New Books - Need Recommendations

[jhcarrell]

I've just finished The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution- Gutzman and now I'm trying to decide what to read next. I'm trying to find some natural / logical structure to the order of my future reading.

Here's a list of books I have, but haven't read yet:

On Liberty - Mill, John Stuart
Common Sense, Rights of Man, and Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine - Paine, Thomas
The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot - Kirk, Russell
Conscience of a Conservative - Goldwater, Barry
The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents - Hayek, F. A.
The Constitution of Liberty - Hayek, F. A.
Speaking of Liberty - Rockwell Jr., Llewellyn H.
Constitutional Chaos: What Happens When the Government Breaks Its Own Laws - Napolitano, Andrew


Recommendations??


Here's a list of most of the books I have already read:

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire - Johnson, Chalmers
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic - Johnson, Chalmers
Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic - Johnson, Chalmers
The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution - Gutzman, Kevin
The Revolution: A Manifesto - Paul, Ron
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship - Paul, Ron
Pillars of Prosperity- Paul, Ron
Imperial America: The United States of Amnesia - Vidal, Gore
The Federalist - Hamilton / Jay / Madison
James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights - Labunski, Richard

 

[heavenlyboy34]

I'm working my way through Mill's "On Liberty" too. It's pretty good-plus a pretty good book to start with on your list, IMO. Common Sense is a good follow-up. The rest is up to you.

 

[RCA]

Conscience of a Conservative - Goldwater, Barry

I'd read this first, it's by far the shortest on your list.

 

[Areté]

Read both of the following by Wes Bertrand of CompleteLiberty.com for free:

Complete Liberty: The Demise of the State and the Rise of Voluntary America
The Psychology of Liberty

I'm sure you'll enjoy them a great deal.

 

[Conservative Christian]

The Law; by Frederic Bastiat
Economics In One Lesson; by Henry Hazlitt
The Anti-Federalist Papers and the Constitutional Convention Debates; edited by Ralph Ketcham
Original Intent; by David Barton
Up From Slavery; by Booker T. Washington
Basic Economics; by Clarence Carson


.

 

[yongrel]

Free to Choose - Milton Friedman
Capitalism and Freedom - Milton & Rose Friedman
Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern Libertarian Movement - Brian Doherty
Through Our Enemies' Eyes - Michael Scheuer
Democracy in America - Alexis De Tocqueville
The Cult of the Preisdency - Gene Healy

...for starters

 

[FrankRep]

The Creature from Jekyll Island : A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
by G. Edward Griffin

http://www.amazon.com/Creature-Jekyll-Island-Federal-Reserve/dp/0912986212

 

[Theocrat]

PIGs are Great Primers of Truth

Have you considered reading some more of these "Politically Incorrect Guides?"

 

[jhcarrell]

Thanks for the recommendations!

I recently came across this blog post for a purposed Libertarian Curriculum

A Libertarian Syllabus

A friend of mine who is involved in youth politics asked me to put together a curriculum for Ron Paul libertarians, a four-year course of study that will take students from the basics of free-market economics and the Constitution into the deeper waters where theory, history, and policy meet. Here’s the tentative curriculum I’ve come up with:

Year 1

Ron Paul – The Revolution: A Manifesto
Barry Goldwater – The Conscience of a Conservative
Tom Paine – “Common Sense,” “The Crisis”
The Federalist (selections)
The Anti-Federalist Papers (selections)
The Constitution of the United States of America
Douglas Hyde – Dedication and Leadership
Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson
Murray Rothbard – What Has Government Done to Our Money?

I’m fairly confident in this first-year syllabus. Arguably I ought to add Thomas Woods’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History and Kevin R.C. Gutzman’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution , but I wanted to restrict myself mostly to primary sources. The Federalist, Anti-Federalist, and Paine selections, plus the Constitution itself, will give students a basic feel for what was at stake in the Revolutionary War and the struggle over ratification. Hazlitt’s book is a terrific economic primer. Hyde’s very short book is an activist’s handbook. The Paul and Goldwater books both establish the essential character of the movement. And Rothbard’s brief book is a good introduction to Dr. Paul’s thinking on monetary policy.

This isn’t as much reading as it might look like, since most of these texts aren’t long.

Year 2

Gene Callahan – Economics for Real People
Frederic Bastiat – The Law
Israel Kirzner – Ludwig von Mises
Andrew Bacevich – American Empire
Ron Paul – A Foreign Policy of Freedom
Justin Raimondo – Reclaiming the American Right

The Law is basic enough that it could be included in Year 1, but I actually think it’s better to have some grounding in economics before reading The Law. The Callahan and Kirzner books will serve as the student’s introduction to specifically Austrian economics. Bacevich’s book is still, to my mind, the best general introduction to what’s wrong with American foreign policy that’s on the market. And since Bacevich is a conservative Catholic and former Army colonel, it’s not easy to dismiss him as an anti-American leftist. His book provides scholarly support for the views expressed in Ron Paul’s collection. Justin Raimondo’s book, meanwhile, ties things together, showing how the Right was drawn into supporting an interventionist foreign policy and the beginnings of the Old Right’s comeback in the early 1990s.

Year 3

Friedrich Hayek – The Road to Serfdom
Murray Rothbard – America’s Great Depression
Albert Jay Nock – Our Enemy, the State
Chalmers Johnson – Blowback
Ludwig von Mises – Liberalism

Now we’re getting into deceptively deep waters. Hayek and Rothbard make a good unit, since both show the relationship economic crisis and the growth of state power. Rothbard’s book provides answers to the usual Keynesian and left-liberal arguments that we need the Federal Reserve to stave off another depression, while Hayek spells out where state economic interventionism leads. Liberalism is a relatively easy-going introduction to Mises and sets out the positive case for classical liberalism. Johnson’s Blowback picks up the foreign-policy thread from the last year’s syllabus, showing how foreign-policy interventionism gives rise to terrorism, or “blowback” in the CIA’s term. Nock’s short but deceptively dense book presents a general case against state action. On reflection, this course fits together better than I originally thought it did.

Year 4

Murray Rothbard – Man, Economy, and State
Hans-Hermann Hoppe – Democracy: The God That Failed
Michael Scheuer – Imperial Hubris
Robert Pape – Dying to Win

Now we’re into some very long texts. I originally had Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action listed in place of Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State, but I decided that the latter would be somewhat easier going on the students, and it’s a fine summation of Austrian economics in its own right. Hoppe’s book builds upon Rothbard and applies his thoughts to controversial policy questions such as immigration. Scheuer and Pape complete the student’s basic training in foreign policy, presenting some hard realities about war, nation-building, occupation, and terrorism.

I welcome everyone’s feedback on this list. As I say, it’s a rough draft, and I’d like to fine-tune it. There are many other libertarian and conservative books that I’d like to include, but these seem like the best fit for what my friend has in mind. I may have overlooked something important, however, so feel free to make other suggestions.

Daniel McCarthy is associate editor of The American Conservative and former Internet Communications Coordinator for Ron Paul 2008.

While I've already read a few of those listed here, I'm considering re-exploring the texts following this general outline to see if doing so would provide for greater comprehension of the material.

There are inevitably some additions I plan to make to this experiment, but I could use some assistance on where to fit them into this puzzle.

some planned additions are:

The Constitution of Liberty - Friedrich Hayek
Speaking of Liberty - Rockwell Jr., Llewellyn H.
States' Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776-1876 - Forrest McDonald
Civil Disobedience and Other Essays - Henry David Thoreau
A Theory of Justice - John Rawls
Democracy in America - Alexis De Tocqueville
Free to Choose - Milton Friedman
On Liberty - John Stuart Mill
Second Treatise of Government - John Locke

Any assistance on how to include these in McCarthy's suggested curriculum along with any relevant suggestions for further but limited editions would be greatly appreciated.

I'm not hoping to read every relevant book out there, but rather hoping to ground myself with a broad but concise base of firm logic on the subjects of government, politics, and liberty.

Again let me say thank you for those that offer up valuable input.

 

[Conza88]

Human Action!

 

[NightOwl]

Don't forget the reading lists at the Campaign for Liberty (see the "Education" tab at the top of the home page).