Yes, that’s right: The Freeman. This was the original, as edited by Albert Jay Nock in the early 1920s. It was radical, far-reaching, topical, and bracing in every way. Here we have a collection of what Nock himself considered to be the best of that journal, with many of the articles (probably even half) written by Nock himself.
Don’t expect anything conventional from this volume. This generation considered themselves to be not liberals or conservatives but radicals. Their judgments are often uncannily wise. Sometimes they are reckless. Sometimes downright wrong. But their writings are always interesting in every way.
This book is of interest mainly to bibliophiles, and it is not a good choice if learning economics is your mission. But as a snapshot in time, as a glimpse into radical opinion between the wars, and as a look at the history of libertarian ideas, this book is essential.
It is very large: 416 pages in fact. And the print is small so it takes some effort. Also, there is no index, which is not helpful. We did add an excellent and comprehensive table of contents, with authors clearly noted, so that helps enormously. All told, it is a fascinating package of ideology, commentary, and editorializing on events of the day from 1920 to 1924.
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Albert Jay Nock (October 13, 1870–August 19, 1945) was an influential American libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic of the early and middle twentieth century. Murray Rothbard was deeply influenced by him, and so was the whole generation of free market thinkers of the 1950s.
B.W. Huebsch, 1924
