Re-reading Economics in Literature: A Capitalist Critical Perspective by Matt Spivey Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2021, 133 pp. David Gordon (dgordon@mises.org) is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies . Matt Spivey asks an important question. Literary critics often use economics to interpret
Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers John Kay and Mervyn King New York: Norton, 2020, xvi + 528 pp. David Gordon (dgordon@mises.org) is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies . Kay and King are not Austrians, but in this important book, they lend aid and comfort to several key
The Essential Austrian Economics Christopher J. Coyne and Peter J. Boettke Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 2020, 68 pp. David Gordon (dgordon@mises.org) is a senior fellow at the Mises Institute and editor of the Journal of Libertarian Studies . Christopher Coyne and Peter Boettke, both professors of economics at George Mason University, say, “The
Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire by Paul Cantor 1976; University of Chicago Press, 2017, 228 pp. Paul Cantor will probably be best known to readers of the Mises page for his pioneering use of Austrian economics in literary criticism, and many will also be aware of his brilliant studies of popular culture. (For the former topic, see my
Open a popular magazine of your choice, or even the newspaper of record, and you’ll find a lot of fascinating claims seemingly backed by scientific aura. Eat this superfood and you’ll be healthy; do this minor thing every day and you’ll be successful; have governments just slightly change some condition that faces us hapless humans and we’ll
Purchasing Submission: Conditions, Power, and Freedom by Philip Hamburger Harvard University Press, 2021, 320 pp. Philip Hamburger has made a revolutionary contribution to American constitutional law. He shows that what is often regarded as a narrow topic, “unconstitutional conditions,” of interest only to specialists, is in fact fundamental to
Last month I reviewed Samuel Moyn’s Humane (New York, 2021) but discussed only a few topics in it. Owing to the book’s great importance, I’d like in what follows to address another issue as well, and this is something with which many readers will already be familiar. The principal theme of Moyn’s book, it will be recalled, is that efforts to make
The ironic thing about Michael Malice’s book The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics is that it mostly deals with the Left. What unites the Right, argues Malice, is that they all hate the Left. His definition of the New Right reads: a loosely connected group of individuals united by their opposition to progressivism, which they
The Conservative Sensibility by George F. Will Hachette Books, 2019 xxxix + 600 pp. The well-known Washington columnist George Will was long ago a libertarian, but he soon changed his mind, adopting instead a statist variety of conservatism. In The Conservative Sensibility , he returns to his libertarian roots, but the return is incomplete, and he
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity By David Graeber and David Wengrow Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021 Xii + 692 pages The Dawn of Everything , which has already attracted much scholarly attention and is a best seller as well, should be a warning to all academics: do not write about economics or the history of modern Europe if you
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.