OK, here we go. This is one bookshelf for now. The remainder of my collection is variously on another shelf (out of frame) or in my car, or in the basement, or in the spare bedroom or in the living room, etc…
And a close-up of my (I think 1953) Regnery edition of Human Action, as well as C.A. Phillips Readings in Money & Banking (which I haven’t yet read). I think Readings might be first edition. (If not first ed., maybe 1918 or 1921 edition ??)
This has been quiet a fun thread. 
I’m thoroughly jealous of some of the library’s out there.
From where did you get that version of Human Action?
First edition, eh? Veddy nice. It’s the same as the Scholar’s Edition, right?
A word to the wise. If you are employed in any type of position where you can classify yourself as an educator, you can effectively get tax write-offs for all of the books you buy (well, at least non-fiction books). You typicall get a fraction of your money back, but it’s better than nothing.
Here are the books I have on the table, next to my desk. They are: Lincoln Unmaske**d by Thomas DiLorenzo, End the Fed by Ron Paul, A People’s History by Howard Zinn, The Ethics of Liberty by Murray Rothbard, The PIG to the Great Depression by Bob Murphy, The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham, The Power Elite by Mills, Bull Moves in Bear Markets by Peter Schiff, The Case Against the Fed by Murray Rothbard, A History of Money and Banking in the United States by Murray Rothbard, Broke: The New American Dream (DVD) by Michael Covel, Tomorrow’s Gold by Marc Faber, and Family of Secrets by Russ Baker.
Mmmm I love the smell of old books. Smells like…knowledge. Which oddly enough is a sweet musky smell.
It’s a third edition of Human Action. I purchased it about 6 years ago on Amazon marketplace. I don’t recall precisely what I paid for it, but I’d guess it was in the neighborhood of $50 if you put me to it.
I just double-checked Readings in Money & Banking, and it is indeed the first edition. Giggity. You can find hardcover editions on Amazon for $20-30 for this one.
On a tangent, I picked up my copy of F.A. Harper’s Why Wages Rise at the 2006 Mises University for $3. I’ve seen the same edition listed for sale on Amazon in excess of $90.
Is that the edition where Mises says that a government levying taxes is consistent with the freedom of an actor in a free market?
I don’t know. As far as I can tell it’s the third edition, not a “revised third edition” etc. Do you know approximately where that statement comes from (i.e., what chapter/section)? I could look it up…
My intro to the Scholar’s Ed. says pg 282.
Wow. Dead on. Paragraph 2.
The maintenance of a government apparatus of courts, police officers, prisons, and of armed forces requires considerable expenditure. To levy taxes for these purposes is fully compatible with the freedom the individual enjoys in a free market economy. To assert this does not, of course, amount to a justification of the confiscatory and discriminatory taxation methods practiced today by the self-styled progressive governments. There is need to stress this fact because in our age of interventionism and the steady “progress” toward totalitarianism the governments employ the power to tax for the destruction of the market economy.
Every step a government takes beyond the fulfillment of its essential functions of protecting the smooth operation of the market economy against aggression, whether on the part of domestic or foreign disturbers, is a step forward on a road that directly leads into the totatlitarian system where there is no freedom at all.
Wait.. what?
So, Mises said that - and it was removed later on from editions?
It seems that he did. I have no idea whether it was removed from later editions (this is the only version I’ve read). In any event, I’ve always understood Mises to be a minarchist, so his defense in these paragraphs for the minarchist holy triumvirate of police, law & military, is not surprising, and IMO not inconsistent with the rest of his body of works. Is it?
I cleared a bookshelf from all the computer language and art books that once occupied it, and organized by economics/political science books on it to take a photograph (now my computer desk looks really bare). A lot of empty spaces on the shelf! [:P] Hopefully, that will slowly correct itself.
This is the shelf. Notice how empty the top shelf and bottom shelf are. The second shelf is saved by the savvy addition of a little statuette I bought in Toledo. The green table to the bottom left should be ignored. [:#] It is not part of my academic life (beer pong table).
!(http://www.economicthought.net/Images/books 001.jpg)
This is the second row. From left to right: Anderson, Benjamin, Economics and the Public Welfare; Ebeling, Richard (ed.), The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle; Ebeling, Richard (ed.), Champions of Freedom; Sechrest, Larry, Free Banking; Friedman and Schwartz, A Monetary History of the United States; Powell, Benjamin, Making Poor Nations Rich; Valarde, Juan, Cien Años de Economía Española; Libertarian Papers*;* Murphy, Robert, The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression; Higgs, Robert, Resurgence of the Warfare State, Arms, Politics and the Economy, Depression, War and Cold War; Carabini, Louis, Inclined to Liberty; Healy, The Cult of the Presidency; Hayek’s The Pure Theory of Capital, Socialism and War and The Road to Serfdom; Vedder and Gallaway’s Out of Work; Garett’s The Bubble that Broke the World; some random book my friend bought me and I will never read probably; Hernando de Soto’s Mystery of Capital; diLorenzo’s How Capitalism Saved America; Ron Paul’s End the Fed; Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom; Norberg’s In Defense of Global Capitalism; Bastiat’s Essays in the Political Economy; and Marx’s The Communist Manifesto.
!(http://www.economicthought.net/Images/books 003.jpg)
Here is the third row: Reisman’s Capitalism; both English editions of Jesús Huerta de Soto’s Money, Bank Credit and Economic Cycles; Mises’ Human Action, Nation State and Economy, Economic Freedom and Interventionism and The Theory of Money and Credit; Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (everybody has to have a copy); Burton Folsom Jr.‘s New Deal or Raw Deal?, Keynes’ The Generaly Theory; Alan Greenspan’s terrible The Age of Turbulence; Tom Palmer’s Realizing Freedom; Stiglitz’ terrible Making Globalization Work; Bhagwati’s In Defense of Globalization; Hazlitt and Economics in One Lesson; David Boaz’ The Libertarian Reader; Harberler, Gottfried, Prosperity and Depression; Rothbard’s A History of Money and Banking in the United States and America’s Great Depression; and finally Thomas Woods’ Meltdown.
!(http://www.economicthought.net/Images/books 002.jpg)
Finally, the least liked row for this forum, the final one with a grand total of three books (but invariably will grow to be bigger than most people want). These are my textbooks so far (and I have not started on the majority of my econometrics and elective classes):
!(http://www.economicthought.net/Images/books 004.jpg)
Unfortunately, my econ. bookshelf does not yet match my WWII military history bookshelf:
!(http://www.economicthought.net/Images/books 005.jpg)
Wow! Have you read all of that?
Thats a good way to spend your tax refund.
My new additions: Capitalism by George Reisman; Anatomy of the State by Murray Rothbard; The Law by Bastiat; Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Supply of Money by Doug French; Chaos Theory by Bob Murphy; The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics by David Gordon; and Reassessing the Presidency by John V. Denson.
This is my selection of books on purely economics subjects:
and this is a more general selection containing most of the books I currently have on my shelf. Thought it would provide a nice perspective, hopefully putting to bed the myth that Austrians are only those inept with maths…(although I suppose I could be inept, but just like having mathsand physics books books!):
