Book Reviews

Book Review: Human Action

by Richard M. Ebeling October 1, 1996

Human Action: A Treatise on Economics by Ludwig von Mises (Irvington-on Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 4th revised edition, 1996); 906 pages; $49.95. On September 14, 1949, Yale University Press released a major new work — Human Action by the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises. The following week, in his regular Newsweek column, Henry Hazlitt referred to the ...

Book Review: Why Government Doesn’t Work

by Richard M. Ebeling September 1, 1996

Why Government Doesn't Work by Harry Browne (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995) 245 pages; $19.95. Government is big, intrusive, and out of control. It is hard to find practically anyone who disagrees with this general perception of the political situation in America today. A Democratic president even says the era of big government is over, and leading Republicans insist that ...

Book Review: The Road from Serfdom

by Richard M. Ebeling August 1, 1996

The Road from Serfdom: The Economics and Political Consequences of the End of Communism by Robert Skidelsky (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996); 214 pages; $24.95. It has been five years since the collapse and formal demise of the Soviet Union. The "evil empire" has passed into the dustbin of history. Democracy and the market economy have been hailed as triumphant in ...

Book Review: Making Economic Sense

by Richard M. Ebeling July 1, 1996

Making Economic Sense by Murray N. Rothbard (Auburn, Ala.: The Ludwig von Mises Institute, 1995); 435 pages. Murray Rothbard was an exceptional interdisciplinary scholar. He was a master of economic theory (and, himself, one of the major 20th-century contributors to Austrian economics), an original political theorist defending human liberty, and a wide-ranging multisubject historian. His death last year, in 1995, was ...

Book Review: Classics in Austrian Economics

by Richard M. Ebeling June 1, 1996

Classics in Austrian Economics: A Sampling in the History of a Tradition edited by Israel M. Kirzner (London: William Pickering, 1994); three volumes; $300. The Austrian school of economics began in 1871 with the publication of Principles of Economics by Carl Menger. In the 1860s, while working in the Austrian ministry of prices, Menger came to realize that the actual way ...

Book Review: The New Color Line

by Richard M. Ebeling May 1, 1996

The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy by Paul Craig Roberts & Lawrence M. Stratton (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1995) In 1944, Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal published a massive work entitled An American Dilemma . His thesis was that the United States was a fundamentally racist ...

Book Review: Community Without Politics

by Richard M. Ebeling April 1, 1996

Community without Politics: A Market Approach to Welfare Reform by David G. Green (London: Institute of Economic Affairs, 1995); 184 pages; £8.00. It seems that thirty years after the introduction of the Great Society programs of the 1960s, it is finally being accepted that a fundamental mistake was made. Rather than eliminating poverty, reviving neighborhoods and communities, and raising up ...

Book Review: Forgotten Lessons

by Richard M. Ebeling March 1, 1996

Forgotten Lessons: Selected Essays of John T. Flynn edited by Gregory P. Pavlik (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1995); 199 pages; $14.95. Most histories about Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal administration leave the impression that except for the ignorant and the reactionary, practically no one opposed the growth of government in the 1930s and 1940s. Nothing could be further from the ...

Book Review: Austrian Economics for Investors

by Richard M. Ebeling February 1, 1996

Austrian Economics for Investors: Ludwig von Mises Goes to Wall Street by Mark Skousen (Potomac, Md.: Phillips Publishing, Inc., 1995); 46 pages; $10. Dr. Mark Skousen is that rarest of free-market economists. He cannot only write serious and original contributions to economic theory, he can also write popular works that ...

Book Review: Shakedown

by Richard M. Ebeling January 1, 1996

Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z by James Bovard (New York: Viking, 1995); 132 pages; $14.95. So you think you are free! So you think that you possess certain constitutional rights that safeguard your liberty from abusive intrusion from the oppressive hand of government! Well, think again! Most of us believe that we have freedom of speech. A newspaper ...

Book Review: The Vision of the Anointed

by Richard M. Ebeling December 1, 1995

The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell (New York: Basic Books, 1995); 305 pages; $25. In an article entitled "The Attitude of the Intellectuals to the Market Economy," published in The Owl in January 1951, French social theorist Bertrand de Jouvenel tried to explain the anticapitalist bias of many in the intellectual ...

Book Review: The Invasion of Japan

by Richard M. Ebeling November 1, 1995

The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb by John Ray Skates (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995); 276 pages; $27.95. On November 1, 1945, the invasion of Japan began, under the code name Operation Olympic. Under the joint command of General Douglas MacArthur and Admiral Chester Nimitz, the United States armed forces started an assault on the southernmost of ...