RIP Andrea Rich

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. 

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.

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.