Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) LIBERAL FASCISM: THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN LEFT Jonah Goldberg Doubleday, 2007, 487 pgs. Jonah Goldberg has ruined what could have been a valuable book. Goldberg has in the past treated libertarians with disdain, but here he offers an analysis of fascism that libertarians will find familiar. Goldberg
Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) THE CONSCIENCE OF A LIBERAL Paul Krugman W.W. Norton, 2007, 296 pgs. Like him or not, Paul Krugman is an economic theorist of distinction, a winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, and often rumored to be in the running for the Nobel Prize. It is disappointing, then, that Conscience of a Liberal contains
Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) THE POLITICALLY INCORRECT GUIDE TO CAPITALISM Robert P. Murphy Regnery, 2007, xii + 206 pgs. Robert Murphy’s admirable book is much more than a conventional defense of capitalism. Murphy includes standard material, e.g., why price controls, minimum wage legislation, and rent control do not work. Though it was
Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) FAITH, REASON, AND THE WAR AGAINST JIHADISM: A CALL TO ACTION George Weigel Doubleday, 2007, 195 pgs. The key to George Weigel’s thought lies in his earlier massive volume Tranquillitas Ordinis (Oxford University Press, 1987). St. Augustine beautifully defined peace as the tranquility of order. Weigel twists
Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) MORALITY AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE C.A.J. Coady Cambridge University Press, 2007, xi + 317 pgs. Professor Coady is best known for a book on the epistemology of testimony, Testimony: A Philosophical Study (Oxford University Press, 1992); but he has also established a well-deserved reputation as an authority on the
Mises Review 14, No. 1 (Spring 2008) THE PURPOSE OF THE PAST: REFLECTIONS ON THE USES OF HISTORY Gordon S. Wood Penguin Press, 2008, 323 pgs. Wood himself has definite views about the nature of the past that are as much theoretical impositions as those of the writers he challenges.” Gordon Wood is one of America’s most distinguished historians. He
Mises Review 14, No. 2 (Summer 2008) HUMAN SMOKE: THE BEGINNINGS OF WORLD WAR II, THE END OF CIVILIZATION Nicholson Baker Simon & Schuster, 2008, 566 pgs. The neoconservatives are already in hot pursuit of Human Smoke . In the March 2008 issue of Commentary, David Pryce-Jones called it a “mendacious book.” From this review, one might have thought
Mises Review 14, No. 2 (Summer 2008) NUDGE: IMPROVING DECISIONS ABOUT HEALTH, WEALTH, AND HAPPINESS Richard H. Thaler and Cass Sunstein Yale University Press, 2008, x + 293 pgs. Thaler and Sunstein have set themselves a seemingly impossible task. Paternalists maintain that it is sometimes justifiable to interfere with someone’s freedom, if doing
Mises Review 14, No. 2 (Summer 2008) THE RETURN OF HISTORY AND THE END OF DREAMS Robert Kagan Alfred A. Knopf, 2008, 116 pgs. In this instance, you can judge a book by its cover. The back of the dust jacket displays endorsements by two of our foremost warmongers. Both John McCain and Joseph Lieberman praise Kagan as an insightful analyst of
Mises Review 14, No. 2 (Summer 2008) THE REVOLUTION: A MANIFESTO Ron Paul Grand Central Publishing, 2008, xi + 173 pgs. In his historic campaign for president, Ron Paul again and again held up the Constitution as a benchmark to judge the policies of the American government. For this, some libertarians criticized him. Was Paul not guilty of
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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.
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