2 in the Collected Works of F. A. Hayek series. In June 2010, the book achieved new popularity by rising to the top of the Amazon.com bestseller list following extended coverage of the book on The Glenn Beck Program. Since that date, it has sold another 250,000 copies in its print and digital editions. Summary Hayek argues that Western democracies, including the United Kingdom and the United States, have "progressively abandoned that freedom in economic affairs without which personal and political freedom has never existed in the past". Society has mistakenly tried to ensure continuing prosperity by centralized planning,