Literature Library

The most complete online offering of the literature of the Austrian School and libertarian ideas, including books, journal articles, and other writings, sorted by author or any method you choose.

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Subject: 117: 510 records

Planned Chaos

Ludwig von Mises Updated 9/29/2014

This new edition (completely reset) of Planned Chaos features a new introduction by Chris Westley of Jacksonville State University. The introduction brings this classic up to date - not that it has ever fallen out of date or ever will. The title com...
Making Economic Sense

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 7/30/2014

Do you ever watch the business news and think: what would Murray Rothbard say about this? He remained a news junky all his life, even while working on his grand scholarly treatises. He was no academic snob; he believed, like Mises, that economics was...
Anatomy of the State

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 7/30/2014

This gives a succinct account of Rothbard’s view of the state. Following Franz Oppenheimer and Albert Jay Nock, Rothbard regards the state as a predatory entity. It does not produce anything but rather steals resources from those engaged in...
America's Great Depression

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 7/7/2014

This book applies Austrian business cycle theory to understanding the onset of the 1929 Great Depression. Rothbard first summarizes the Austrian theory and offers a criticism of competing theories, including the views of Keynes. Rothbard then co...
Education: Free and Compulsory

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 7/2/2014

What is it about today's school system that so many find unsatisfactory? Why have so many generations of reformers failed to improve the educational system, and, indeed, caused it to degenerate further and further into an ever declining level of...
Forty Centuries of Wage and Price Controls: How Not to Fight Inflation

Robert L. Scheuttinger Updated 6/27/2014

By special arrangement with the authors, the Mises Institute is thrilled to bring back this popular guide to ridiculous economic policy from the ancient world to modern times. This outstanding history illustrates the utter futility of fighting the ma...
Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition

Ludwig von Mises Updated 6/18/2014

This is Mises's classic statement in defense of a free society, one of the last statements of the old liberal school and a text from which we can continue to learn. It has been the conscience of a global movement for liberty for 80 years. This...
Economics and the Public Welfare

Benjamin Anderson Updated 4/25/2014

Here is a contemporaneous account of the economic history of the first half of the 20th century, by an American adherent of the Austrian School. Covered in these pages is the inflation of World War I and following, the 1920s boom, and the onset and c...
Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, An

Lionel Robbins Updated 4/25/2014

An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science by Lionel Robbins first appeared in 1932 as an outstanding English-language statement of the Misesian view of economic method, namely that economics is a social science and must advance its...
Castles in the Air

Leonard E. Read Updated 4/25/2014

In Castles in the Air, Leonard Read discusses the idealistic foundations of the United States and how those foundations are crumbling right before the eyes of the people. Read addresses topics such as social order, the tendency for individuals to thr...
The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. (ed.) Updated 4/9/2014

The world’s financial system is in a precarious state, and everywhere the cry is heard for reform. The contributors to this notable anthology argue for one particular sort of reform, a return to the gold standard. They write from the perspe...
Deflation and Liberty

Jörg Guido Hülsmann Updated 3/27/2014

This monograph addresses a critically important issue: the prevailing view that deflation (falling prices and/or falling money stock) is a catastrophe that must be stopped. Jorg Guido Hulsmann shows that deflation is nothing to fear. The government s...
Our Enemy, The State

Albert Jay Nock Updated 11/26/2013

What does one need to know about politics? In some ways, Nock has summed it all up in this astonishing book, the influence of which has grown every year since its publication. The Mises Institute has long hoped for an opportunity to produce a...
Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

Ludwig von Mises Updated 11/20/2013

New hardcover edition, introduction by Murray N. Rothbard Like Hayek, Mises moved beyond economics in his later years to address questions regarding the foundation of all social science. But unlike Hayek's attempts, Mises's writings on these...
Economic Principles

Frank A. Fetter Updated 10/2/2013

Frank A. Fetter was a leading American follower of Carl Menger and the early Austrians. He was the first economist to develop a complete statement of the pure time preference theory of interest, and he revolutionized the theory of rent which had be...
Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom

John V. Denson Updated 9/19/2013

American Despots Amazing low sale price in defense of authentic freedom as versus the presidency that betrayed it! Everyone seems to agree that brutal dictators and despotic rulers deserve scorn and worse. But why have historians been so willi...
Essentials of Economic Theory

John Bates Clark Updated 9/18/2013

John Bates Clark was an American adherent of the Marginalist School who engaged the Austrians and learned from them. He delivered many blows against the Historical School in favor of the idea of pure theory. He was also one of the first economists to...
An Outline of International Price Theory

Chi-Yuen Wu Updated 9/10/2013

Greatness often comes from the most unlikely corners. Chi-Yuen Wu began this treatise while a student at LSE during the Great Depression, then returning to an anxious China, on the verge of war, and in the throes of economic instability, finished it...
On Doing the Right Thing

Albert Jay Nock Updated 6/20/2013

This wonderful collection of essays by Albert Jay Nock, first published in 1928, includes his "Anarchist's Progress," "Thoughts on Revolution," "The Decline of Conversation," and other classics by this great American...
Two Essays by Ludwig von Mises (Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism; Liberty and Property)

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/10/2013

In "Liberty and Property," Mises demonstrates how poverty, starvation, disease, and serfdom dominated the pre-capitalist ages, and how the market brought liberation for the masses of men. Socialism, in contrast, embodies hatred for liberty...
Prices and Production

Friedrich A. Hayek Updated 5/7/2013

Hayek was not only a leading champion of liberty in the 20th century. As this massive book reveals, he was also a great economist whose elaboration on monetary theory and the business cycle made him the leading foe of Keynesian theory and policy in t...
Individualism and Economic Order

Friedrich A. Hayek Updated 5/6/2013

If you are looking to acquaint yourself with F.A. Hayek's perspective on economic theory--beyond his business cycle and monetary studies of the interwar years--this is the best source. The collection appeared in 1947, before he moved on toward br...
Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow

Ludwig von Mises Updated 4/26/2013

This might be Mises's best-selling book. This new release is certainly the most beautiful edition to appear yet. It is a very clear explanation of the basics of economic policy: private property, free trade, exchange, prices, interest, money and...
The Economics of Liberty

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. (ed.) Updated 4/25/2013

This collection of short, entertaining, and educational articles exposes how government interference with the economy violates individual liberty, leads to inefficiencies, and rewards special interests. This collection appeared in 1991 and it holds u...
What Has Government Done to Our Money?

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 4/16/2013

When this gem first appeared in 1963, it took the form of a small paperback designed for mass distribution. We've conjured up that spirit again with this special edition of Rothbard's primer on money and government. Innumerable economist...
For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 12/4/2012

Latest edition includes an introduction by Lew Rockwell. In For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Rothbard proposes a once-and-for-all escape from the two major political parties, the ideologies they embrace, and their central plans for us...
Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy 1933-1941

Charles Callan Tansill Updated 11/6/2012

This professionally prepared ebook is an electronic edition of the book that is designed for reading on digital readers like Nook, Kindle, iPad, Sony Reader, and other products including iPhone and Android smart phones. The text reflows depending o...
Ouroboros or the Mechanical Extension of Mankind

Garet Garrett Updated 11/6/2012

"One story of us is continuous. It is the story of our struggle to recapture the Garden of Eden, meaning by that a state of existence free from the doom of toil." Garett explores the consequences of advancing technology and industrial...
The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude

Etienne de la Boetie Updated 7/19/2012

States are more vulnerable than people think. They can collapse in an instant—when consent is withdrawn. This is the thesis of this thrilling book. Murray Rothbard writes a classic introduction to one of the great political essays in the history...
Memoirs of a Superfluous Man

Albert Jay Nock Updated 7/19/2012

Albert Jay Nock, perhaps the most brilliant American essayist of the 20th century, and certainly among its most important libertarian thinkers, set out to write his autobiography but he ended up doing much more. He presents here a full theory of soci...
The Foundations of Morality

Henry Hazlitt Updated 6/28/2012

Here is Hazlitt's major philosophical work, in which he grounds a policy of private property and free markets in an ethic of classical utilitarianism, understood in the way Mises understood that term. In writing this book, Hazlitt is reviving an...
The Turgot Collection: Writings, Speeches, and Letters of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune

A.R.J. Turgot Updated 5/24/2012

Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727-1781) was one of the foremost classical liberals of the 18th century. In the opinion of Murray Rothbard, he was one of the greatest economists of all time, and he served with distinction under Louis XVI as...
Conceived in Liberty

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 5/14/2012

The new single-volume edition of Conceived in Liberty is here! After so many years of having to juggle four volumes, the Mises Institute has finally put it altogether in a single, 1,616-page book. This makes it easier to read, and makes clearer just...
Lessons for the Young Economist Teacher's Manual

Robert P. Murphy Updated 5/14/2012

This is the teacher's manual to accompany the student textbook, Lessons for the Young Economist. The manual follows the student text very closely (the student text is needed separately, either in physical form or PDF). For each section within...
America's Second Crusade

William Henry Chamberlin Updated 5/2/2012

Was World War II a failure? It is an unthinkable thought in the American political ethos. but noted American journalist and author William Henry Chamberlin dares think it, from the vantage point of the immediate postwar world of 1950. "Not on...
The Development of Economics

William A Scott Updated 5/2/2012

William A. Scott The Development of Economics...
Free Market Economics: A Syllabus

Bettina Bien Greaves Updated 4/20/2012

This little gem is a complete economics education for high-school age students. It provides lessons, study questions, activities, and an excellent list of readings for each topic under consideration. Bettina chose well because the readings all hold u...
Free Market Economics: A Basic Reader

Bettina Bien Greaves Updated 4/20/2012

Bettina Bien Greaves put this volume together as a one-stop primer in economics that includes the best economic writing she had run across. In some ways, the choices are brilliant. They are arranged by topic to cover the division of labor, prices, p...
As We Go Marching

John T. Flynn Updated 4/16/2012

John T. Flynn's classic work from 1944 on how wartime planning brought fascism to America. In some ways, this is the finest and most mature of all his works. It was written in wartime and his points were profoundly cutting. After all, the U.S....
Men of Wealth: The Story of Twelve Significant Fortunes from the Renaissance to the Present Day

John T. Flynn Updated 4/16/2012

This book reminds us what a remarkable writer and journalist John T. Flynn truly was. It is a first-class business history, by any standard. It is the story of great fortunes made by the most notable men of wealth in history: Jacob Fugger, John Law,...
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles

Jesus Huerta de Soto Updated 4/4/2012

3rd Edition - Updated and revised. The three years since the publication of the previous English edition of Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles have seen a continuation of the economic recession process set in motion after the 2007 financial c...
Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School

Ralph Raico Updated 4/2/2012

Here is the book to learn classical liberalism from the ground up, written by the foremost historian in the Austrian tradition--Ralph Raico. Every student, scholar, and freedom fan must have a copy of Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School at...
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality

Ludwig von Mises Updated 3/22/2012

In 1954, after a lifetime of serious theoretical work in economic science, Mises turned his attention to one of the great puzzles of all time: discovering why the intellectuals hate capitalism. The result is this socio-psycho-cultural analysis inform...
An Economic Review of the Patent System

Fritz Machlup Updated 3/16/2012

Fritz Machlup An Economic Review of the Patent System (1958) Adobe Acrobat 6.0 Paper Capture Plug-in...
The Great American Land Bubble: The Amazing Story of Land-Grabbing, Speculations, and Booms from Colonial Days to the Present Times

A. M. Sakolski Updated 3/16/2012

Those who lived through the huge speculative real estate bubble of the 1990s through 2008 might have imagined that it was unprecedented. Not so. Far from it! This definitive history of land speculation provides a well-documented but hugely ente...
Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Updated 2/29/2012

This professionally prepared ebook is an electronic edition of the book that is designed for reading on digital readers like iPad, Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, and other products including iPhone and Android smart phones. The text reflows depending o...
The Tragedy of the Euro

Philipp Bagus Updated 2/29/2012

2nd Edition Philipp Bagus, professor of economics at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, is a young scholar with a large influence, having forecast all the problems with the Euro and having persuaded many economists on the Continent that this cur...
Mises and Austrian Economics: A Personal View

Ron Paul Updated 2/29/2012

Ron Paul deserves a high place in the history of liberty for being the only seriously principled statesman to serve in the US House of Representatives in the last quarter of the 20th century. It should not be a surprise to discover that Ludwig vo...
From Bretton Woods to World Inflation: A Study of Causes and Consequences

Henry Hazlitt Updated 2/24/2012

Henry Hazlitt was a leading editorialist for the New York Times from 1934 until 1946. His career at the paper, however, abruptly ended because of the articles collected in this book. He closely covered the Keynesian-inspired Bretton Woods Agreement o...
Lectures on Political Economy - Volume I: General Theory

Knut Wicksell Updated 2/24/2012

Knut Wicksell was a Swedish economist who had an enormous influence on Austrian economics and Ludwig von Mises. This might be his most compelling book: lectures delivered over the course of an entire career, covering both general and specific economi...