Book Reviews

Book Review: Property and Freedom

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1999

Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999); 328pages; $30. In his 1848 treatise, The Principles of Political Economy, John Stuart Mill stated: "The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical laws. There is nothing optional or arbitrary in them.... It is not so with the distribution of ...

Book Review: The Passing of an Illusion

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1999

The Passing of an Illusion: The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century by François Furet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); 596 pages; $35. Even now, though it is less than 10 years since the end of the Soviet Union, it is hard to imagine that in the 20th century, millions of people believed in and dedicated their lives ...

Book Review: Hayek

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1999

Hayek: A Commemorative Album compiled by John Raybould (London: Adam Smith Institute, 1999); 120 pages; $19.95. I first met Friedrich A. Hayek in 1975, the year after he received the Nobel Prize in economics. I had had the exceptionally good fortune to be awarded summer fellowships for 1975 and 1977 at the Institute for Humane Studies when their offices were ...

Book Review: Freedom in Chains

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 1999

Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State and the Demise of the Citizen by James Bovard (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999); 326 pages; $26.95. Are you better off than you were 25 years ago? Listening to critics from the left, the impression would be created that Americans are experiencing a falling standard of living and facing immanent mass ...

Book Review: The Future and Its Enemies

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 1999

The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel (New York: Free Press, 1998); 265 pages; $25. May 8, 1999, marks the hundredth birthday of Austrian economist Friedrich A. Hayek. One of Hayek's most important and lasting contributions to human understanding has been his development of a theory of spontaneous order. Hayek argued (echoing the 18th-century Scottish moral philosopher Adam Ferguson) that ...

Book Review: The Roosevelt Myth

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1999

The Roosevelt Myth: 50th Anniversary Edition by John T. Flynn (San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes, 1998); 437pages; $24.95. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945, there followed a vast outpouring of despair and sadness from one end of the United States to the other. For more than 12 years, FDR had occupied the White House, having won ...

Book Review: Is There a Third Way?

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1999

Is There a Third Way? by Michael Novak (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1998); 62 pages; £6.00. In spite of the failure and collapse of Soviet-style socialism and the free market's demonstration of its superiority over all forms of central planning, the ideal that still guides most intellectuals and all governments is the "middle way" of the interventionist-welfare state. While ...

Book Review: Say’s Law and the Keynesian Revolution

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1999

Say's Law and the Keynesian Revolution: How Macroeconomic Theory Lost Its Way by Steven Kates (Northhampton, Mass.: Edward Elgar, 1998); 252 pages; $85. John Maynard Keynes ended his famous 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, by pointing out, "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, ...

Book Review: Problemas Economicos de Mexico

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1999

Problemas Economicos de Mexico by Ludwig von Mises (Mexico City: Instituto Cultural Ludwig von Mises); 125 pages; $20. In December 1941, Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises was invited by Luis Montes de Oca, a former director of the Mexican central bank, to deliver a series of lectures in Mexico during January and February 1942. The Mexico visited by Mises was ...

Book Review: The Noblest Triumph

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1998

The Noblest Triumph: Property and Prosperity through the Ages by Tom Bethell (New York: St. Martin's Press 1998); 378 pages; $29.95. For the classical liberals and classical economists of the 19th century, the institution of private property was considered fundamental for both freedom and prosperity. John R. McCulluch, one of the great popularizers of economic ideas in the mid 19th ...

Book Review: Desperate Deception

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1998

Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 by Thomas E. Mahl (Washington, D.C.: Brassey's, 1998); 256 pages; $22.95. Imagine that the United States were in a war with a strong and determined foe. Imagine that it had become clear to American foreign policymakers that the United States were unable to militarily defeat its enemy on its own. ...

Book Review: In Praise of Commercial Capital

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1998

In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1998); 278 pages; $29.95. One of the most persistent views in many intellectual circles is that capitalism and the market economy are antagonistic to refined culture and artistic appreciation. On the one hand, the general public, it is claimed, is too uneducated and narrow-minded to understand either ...