In the first English-language biography of one of the most important figures in postwar German history, Alfred C. Mierzejewski examines the life and service of Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977), West Germany's first minister of economics and second chancellor. Erhard liberalized the German economy in 1948 and is generally considered the father of West Germany's ""economic miracle""--the period of extraordinary growth in jobs and improvement in the standard of living in the 1950's that helped stabilize Germany's first successful democracy. While recent scholarship has dismissed Erhard's influence