Panic of 1819 is pretty distinguished.
Does anyone know of a good book on Ancient Greek history that they would recommend? Not a beginner’s book, I know a decent amount about Greeks, but I wanted to get into it more.
In particular, I wanted a book that deals more with the intellectuals of Greece, the last book I tried dealt mostly with State affairs.
I not really sure if this is a request kind of thread, so sorry in advance if I went off topic.
Not necessarily related to Austrian Economics in any way, but Hitler’s War and Churchill’s War both by David Irving are some of the finest WW II books available.
I recommend The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, written by Diogenes Laertius in the 3rd Century AD. Don’t let its antiquity fool you: it’s a fun read, filled with amusing anecdotes (many of which are likely apocryphal, but are nonetheless interesting as indicators of the ancient reputations of their subjects) as well as distillations of the respective credos of each thinker.
Here is some stuff I liked:
Buchanan Churchill, Hitler and ‘The Unnecessary War’
Fleming The Illusion of Victory: Americans in World World War 1
Fleming The New Dealer’s War: F.D.R. and the War Within World War II
Veale Advance to Barbarism: The Development of Total Warfare from Sarajevo to Hiroshima
Acton, A Lecture on the Study of History
Acton Lectures on Modern history
Acton Lectures on the French Revolution
Carlyle The French Revolution
Good for an understanding of historical events
Nisbet, The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America
The Constitution as Counter-Revolution: A Tribute to the Anti-Federalists by
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel - read.
Augustin Thierry, History of the Conquest of England by the Normans; Its Causes, and its Consequences, in England, Scotland, Ireland, & on the Continent, 2 vols. [1856]- have yet to read
Augustin Thierry, The Formation and Progress of the Tiers État, or Third Estate in France 2 vols [1856] - have yet to read
Angeliki E. Laiou - The Economic History of Byzantium
Maria Eugenia Aubet and Mary Turto - The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade (This has mostly to do with Spain)
Joan Oates - Babylon
Warren T. Treadgold - A history of the Byzantine State and Society
Anthony Gafton - Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius, and the Library of Caesarea
Enrico Ascalone - Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians (Dictionaries of Civilizations)
Ibn Khaldun - An Arab Philosophy of History: Selections from the Prolegomena of Ibn Khaldun of Tunis (I recomend ANYTHING by Ibn Khaldun, perhaps the most under rated scholar in the west. He was an amazing political theorist and proto - economist)
To this date I have yet to see a decent history of Persia / Zoroastrianism, Carthage, Phoenicia, ancient Ethiopia (Aksum and before), The Hittites, or even much of Eastern Europe (outside of Russia) before 1750.
A very extensive list here.
I hadn’t seen this post, but there’s another thread going around that I started for people to list the best books on United States history if anyone would like to add a selection.
If you can, the list is here: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/best-books-on-united-states-history/13708/24
Capitalism and The Historians - various - actually not as amazing as one might hope
Thomas Babington Macaulay - Anything - great Whig historian, with all the problems the implies
Martin van Creveld - Transformation of War - put wars in a historical context. Good for understanding today’s world and the past.
John Taylor Gatto - Underground History of American Education
Mises - Nation, State, and Economy - relates to WWI era
Also good are
Scale and Scope: The Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism - Chandler
Gordon S. Wood - Radicalism of the American Revolution
road from serfdom - skidelsky - good book about state and market post WWII
Commanding Heights - Daniel Yergin - good book about state and market post WWII
I would note too that many books are on Scribd - even books you wouldn’t expect
Just a heads up to anyone else who might be interested in The Medieval Machine by Jean Gimpel, mentioned on page 1 of this thread. I picked it up at the library yesterday after scanning this thread. So far it’s a good, enlghtening read. But one hundred pages in and I’ve seen the words exploitation and proletariat several times; this is the 13th century we’re talking about. Like the majority of historians, Gimpel (a Frenchman) had socialist sympathies. This isn’t necessarily such a sin when one is reading about diplomacy or war tactics, but since this book is largely a study of economic history I’m finding it hard to take the author seriously at times. I suppose I should have read the thread more thoroughly; I was at first under the assumption that the authors listed here were Austrian/libertarian historians, but that’s expecting a bit much. Such a shame that Rothbard didn’t live on for a few more decades to take European (and beyond) histories as trenchantly as he did for America. Seems like most of the contemporary Austrian economic histories are only interested in American history as well.
Please read the whole book before trying to warn off people from picking it up for lack of libertarian purity. It is a very important corrective for the widespread view of the economic history of medieval Europe. Suffice it to say that Tom Woods has cited it extensively.
Please read the whole book before trying to warn off people from picking it up for lack of libertarian purity.
Agreed. We don’t want people not reading Kolko’s Triumph of Conservatism just because he’s not a libertarian. The books is crucial for our understanding of the progressive era.
There is a larger point that many books are helpful and useful even if we the author is wrong on some things, so we have to use the proper framework to separate the wheat from the chaff.
BTW, quote function isn’t working on IE or firefox on my machine.
Please read the whole book before trying to warn off people from picking it up for lack of libertarian purity. It is a very important corrective for the widespread view of the economic history of medieval Europe. Suffice it to say that Tom Woods has cited it extensively.
You make a good point. Although the writer is not an Austrian, I wouldn’t dissuade anyone from reading The Medieval Machine. It has been an interesting, worthwhile read; Gimpel has covered a wide ranch of topics, even shedding some light on the lives of average laborers, without getting tedious. My only (other) complaint might be that he focuses on England and France, but then again it’s only <250 pages. I look forward to reading more non-libertarian histories, but I also hope to see Austrian analyses of world history published in the future.
History of Money and Banking: Colonial Period to WW2 - Murray Rothbard
This link is excellent, imo.
‘‘Articles and papers would also be appreciated’’
How about this: Karl Polanyi and Markets in the Ancient Near East by Morris Silver which challenges an apparant othodoxy set by Karl Polanyi(of The Great Transformation fame) which states that ancient societies like the Greek polis were somthing like command economies with administerd prices instead of a self ajusting market mechanism. A case made in Polanyi’s Ports of Trade in Early Societies.
Silver is challenged here
& replys here
The above links are view only, to download click here
Ralph Raico’s “Great Wars, Great Leaders” is a great collection of essays. It is free on mises.org
Just finished Taylor’s “The Hapsburg Monarchy”. I find it hard to grasp why a guy with transparent anti-German (Taylor took pride in having advised the Czechs on the expulsion of the German minority after WW2) and anti-Hapsburg feelings (obsessions?) should get to write a book on the Hapsburg Empire. Perhaps a book on pan-slavism would have been more to Taylor’s liking, although he would have been unable to criticize everything in such a book. And again, a book of the Hapsburgs that says not one word on the incredible cultural productivity of the empire is baffling, to say the least.
Bottom line: I’m certain there are many better books around. God, there must be!
I’m looking for a book that details the end of the laissez-faire era in Europe in the late 19th century from a libertarian perspective.