Book Reviews

Book Review: The Making of Modern Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 2001

The Making of Modern Economics: The Lives and Ideas of the Great Thinkers by Mark Skousen (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001); 485 pages; $25. IN THE EARLY DECADES OF THE 19TH CENTURY, Thomas Carlyle was the first one to call economics “the dismal science.” He considered the study of the market economy “dismal” because it emphasized individualism and freedom of association ...

Book Review: The Burden of Bad Ideas

by George Leef June 1, 2001

The Burden of Bad Ideas by Heather Mac Donald (Chicago, Ill.: Ivan R. Dee, 2000); 242 pages; $26. WE HAVE ALL HAD our share of bad ideas. Most of the time, we discard them before acting on them, but when we do act on a bad idea, we usually realize quickly that it was ...

Book Review: Regulation without the State

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 2001

Regulation without the State ... The Debate Continues by John Blundell and Colin Robinson (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000); 93 pages; $15. ALMOST 40 YEARS AGO, free-market economist and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman published a short book entitled Capitalism and Freedom (1962). At a time during which Keynesian economics and the popularity of the interventionist-welfare state were still on the ...

Book Review: Government: Whose Obedient Servant?

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 2001

Government: Whose Obedient Servant? A Primer in Public Choice by Gordon Tullock, Arthur Seldon, and Gordon L. Brady (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 2000); 184 pages; $15. IN SPITE OF THE COLOSSAL DISASTER of socialism throughout the world and the corrupt inefficiencies and distortions caused by the interventionist-welfare state, virtually every country in the world clings to various elements of these ...

Book Review: Revolutionary Language

by George Leef April 1, 2001

Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood (Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse.com, Inc., 1999); 324 pages; $13.95. AN IMPORTANT but little-known battle between the forces of statism and the forces of liberty of the early 1990s pitted the “law-enforcement” community and national security paranoiacs against one man who happened to believe that people ought to be ...

Book Review: Basic Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 2001

Basic Economics: A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 2000); 366 pages; $30. WHEN ADAM SMITH completed his criticisms of mercantilism, the 18th-century system of government planning and control, in The Wealth of Nations, he expressed a deep pessimism that the free-trade ideal that he had defended, instead of the regulated economy, would ever be ...

Book Review: Global Fortune

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 2001

Global Fortune: The Stumble and Rise of World Capitalism edited by Ian Vasquez (Washington, D. C.: Cato Institute, 2000); 295 pages; $18.95 cloth; $9.95 paperback. IN SEPTEMBER 2000, David Henderson, a prominent free-market economist in Great Britain, delivered the annual Wincott Lecture at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) in London. His theme was “Anti-Liberalism 2000.” Henderson detailed the wide and ...

Book Review: The Mystery of Capital

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 2001

The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto (New York: Random House, 2000); 243 pages; $24.95. CONSIDER THE TERM “the Third World.” Most people probably would conjure up in their minds the image of tens of millions of poverty-stricken people living in Asia, Africa, and South America possessing no means for ...

Book Review: Feeling Your Pain

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 2001

Feeling Your Pain: The Explosion and Abuse of Government Power in the Clinton-Gore Years by James Bovard (St. Martin’s Press, 2000); 426 pages; $26.95. WHEN THE HISTORY of the last decade of the 20th century is written sometime in the future, chroniclers of the 1990s will probably, at first, be tempted to emphasize the apparent triumphs of freedom around ...

Book Review: The Faces of Janus

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 2000

The Faces of Janus: Marxism and Fascism in the Twentieth Century by A. James Gregor (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2000); 240 pages; $30. IN 1947, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises published a short book entitled Planned Chaos. He analyzed and put into perspective the intellectual and ideological forces that had been at work in the Western world since the ...

Book Review: When in the Course of Human Events

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 2000

When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession by Charles Adams (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000); 255 pages; $24.95. IN HER 1924 BOOK Free Trade and Peace in the Nineteenth Century, Helen Bosanquet pointed out, The conflict between Free Trade and Protection was one of the chief causes of the great Civil War.... Interests ...

Book Review: The Tyranny of Good Intentions

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 2000

The Tyranny of Good Intentions: How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice by Paul Craig Roberts and Lawrence M. Stratton (Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 2000); 240 pages; $24.95. IT OFTEN SEEMS that liberty is only really appreciated when it is either directly threatened or has been lost. In the 1930s, when liberty was challenged by ...