Stalin’s War: A New History of World War II by Sean McMeekin Basic Books, 2021 831 pp. Probably the dominant mainstream view of World War II goes like this. World War II was the “good war.” Though Joseph Stalin was guilty of many crimes, Adolf Hitler, with his vast conquests accompanied by mass murder on a colossal scale, was an immediate threat
[ 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
Moral Progress in Dark Times: Universal Values for the 21st Century by Markus Gabriel, translated by Wieland Hoban Polity Press, 2022; xii + 281 pp. It would be easy to give this book a negative review, as it advocates a number of policies that from our standpoint are wrongheaded. Gabriel is especially alarmed by the dangers of “climate change”
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
Rigged! How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Hemingway Regnery Publishing, 2021, 432 pp. Mollie Hemingway, an editor of the online magazine The Federalist , calls our attention in this well-researched book to a problem of vital significance. She is a supporter of Donald Trump, though not an uncritical one, and
No Free Lunch: Six Economic Lies You’ve Been Taught and Probably Believe by Caleb S. Fuller Freiling Publishing, 2021. 110 pp. Caleb Fuller, an economist who teaches at Grove City College, thinks that many people have a mistaken conception of economics. It is, they think, a dull and dry subject, the “dismal science,” of primary interest to
Why Does Inequality Matter? by T.M. Scanlon Oxford University Press, 2018, 170 pp. T.M. Scanlon, who taught philosophy for many years at Princeton and Harvard, is one of the leading moral and political philosophers of the past fifty years or so. Though far from a libertarian, he takes libertarian views with great seriousness and has endeavored to
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
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.