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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Literature Library: free books from the Ludwig von Mises Institute: 2046 records

Ideology and Theories of History

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 8/3/2010

The first in a series of six lectures on the History of Economic Thought. [1:06:34]...
The Emergence of Communism

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 8/3/2010

The second in a series of six lectures on the History of Economic Thought. [1:11:47]...
National Economy and Rotary

Ludwig von Mises Updated 6/29/2010

In 1931, the International Rotary held its annual convention in Vienna, Austria. For the meeting, Rotary issued a tabloid. It contained information about Rotary's agenda for that convention, its international activities, and articles by Rotary me...
Murray N. Rothbard vs. The Philosophers: Unpublished Writings on Hayek, Mises, Strauss, and Polanyi

Roberta A. Modugno Updated 6/25/2010

Here is Rothbard's stunning mind at work on some of the most serious topics in philosophy, economics, and politics, originally crafted as private memos. The advantage here is that you get super-candid evaluations of the thought of the giants whil...
Study Guide of Man, Economy, and State

Robert P. Murphy Updated 6/18/2010

The prose of Man, Economy, and State by Murray Rothbard is as clear as a bell. But its sheer size (1441 pages!) is intimidating. After all, Rothbard systematically covers the whole of economic science. Fortunately, the young and brilliant economi...
Study Guide to Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

Robert P. Murphy Updated 6/18/2010

This is the first-ever Human Action Study Guide, and congratulations to Robert Murphy for being the only person in 60 years to complete this much-needed task that has been attempted many times before. This Guide is spiral bound and 380 pages, com...
Pictures of the Socialistic Future

Eugen Richter Updated 6/15/2010

This book is a remarkable discovery, as fresh today as when it was first translated in 1893. It is a novel of life under socialism by Eugene Richter, a German liberal of the 19th century. Prophetic is not quite the word for this book. Richter...
Theory and History: An Interpretation of Social and Economic Evolution

Ludwig von Mises Updated 6/11/2010

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 t...
Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money

Doug French Updated 6/7/2010

Early Speculative Bubbles & Increases in the Money Supply The Housing Bubble was hardly the first in human history. What's eluded historians is the same issue that eludes commentators today: the underlying cause of bubbles. This book i...
The Capitalist and the Entrepreneur: Essays on Organizations and Markets

Peter G. Klein Updated 6/7/2010

Entrepreneurship is a hot topic in academic, managerial, and policy circles. Yet researchers and policymakers tend to define entrepreneurship narrowly as business start-ups, and entrepreneurs as young dreamers with a particular personality. In f...
Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, and Other Essays

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 6/1/2010

Rothbard vs. the Crazies All evidence points to the superiority of the libertarian ideal—private property, capitalism, international trade, laissez-faire—but something is keeping the world from embracing it. That something is wrong-headed ideolog...
A Critique of Block on Abortion and Child Abandonment

Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski Updated 5/29/2010

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Nation, State, and Economy

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/28/2010

This was Mises's second book. It was written following his military service in World War I. It is also his first book that dealt with political themes--and began Mises's full-scale launch into the fight against collectivism that would be a th...
Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/28/2010

New LvMI edition with foreword by Thomas Woods 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 g...
Memoirs

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/28/2010

These are difficult times for those who love freedom. But they are nothing like what Mises faced during his life. He prevailed, and his Memoirs explain how. We can learn from Mises in this respect too. "How one carries on in the face of u...
Liberty Quotations

Mises Institute Updated 5/28/2010

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Common Sense Economics

L. Albert Hahn Updated 5/27/2010

Professor Hahn, one of the greatest but least known Austrian economists of his generation, offers a fantastic refutation of Keynesian macroeconomics, including its wild obsession with effective demand, and also a systematic presentation of the Austri...
Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/25/2010

The cover is from a Greek portrayal of the reality of war -- a fitting portrayal too of life under socialism, in which brute force is the only way to secure control over resources essential to life. This edition is the original as published by Yal...
Debt: Private and Public, Good and Bad

Sir Ernest Benn Updated 5/25/2010

...
Mystery of Banking, The

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 5/24/2010

The Mystery of Banking from Mises Media on Vimeo. Talk about great timing. Rothbard's extraordinary book unravels the mystery of banking: what is legitimate enterprise and what is a government-backed shell game that can't last. His explana...
The Left, the Right, and the State

Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. Updated 5/24/2010

Lew Rockwell's new manifesto is a clarion call—creative and thought-provoking on every page—for a principled liberty in our time. There are very few books in which you can open up any page and immediately find a quotable and inspiring passage tha...
The Ethics of Money Production

Jörg Guido Hülsmann Updated 5/24/2010

This pioneering work, in hardback, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann, professor of economics at the University of Angers in France and the author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, is the first full study of a critically important issue toda...
Classical Economics: An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought, Volume II

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 5/24/2010

The appearance of the famous (and massive) volumes of Rothbard's History of Economic Thought in a new edition is cause for great celebration. They have been out of print for many years, and were previously only available at a price exceeding...
William Pitt, the Bank of England, and the 1797 Suspension of Specie Payments: Central Bank War Finance During the Napoleonic Wars

Scott N. Duryea Updated 5/23/2010

...
Manipulation of Money and Credit, On the

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/20/2010

Ludwig von Mises Causes of the Economic Crisis Acrobat Distiller 7.0.5 (Windows)...
The Importance of Christian Thought for the American Libertarian Movement: Christian Libertarianism, 1950-71

Lee Haddigan Updated 5/19/2010

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Risking Aggression: Reply to Block

Kris Borer Updated 5/17/2010

Stephan Kinsella lp-2-12 Mac OS X 10.6.4 Quartz PDFContext Stephan Kinsella lp-2-12 Mac OS X 10.6.4 Quartz PDFContext Stephan Kinsella lp-2-12 Mac OS X 10.6.4 Quartz PDFContext Stephan Kinsella lp-2-12 Mac OS X 10.6.4 Quartz PDFContext Stephan K...
The Third Axiom, or A Logic of Liberty: On the Structure of Ethics and Economics as One Unified Aprioristic Science

Peter J. Preusse Updated 5/17/2010

...
An Introduction to Economic Reasoning

David Gordon Updated 5/17/2010

This high-school text, published in May 2000, is aimed at teaching the intelligent young reader how to think about economic problems in a manner consistent with the Austrian School tradition. Its chapters on action, preference, demand and supply, val...
Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics

George Reisman Updated 5/17/2010

George Reisman was a student of Mises's, a translator of his work, and, as he demonstrates in this outstanding treatise, a leading theorist in the Misesian tradition. This mammoth exposition deals with the method and theory of economics, and part...
Wealth: A Brief Explanation of the Causes of Economic Welfare

Edwin Cannan Updated 5/15/2010

Edwin Cannan Wealth...
The Legacy of Max Weber

Ludwig M. Lachmann Updated 5/15/2010

Ludwig Lachmann took a strong interest in the history of economic thought, particularly as it pertained to methodology. While he would not have claimed to be an Austrian in the Misesian tradition, his writings have influenced Austrians. Here is his s...
Pure Theory of Capital, The

Friedrich A. Hayek Updated 5/15/2010

The greatest failing of non-Austrian theories of macroeconomics, it's been said, is that they lack a robust theory of capital. F.A. Hayek sought to fill out the theory of the business cycle with an impenetrable one, and the result was this remark...
An Outline of International Price Theory

Chi-Yuen Wu Updated 5/15/2010

Chi-Yuen Wu from China was an Austrian price theorist writing during Mises's own time. His great contribution was this 1939 treatise written while studying at the London School of Economics, under the guidance of Lionel Robbins. Though the author...
The Anatomy of Criticism: A Trialogue

Henry Hazlitt Updated 5/15/2010

When Henry Hazlitt published this exceedingly rare book, he was finishing up a three-year position at The Nation as literary critic, and preparing to accept the position as H.L. Mencken's successor at American Mercury. He was struggling with...
The Rise and Fall of Society

Frank Chodorov Updated 5/15/2010

Frank Chodorov adored the work of Albert Jay Nock, particularly Nock's writings on the State. And so Chodorov set out to do something implausible: to rework the Nock book in his own style. Rothbard wrote of this book: "Frank's...
The Regulated Consumer

Mary Bennett Peterson Updated 5/15/2010

At the outset of the Naderite consumer movement, the Austrians had a vigorous response in this book by Mary Bennett Peterson. She discusses whether and to what extent product, safety, labor, communications, and other regulation helps or hinders the i...
The Economics of Inflation: A Study of Currency Depreciation in Post-War Germany

Constantino Bresciani-Turroni Updated 5/15/2010

"This is the most comprehensive and authoritative account of the great German inflation from 1914 to 1923." - Henry Hazlitt As an Austrian study of hyperinflation, this study has never been surpassed. The same is true of the detailed ex...
Lectures on Political Economy - Volume II: Money

Knut Wicksell Updated 5/14/2010

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...
A History of American Currency

William Graham Sumner Updated 5/14/2010

The author, William Graham Sumner, was the great sociologist of late 19th century America, but also a wise observer of economic conditions. In 1874, in the midst of another debate about the future of the American monetary system, he offered this...
The Market for Liberty

Morris and Linda Tannehill Updated 5/14/2010

Some great books are the product of a lifetime of research, reflection, and labored discipline. But other classics are written in a white heat during the moment of discovery, with prose that shines forth like the sun pouring into the window of a time...
The Discovery of Freedom

Rose Wilder Lane Updated 5/14/2010

With new forewords by Roger Lea MacBride and Hans F. Sennholz What an American original was Rose Wilder Lane! What a treasure! She lived from 1886 until 1968, the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and widely considered a silent collaborator on t...
The Driver

Garet Garrett Updated 5/14/2010

Here is a treasure in the history of the pro-capitalist novel. Garet Garrett, author of The People's Pottage, tells the story of an upstart Wall Street speculator financier, Henry Galt, a shadowy figure who stays out of the limelight as much as p...
The Bastiat Collection-Volume 1

Frederic Bastiat Updated 5/14/2010

In two volumes, here is The Bastiat Collection, the main corpus of his writings in English in a restored and elegant translation that includes some of the most powerful defenses of free markets ever written. This restoration project has yielded a...
The Bastiat Collection-Volume 2

Frederic Bastiat Updated 5/14/2010

In two volumes, here is The Bastiat Collection, the main corpus of his writings in English in a restored and elegant translation that includes some of the most powerful defenses of free markets ever written. This restoration project has yielded a...
Die Gemeinwirtschaft

Ludwig von Mises Updated 5/14/2010

Mises's book Socialism might be the bravest and most revolutionary book of the 20th century. Here is the second edition of the German original, with a beautiful cover and handsomely bound for the serious reader and collection....
The Cinder Buggy

Garet Garrett Updated 5/14/2010

Garet Garrett's fiction deals with the social impact of economic transformations. In The Driver, he deals with railroads, while Satan's Bushel examines agricultural. The Cinder Buggy, his second in the trilogy, is the longest of the t...
Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom

John V. Denson Updated 5/14/2010

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...
Pillars of Prosperity: Free Markets, Honest Money, Private Property

Ron Paul Updated 5/14/2010

When the economic history of our times is written, one man will emerge as the prophet of both the financial collapse and the disasters associated with government management: Ron Paul. He alone among the political class sounded the warnings and sees t...
The Case Against the Fed

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 5/14/2010

The most powerful case against the American central bank ever written. This work begins with a mini-treatment of money and banking theory, and then plunges right in with the real history of the Federal Reserve System. Rothbard covers the struggle bet...