Let's begin in Ancient Egypt. The conflict between the taxpayers and the taxeaters determined much of its history, according to Charles Adams. Not only that: The Rosetta stone was a tax document. Biblical Israel split after Solomon's death because his son refused to cut taxes. Taxes led to Rome's rise and fall. William Tell shot the apple off his son's head as a punishment for tax resistance.
That's just the beginning. Taxes have determined the course of history in ways most historians don't recognize. But Adams is no ordinary historian. He is a remarkable researcher (this book was 20 years in the making!) and a great story teller, and in these pages you will find a detailed historical study that confirms much of Austrian School fiscal analysis.
This volume includes:
- Foreword by Alvin Rabushka
- Part I. Taxes: What They Are and Where They Began
- Ancient Egypt: the Ubiquitous Scribes
- The Rosetta Stone Speaks--and Tells a Tale of Taxes
- The Age of Terror-Taxation--and the Indomitable Tax Rebels of Ancient Israel
- Israel's Finst Hour: From Hanukkah's Glory to Goliath's Triumph
- The Ingenious Greek: Tyranny and Taxes
- The Ingenious Greek: Public Revenue Without Bureaucracy
- Part II. The Kaleidoscopic Romans
- The Early Republic: The Citizens' War-Tax Era
- The Publicani Drive the Republic to Ruin
- Augustus: Master Tax Strategist
- Diocletian's New Order
- Rome Falls: Was It Tax Evasion?
- Part III. The Middle Ages
- Islam: Death or Taxes for the Infidel
- Medieval Taxation: When Taxpayers Had God on Their Side
- The Jews: On the Road to the Final Solution
- Medieval England: How Englishmen Purchased Liberty with Taxes
- Part IV. Russia, Switzerlan, Spain, and Germany
- Russia: The Tax Road to Serfdom and the Soviets
- The Swiss: From William Tell to No-tell
- The Collapse of the Hercules of Europe
- How Cortes Found that Taxes Were the Chink in Montezuma's Armor
- Taxes Forge Modern Germany
- Part V. The Ancien Regime
- The Devil's Tax System
- Many Revolts--One Revolution
- Part VI. After Magna Carta
- The True Sovereign of England: The King or the Common Law?
- Parliament Searches for a Better Tax
- The Decline of the Super-Dutch and the Rise of the Super-British
- The Enlightenment Had the Word on Taxation
- Part VII. The Rocky Road of Early American Taxation
- Tax Revolt in the Colonies
- The Tax Struggle for "a more perfect Union"
- Was It Taxes, Rather Than Slavery, That Caused the Civil War?
- Part VIII. The Monster That Laid the Golden Egg
- The Tax That Beat Napoleon
- Scaffolding for Plunder
- How a Good Tax Goes Bad
- The Artful Dodger: Evasion and Avoidance
- Flight to the Havens: The Offshore World
- The Miracle Economies
- What Constitutions Are Supposed to Do
- Learning from the Past
- Taming the Monster
- Epilogue: The Foursquare
Paperback
ISBN 1568332351
530 pp. (pb)