The book of peace

This weekend, the New York Times published an excellent review of what looks to be a good book on Iraq: No End in Site by Charles Ferguson. The catalog of error, arrogance, corruption, and violence looks overwhelming, and the review itself is very instructive. If the book is anywhere near as good, it seems very important. In any case, what we see here is not so much an unusual case of failure but an example of a long-running failure of central planning of which war itself is typical case in point. But with war, we also have a very clear case of both many kinds of failure: social, economic, and moral. It is to this latter point that a book just added to the Literature section speaks. It is from 1845: The Book of Peace. It is 600 pages, so watch that link. It was scanned by Laurence Vance, and given as a gift to Mises.org. It looks outstanding.