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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Source: Online Books: 510 records

Bagels, Barry Bonds, and Rotten Politicians

Burton Blumert Updated 1/17/2012

Burton Blumert was an entrepreneur who knew not only all that there is to know about precious metals but also about politics and economics. He offers his wide-ranging insights in this funny, charming, and also learned collection of essays from many y...
The Wild Wheel

Garet Garrett Updated 1/17/2012

No one, but no one, tells the story of the Ford Motor Company like Garet Garrett. He loved machines and technology, and the markets that create and distribute them. He loved the car and its transforming effect on society. And he lived through it all...
The Philosophy of Ownership

Robert LeFevre Updated 1/13/2012

The significance of property ownership has rarely been fully appreciated, writes Robert LeFevre. He proceeds to present the entire libertarian case for private ownership, with his characteristic clarity of exposition. He makes what is a radically...
The Return to Protection

William Smart Updated 1/13/2012

William Smart was the outstanding Austrian in England during his generation, a leading advocate of the marginalist school. But he was more than that: he was a dedicated champion of laissez-faire trade policy in the tradition of Cobden and Bright. He...
Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 1/12/2012

Ridiculously low price! Murray N. Rothbard's great treatise Man, Economy, and State and its complementary text Power and Market, are here combined into a single edition as they were written to be. It provides a sweeping presentation of Austria...
Economic Point of View: An Essay in the History of Economic Thought

Israel M. Kirzner Updated 1/12/2012

Israel Kirzner is an outstanding student of Mises's, and here is his sweeping defense of the Misesian definition of the scope and meaning of economic science. He compares the Misesian view of human action with the neoclassical and classical schoo...
What You Should Know About Inflation

Henry Hazlitt Updated 1/11/2012

The book's title—What You Should Know About Inflation—only hints at the extent of the issues that Hazlitt addresses. He presents the Austrian theory of money in the clearest possible terms, and contrasts it with the fallacies of government manage...
Education: Free and Compulsory

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 1/10/2012

What is it about today's school system that so many find unsatisfactory? Why have so many generations of reformers failed to improve the educational system, and, indeed, caused it to degenerate further and further into an ever declining level...
Crises and Cycles

Wilhelm Röpke Updated 1/10/2012

It's hard to say what is the most rare, most hard to find, most buried important book, in the history of the Austrian School. But this splendid and critically important treatise would certainly be among the nominees. Until this edition, this...
International Economic Disintegration

Wilhelm Röpke Updated 1/9/2012

Röpke wrote this book in the late 30s, and it was published in 1942. He explains how the world unraveled the 1930s from a combination of protectionism and monetary destruction. And while his analysis is robust, he also relays what seems to be an...
Songs of the Mises-Kreis (Complete Collection)

Mises Institute Updated 1/6/2012

Here is the book that allows you to sing like Mises and the gang, with all verses for the songs we've been able to reconstruct, and complete piano accompaniments. From 1920 until 1934, Ludwig von Mises conducted a fortnightly private seminar...
The Value of Money

Benjamin Anderson Updated 1/6/2012

Benjamin Anderson, American Austrian, was among a handful of economists, led by Ludwig von Mises in his pioneering work The Theory of Money and Credit in 1912, who set out to integrate monetary theory into a general theory of value. Anderson devot...
International Order and Economic Integration

Wilhelm Röpke Updated 1/3/2012

Some of Röpke's best work has remained long out of print, this book among them. With great sincerity and passion he explains how the old liberals of his generation came to reject war came to reject war as a first principle and then reject so...
Labor Policy of the Free Society, The

Sylvester Petro Updated 1/2/2012

Professor Petro is one of the giants of the Austrian tradition, and he applied his talents to a particular area of specialization: labor policy. This 1957 book covers three main areas: US labor law and experience, the Austrian theory of labor/capital...
The Free Market and Its Enemies: Pseudo-Science, Socialism, and Inflation

Ludwig von Mises Updated 12/31/2011

This is a "new" book by Ludwig von Mises, the first of a series of lecture transcripts drawn from careful notes taken by Bettina Bien Greaves in the summer of 1951. It features Mises in a role in which we do not usually find him, not as a w...
The Free Market and Its Enemy

Leonard E. Read Updated 12/31/2011

Leonard E. Read The Free Market and Its Enemy...
Critique of Interventionism, A

Ludwig von Mises Updated 12/30/2011

In the sequence of Mises's books concerning policy, this book followed Socialism, and was the first to present a new theory of interventionism. In Mises's view, interventionism is an inherently unstable policy because it creates new disloc...
An Introduction to the Theory of Value

William Smart Updated 12/30/2011

It is astonishing that a book of this quality would have been completely lost to history. It was the first to introduce the core ideas of the Menger branch of Marginalist thought to English readers. The first edition appeared in 1891. It appeared in...
How They Succeeded: Life Stories of Successful Men and Women Told by Themselves

Orison Swett Marden Updated 12/29/2011

There is a beautiful romance in this book, a romance with achievement in an age when achievement was valued. It can happen again, and a good first step is to study the lives and values of the greats of the last century to learn how and why. The Gi...
Planned Chaos

Ludwig von Mises Updated 12/27/2011

This new edition (completely reset) of Planned Chaos features a new introduction by Chris Westley of Jacksonville State University. The introduction brings this classic up to date - not that it has ever fallen out of date or ever will. The title c...
The Theory of Collective Bargaining

William H. Hutt Updated 12/26/2011

In 1930, W.H. Hutt demonstrated several spectacular points: labor unions cannot lift wages overall; their earnings come at the expense of the consumer; their effect is to cartelize business and reduce free competition to the detriment of everyone. He...
The Economics of the Colour Bar

William H. Hutt Updated 12/23/2011

Who were the original and most passionate opponents of apartheid in South Africa? The classical liberals, and this book was their most important weapon against the problem of racial injustice. William H. Hutt, an Austro-classical economist in Sou...
My Years with Ludwig von Mises

Margit von Mises Updated 12/22/2011

A moving account of her life with "Lu," from their first days in Vienna to his death in New York in 1973. The reader learns that Mises was a warm and gentle husband, in addition to being a great mind. The author reports interesting anecdote...
Antitrust: The Case for Repeal

Dominick Armentano Updated 12/21/2011

This 100-page tour de force rips the intellectual cover off antitrust regulation to reveal it for what it is: a bludgeon used by businesses against their competitors. Unlike some critics, Professor Armentano carries the logic of his analysis to fulle...
Human Action

Ludwig von Mises Updated 12/20/2011

This spectacular edition of the great work has all the makings of a game changer. In a mere 24 hours after release, this became our all-time bestseller. The masterpiece first appeared in German in 1940 and then disappeared, only to reappear in E...
The Menace of the Herd, or Procrustes at Large

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Updated 12/20/2011

This exceeding rare book is by one of the great men of the 20th century. Written soon after his immigration to the United States, he signed the book "Francis Stuart Campbell" because he was a refugee from Austria and didn't want to enda...
The Conquest of Poverty

Henry Hazlitt Updated 12/19/2011

Long before Charles Murray took on the topic, Henry Hazlitt wrote an outstanding book on poverty that not only provided an empirical examination of the problem but also presented a rigorous theory for understanding the relationship between poverty an...
God's Gold: The Story of Rockefeller and His Times

John T. Flynn Updated 12/16/2011

In 1932, John T. Flynn had begun to rethink his old-style "progressivism" to develop intellectually into a defender of markets as against the regimentation of government management. A first product of these steps is this classic and extraor...
America's Great Depression

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 12/14/2011

Applied Austrian economics doesn't get better than this. Murray N. Rothbard's America's Great Depression is a staple of modern economic literature and crucial for understanding a pivotal event in American and world history. The Mises In...
Banking and the Business Cycle

Chester A. Phillips Updated 12/14/2011

This rare study by C.A. Phillips, together with T.F. McManus and R.W. Nelson, appeared in 1937 as an Austrian-style analysis of the stock market crash and the great depression that followed. It explores the many theories tossed about at the time,...
Essentials of Economics

Faustino Ballvé Updated 12/13/2011

A brief Survey of Principles and Policies Faustino Ballvé was a remarkable thinker and economist, educated in Spain and England and teaching and practicing law in Mexico City. He was here when Ludwig von Mises came to speak on a lecture tour....
Socialism and International Economic Order

Elizabeth Tamedly Updated 12/13/2011

This extraordinary book by Elisabeth Tamedly, as scholarly as it is passionate, argues that socialism, despite its internationalist aspirations, is not capable of accomplishing stable international peace and order. If we postulate a true democracy, s...
Elements of Libertarian Leadership

Leonard E. Read Updated 12/12/2011

Leonard E. Read Elements of Libertarian Leadership...
Liberty or Equality: The Challenge of Our Time

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn Updated 12/9/2011

Sometime in the 18th century, the word equality gained ground as a political ideal, but the idea was always vague. In this treatise, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn argues that it reduced to one simple and very dangerous idea: equality of political power a...
The American Omen

Garet Garrett Updated 12/8/2011

Garet Garrett The American Omen...
Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War

George Morgenstern Updated 12/7/2011

NY: Devin-Adair, 1947...
Man, Economy, and Liberty: Essays in Honor of Murray N. Rothbard

Walter Block (ed.) Updated 12/6/2011

In 1986, a remarkable party was held on Murray Rothbard's sixtieth birthday, and papers written in his honor were presented. Two years later the book was released. It contained many wonderful essays--both scholarly and humorous--on his work and l...
Economics of Prohibition, The

Mark Thornton Updated 12/6/2011

It is conventional wisdom that alcohol prohibition failed, but the economic reasons for this failure have never been as extensively detailed or analyzed as they are in this study by Mark Thornton. The lessons he draws apply not only to the period...
Power and Market: Government and the Economy

Murray N. Rothbard Updated 12/5/2011

What can government do to enhance social and economic well being? Nothing, says Murray N. Rothbard. Power and Market contains the proof. It will inoculate the reader against even the slightest temptation to invoke the state as a solution to any socia...
Inclined To Liberty: The Futile Attempt to Suppress the Human Spirit

Louis E. Carabini Updated 11/30/2011

"No one should be allowed to own a yacht." "The salaries of company executives are too high" "No one should be allowed to inherit wealth." We are surrounded every day by anti-capitalist clichés. We encoun...
Efficiency and Externalities in an Open-Ended Universe

Roy Cordato Updated 11/29/2011

The problem of externalities and efficiency is cited relentlessly in mainstream literature as the great rationale for government intervention. The Austrian School, however, rooted in an understanding of the competitive process, takes another approach...
I Chose Liberty: Autobiographies of Contemporary Libertarians

Walter Block (ed.) Updated 11/29/2011

Walter Block leaned on 82 of the world's most prominent libertarian thinkers and asked them to tell their life stories with an eye to intellectual development. The result is the most comprehensive collection of libertarian autobiographies...
Business Tides: The Newsweek Era of Henry Hazlitt

Henry Hazlitt Updated 11/28/2011

A lone voice of economic sanity in the United States after World War II was Henry Hazlitt, who had moved in 1946 from the New York Times editorial page to Newsweek magazine, where he wrote until the late 1960s. He wrote a column every week on the mos...
The American Story

Garet Garrett Updated 11/23/2011

He was a defender of free enterprise who adored the magnificence of the American genius for progress. He was a champion of business who believed in profiting the old fashioned way. He was a libertarian who deplored the rise of big government....
A Treatise on Political Economy

Destutt Tracy Updated 11/22/2011

The neglect of Antoine Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) in the history of political economy is both strange and tragic. He was, after all, Thomas Jefferson's number one favorite economist, the thinker who influenced him and, ar...
Stock Market, Credit, and Capital Formation, The

Fritz Machlup Updated 11/21/2011

Economist Fritz Machlup was an early Misesian who wrote this book as an early study in the workings of the business cycle. In particular, he investigates and explains the relationship between expanding credit, monetary policy, and rising stock prices...
Away From Freedom

Vernon Orval Watts Updated 11/18/2011

Murray Rothbard writes the introduction to the reprint of this 1952 gem. It is by V. Orval Watts, one of the leading anti-Keynesians of his time. He is writing during the great entrenchment of the Keynesian perspective within the economics profession...
The Great Austrian Economists

Randall G. Holcombe (ed.) Updated 11/17/2011

The Austrian tradition began formally with Carl Menger's 1871 work, Principles of Economics. But its roots stretch back to the late-Scholastic period, when philosophers first began to think systematically about the relationship between human choi...
The Underground Economy

Hans F. Sennholz Updated 11/10/2011

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The Value of Money

Tjardus Greidanus Updated 11/4/2011

Tjardus Greidanus The Value of Money...