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I have just received the latest catalogue from Laissez Faire Books, and I imagine that many other L&P regulars have too.
This catalogue, along with the desire to bring L&P back to more classically liberal subjects, has prompted me to make the following offer.
Please recommend to me one book that meets the following criteria:
--It's in the classical liberal tradition or else it discusses a figure or idea within that tradition.
--It's not written by any of the L&P contributors.
--It's available either from Laissez Faire or from any other easily accessible source.
--It was published in the last few years.
Please pick the most interesting book you can think of that meets all these requirements. I will order the book, read it, and post a detailed response in the next few weeks. Other L&P members are welcome to join me, and perhaps it could turn into a mini-conference if the interest is high enough.
For example, Alan Ebenstein's The Mind of Friedrich Hayek interests me at the moment, and it would certainly meet all the criteria. By contrast, I'm not interested in writing yet another summary of The Road to Serfdom, and I expect that no one really wants to read it either.
Ideally, the book would also be one that I haven't read yet, although I am not above reviewing something I have read if there is a definite popular demand for it.
So... What is most interesting book that our corner of the political chart has to offer these days? Make your suggestions in the comments; I will pick one of them and get reading shortly.
Update: With some trepidation, I have picked Randy Barnett's Restoring the Lost Constitution for a discussion in the near future. I am not an expert on constitutional law, though I have taken some classes in it and always follow the Supreme Court with interest. I'm not sure I'm qualified to discuss the book in depth, but since it got two favorable recommendations, I've made my choice. At worst it will be a learning experience--with more of an audience than usual.
Bruce Caldwell's Hayek's Challenge was a close second choice, both because I'd been wanting to learn more about Hayek myself lately and because Steven Horwitz recommended it as the best book he had read in the last couple of years. In all likelihood, I will be discussing it in the near future, too.
I ordered it based upon the strength of his earlier book and just arrived in the mail day before yesterday from the publisher. He presents a broad approach to a religious evolution toward a new spirituality over a 300 year period. I haven't had a chance to do more than glance through it yet, but he touches upon a wide range of religious thought, from the religious ferment in the 1600's and deism to Joseph Smith and Erasmus Darwin during the 1800's to Ayn Rand(!), Buddhism and the New Age movement of today.
Being an atheist from age twelve when I realized the difference between real real and comic book real leaves me questioning much of any discussion of spirituality, but the book is interesting.
Thank you for the recommendations. The Herrick work on deists seems particularly interesting to me, as I specialize in religious history and the enlightenment (though mostly on the other side of the channel). I will be sure to add it to my reading list.
Kenneth R Gregg -
2/12/2005
I have four suggestions. I can't seem to reduce it to one recommendation. All of these are excellent works:
Nature and Artifics: The Life and Thought of Thomas Hodgskin, 1787-1869 (Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1998. 247 pp.) by David Stack. This is a brilliant intellectual and personal biography of Hodgskin. It covers not only his ideas from his time in the British Navy and his studies at Edinburgh University through his days helping to found the London Mechanics Institute and his time with the Economist, but the important distinctions of the sources of English radicalism of the period. Stack has some great material on the philosophical radicals.
Land Reform and Working Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 372 pp.) by Jamie L. Bronstein. I don't know of any work which does a better job of covering the anglo-american land reform movements, the major figures (including my favorite, the great libertarian George Henry Evans) and ideas framed by the various English and American groups on land reform, and the strong interrelationships between the figures on both sides of the atlantic.
Transatlantic Radicals and the Early American Republic (Lawrence, Kansas: The University Press of Kansas, 1997. 425pp.) by Michael Durey. Like Fischer's Albion's SeedTransatlantic Radicals... is a powerful tracing of the waves of èmigrés to the reality of the "asylum and elysium" of the American shores. He traces English, Scottish and Irish radicals from their activities in their mother countries, to their escape from the repression of their movements, and their influence in the newly-formed United States. The intellectual leadership of Thomas Paine for several generations of the "transatlantic community of radicals" and their efforts in support of their annointed political leader, Thomas Jefferson, is analyzed in full, including their concerns over American slavery.
The Radical Rhetoric of the English Deists: The Discourse of Skepticism, 1680-1750 by James H. Herrick (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1997. 245 pp.). I never thought I would find a work that is a better treatment of deism than can be found in J.M. Robertson's classic books. I was wrong. Herrick very neatly provides a careful analysis of the methods of the deist attacks on religion and the clergy, the Christian apologists' defense of religion, the Bible, the historical Jesus, and their persecution and legal prosecution against the deists. In large part, the deists won this battle for free expression and freedom of thought. It is a never ending war against authority and many lessons can be learned from such a study.
Gil Guillory -
2/11/2005
My $0.02. Books on philosophy, economics, or comparative systems are likely to breed more chat. So:
I really liked Jan Narveson's _Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice_ (2002). It's a collection of essays that were written before and after his _The Libertarian Idea_, but it reads like a cap to the first book. This later book is uncompromisingly anarchist, without losing the grace and reasonableness one expects from an academic philosopher. Narveson's books persuaded me, among other things, to read Hobbes. You might call Narveson a Hobbesian libertarian. What does that mean? Read the book.
I also liked Randy Barnett's _Structure of Liberty_ -- is that getting too old?. What I find interesting about the book is not its overall claim (a consequentialist defense of libertarianism), but its taxonomy and exploration of the problems of justice (knowledge, error, enforcement, etc.) -- it really gets the juices flowing.
And since it's been mentioned, I found Lester's _Escape from Leviathan_ to be disappointing. His construction of "absence of imposed costs" seems too flexible to draw the firm conclusions he claims for them. But, the frontispiece inscription reversing Mussolini is inspiring and should be the anarcho-capitalist's universal call to arms: "Nothing in the state, everything outside the state, everything against the state!"
Sheldon Richman -
2/11/2005
Stephen Cox's The Woman and the Dynamo
James Bovard's The Bush Betrayal and Terrorism and Tyranny.
Mark Brady -
2/11/2005
I recommend that you hasten to your local university library to look at a copy of J. C. Lester's Escape from Leviathan: Liberty, Welfare, and Anarchy Reconciled (St. Martin's Press, 2000). I hope you would then decide to buy a copy for your personal collection. It's a significant contribution to libertarian thought but sadly it has not received the attention it deserves--either from libertarians or political philosophers.
Steven Horwitz -
2/11/2005
Excellent choice as well!
Houman Brian Shadab -
2/11/2005
I recommend Randy Barnett's _Restoring the Lost Constitution_. Its really the cutting edge of (libertarian) constitutional thought and a great read.
Cox and Alm's (1999) *Myths of Rich and Poor*
Virginia Postrel's *The Future and its Enemies*
and best of all
Paul Seabright's *The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life*
The latter is the second best book I've read in the last year or two.
Have fun.
Steven Horwitz -
2/11/2005
First, do NOT waste your time with Ebenstein. His books are perhaps the two least valuable works on Hayek ever. If you're gonna read something on Hayek, Bruce Caldwell's *Hayek's Challenge* is far superior, and is the best book I've read in the last year or two. My thoughts on these two authors are
