Book Reviews

Book Review: Determinants of Economic Growth

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1997

Determinants of Economic Growth: A Cross-Country Empirical Study by Robert J. Barro (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997); 145 pages; $22.50. The London School of Economics regularly hosts a Lionel Robbins lecture series. Lord Robbins, who in the 1930s was a vigorous and articulate proponent of Austrian economics, was a master in the history of economic ideas. In 1952, he published ...

Book Review: How Nations Grow Rich

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1997

How Nations Grow Rich: The Case for Free Trade by Melvyn Krauss (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); 140 pages; $22.50. One of the frustrations in the study of economics is the discovery of how frequently the same fallacious ideas keep reappearing. Since the time of David Hume and Adam Smith, economists have demonstrated over and over again the mutual ...

Book Review: The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1997

The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America by Paul Craig Roberts and Karen Lafollette Araujo (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); 214 pages; $25. The mass media has focused public attention on the dramatic attempts to implement market-oriented reforms in Eastern Europe, Russia, and other countries in the former Soviet Union. Less attention has been given to another part of the ...

Book Review: Dynamics of the Mixed Economy

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1997

Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism by Sanford Ikeda (New York: Routledge, 1997); 296 pages; $69.95. POPULAR RHETORIC in the news media and in political discussions claims that with the fall of communism, free-market economics has triumphed around the world. In fact, this is not the case. While Soviet-style socialist central planning is dead, laissez-faire capitalism is ...

Book Review: Hungry Ghosts

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 1997

Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine by Jasper Becker (New York: Free Press, 1996); 352 pages; $25. In 1994, Mao Zedong's personal physician, Dr. Li Zhisui, published The Private Life of Chairman Mao. Leading experts on Chinese communist history say that the book is authentic and accurate. He served Mao from 1955 until ...

Book Review: The End of Welfare

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 1997

The End of Welfare: Fighting Poverty in the Civil Society by Michael Tanner (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 1996); 226 pages; $10.95. Thirty years ago, when the welfare-state programs of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty were first being implemented, the general consensus among the political elite and the intellectual community was that wise government, with sufficient funding, could lift the poor ...

Book Review: Critique of Interventionism

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1997

Critique of Interventionism by Ludwig von Mises, revised edition (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1996) 122 pages; $12.95. In the first decade of the 1800s, the French classical-liberal economist Jean-Baptiste Say summarized in his book Treatise on Political Economy what became the general view of the majority of political economists throughout the early and middle decades of the ...

Book Review: Libertarianism

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1997

Libertarianism: A Primer by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press 1997); 312 pages; $23.00. The greatest triumph of socialism during the last one hundred years has been the extent to which collectivist ideas dominate the vocabulary and the concepts of public policy. Socialism, ...

Book Review: Austrian Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1997

Austrian Economics: An Anthology edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education 1996); 166 pages; $14.95. Just a little over one hundred years ago, in 1896, the Austrian economist Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk published a 120-page monograph entitled "Karl Marx and the Close of His System." It offered, up to that time, the most detailed critical evaluation ...

Book Review: Red Flag Over Hong Kong

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1997

Red Flag Over Hong Kong by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman, and Alvin Rabushka (Chatham, N.J.: Chatham House Publishers, Inc., 1996); 196 pages; $17.95. In 1996, Amnesty International released a report entitled "China, No One is Safe: Political Repression and Abuse of Power in the 1990s." Whether it is academics desiring intellectual freedom, urban residents or peasants in the ...

Book Review: Alien Wars

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1996

Alien Wars: The Soviet Union’s Aggressions against the World, 1919 to 1989 by Gen. Oleg Sarin and Col. Lev Dvoretsky (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1996); 243 pages; $24.95. Historian Harry Elmer Barnes once explained the meaning of historical revisionism. Revisionism, he said, "implies an honest search for historical truth and the discrediting of misleading myths that may be a barrier to ...

Book Review: The Corrosion of Charity

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1996

The Corrosion of Charity by Robert Whelan (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1996); 116 pages; £7.00. When the first suggestions were made for "downsizing" federal welfare spending after the 1994 Congressional elections, it was not surprising that various special-interest groups that either receive welfare payments in one form or another or that serve as the administrative or bureaucratic conduits for dispersing ...