Love, love, LOVE (!) Gatto! Dumbing Us Down was the first of his that I read, but Underground History of American Education is my favorite - Weapons of Mass Instructions is a condensed version of that. I was homeschooled, so I just love that kind of stuff.
I’m currently reading Laurence Vance’s “Christianity and War” with Butler Shaffer’s “Boundaries of Order” waiting in the wings.
Danny Sanchez wrote the following post at Sat, Jan 15 2011 3:25 AM: Finished Power and Market!
Nice! As if you don’t have enough on your plate, read Boundaries of Order next (its free via mises online). I can’t find anyone else whose read it and IMO its indispensable. Feel free to skip to chapter 3 as its where the book really delivers
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe
After that, I’m reading Washington Rules by Andrew Bacevich.
If you are like semi-established with libertariansim and austrian economics, the Chodorov book won’t add that much. I use it to give to people who want to get a gest of like ‘what’ this liberty thing you are talking about’, but it’s really not that new/fundamental. It’s about how socity is made of individuals, cooperating and so and so forth.
Hazlitt’s book really is a point by point refutationof Keynes book. If you are interested in that, go for it. But I didn’t get that much our of it.
Gaza in Crisis: Reflections on Israel’s War Against the Palestinians by Noam Chomsky and Ilan Pappe
How is this book?
I’ve only just begun it, but I like it quite a bit thus far. If you don’t have a lot of background information on the topic, you might be subject to getting lost-- but the authors do provide some for the uninitiated.
Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, Tabbarock’s Entrepreneurial Economics, and Redbeard’s Might is Right or Survival of the Fittest.
I just finished Political Philosophy, Clearly by de Jasay.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is actually one of my favorite areas of study, since half of my father’s side of the family (the paternal side) is extremely pro-Israel and extremely anti-Palestinian, and I’m far, far away from their position (one of my family’s friends actually told my dad when I was younger that he should moderate my views).
Much of the material collected here precedes Israel’s recent military attack on a Gaza-bound international flotilla of embargo-breaking humanitarian aid, so it isn’t entirely up-to-date, but it is still very good. I don’t know how it is for someone who finds it a favorite subject, but it offers a lot of context and fairly recent events.
Now listening to the audiobook of The Story of Civilization, Volume 1: Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant. After so many pages of Rothbard’s pugnacious, prosaic style, returning yet again to Durant’s exquisite wordcraft is wonderfully refreshing.
My bed-time book has been P. J. O’Rourke’s On the Weath of Nations. It’s an entertaining summation of Adam Smith’s great book, which he spices up with Smith’s other writings, and what people wrote about Smith at the time. Steven Landsburg’s Fair Play is on the mail, and will follow that one. Anyhow, I still got other books lying around like a couple by Michael Crichton and Richard Feynman.
I am resuming my econ self-study by going through Steven Landsburg’s Macroeconomics textbook, whose applications and all I’ve found to make a nicer reading than even Mankiw’s. Next I will be finishing up my econ study with Samuelson’s Economics – or will be finishing up a game theory textbook I bought awhile back and advance to some other topics, or even other disciplines like evo biology or physics.
A People’s History of the United States, Howard Zinn on History, Freakonomics, The Evolution of Integral Consciousness and a book outlining Frederich Nietzsche.
Reading Matt’s book, Withur We.
I am also casually goign through Bob Murphy’s HA study guide, while reviewing HA again, and some Aristotle thanks to some other recommendations.
Started The Foundations of Morality yesterday and ended up reading a lot more than I intended; I’m about 50 pages in today. Great stuff so far.
I also browsed Hulsmann’s The Last Knight of Liberalism, and was similarly engrossed. It was really pleasant reading (despite the subject - I read about Mises’ final years); as intimidating as its length is, I’m going to have to read it soon.
What are your thoughts on Jiddu Krishnamurti?
“An Archeology of Knowledge” by Michel Foucault and “Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language” by Saul Kripke.
Rework is a great title. I haven’t read it but I am very familiar with the Jason Fried and DHH’s business methodology as I use elements of it daily. Danny might find some value in it as the chief of the Academy, as organizational culture and standards have a lot to do with success once you grow beyond the bootstrapping phase of any new enterprise.
There generally doesn’t seem to be a lot of interest in non-ideological, non-academic, non-fiction capitalist literature here, but the guys behind Rework are part of a cultural capitalist and entrepreneurial renaissance on the internet, and I feel, deserve a lot of consideration.
I don’t have much time to read these days. When I get time, I will finish reading all of Garet Garrett’s novels, then probably David Friedman’s “Future Imperfect”.
Thanks Kaju and LS! I’ll put Rework on my list. But it might be a while. Now that I’ve finished all the major works of Mises (and nearly all of Rothbard’s), my next big projects are to read all the major works of David Hume (I’ve read innumerable excerpts of them, but never cover-to-cover), listen to the rest of the major works of Will Durant (which, at this point, consists of his huge The Story of Civilization series), and go into Hazlitt some more (after Foundations of Morality, I want to at least read Economics in One Lesson, if not his other stuff).