[ Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong, Basic Books, 2022 viii + 605 pp.] J. Bradford DeLong, who teaches economics at UC Berkeley and was a protégé of Larry Summer’s dislikes Austrian economics, which he sometimes assails on his blog. You might reasonably expect that for this reason, I will
Jesús Huerta de Soto, who is professor of economics at the Rey Juan Carlos University of Madrid, is the leading representative of the Austrian school of economics in Spain. He is a renowned teacher, and two of his many doctoral students, David Howden and Philipp Bagus, both now themselves professors of economics, have edited a festschrift in his
Scalia: Rise to Greatness, 1936–1986 by James Rosen Regnery Publishing, 2023 496 pages James Rosen, who has written biographies of John Mitchell and Dick Cheney, and was for many years a reporter for Fox News, has found an ideal biographical subject in Antonin Scalia,, who served for thirty years on the Supreme Court. The volume under review, the
The Conservative Affirmation By Willmoore Kendall Regnery, 2022 (Originally published in 1963) lxix + 362 pp. Willmoore Kendall was the most important political theorist of the brand of conservatism associated with William F. Buckley Jr.’s National Review during the 1950s and 1960s. To some of us, this will be not altogether a positive
Taxes Have Consequences: An Income Tax History of the United States By Arthur B. Laffer, Brian Domitrovic, and Jeanne Cairns Sinquefield Post Hill Press, 2022, xxv + 413 pp. Taxes Have Consequences is a good book that could have been better. The authors are leading defenders of “supply side” economics, which attracted much attention during the
Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less By Alex Epstein Portfolio 2022 xii + 468 pp. In his remarkable new book, Alex Epstein has changed the terms of the debate about the danger of “global warming” and the alleged need to take drastic action in response to this. One side assures us that we
Time for Socialism: Dispatches from a World on Fire, 2016–2020 By Thomas Piketty Yale University Press, 2021 352 pages Thomas Piketty has written a useful book. Readers need no longer plough their way through his vast Capital in the Twenty-First Century , not to mention his even vaster Capital and Ideology, to understand his message. This fairly
Raghuram Rajan has written a surprising book. Now teaching finance at the University of Chicago, he is an international bureaucrat in good standing, and not a minor one at that; he was chief economist of the International Monetary Fund. Yet far from calling for an increase in “global governance,” as one might expect from someone with his
Capitalism is increasingly under attack these days by people who claim that it promotes a collapse of moral values, subordinating all else to the pursuit of individual wealth and pleasure. Often these critics demand either the strict supervision of the free market by elite government administrators or its outright replacement by socialism. In this
After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed By Andrew Bacevich Metropolitan Books, 2021 Xiv + 206 pages Andrew Bacevich, a history professor at Boston University for twenty-three years, has written an excellent book on American foreign policy, but it is embedded within a larger and more questionable book. Fortunately, the merits
What is the Mises Institute?
The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard.
Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.