New Books in Literature Section

Do We Want Free Enterprise by V. Orval Watts is an exciting challenge issued to business in 1944. He points out that business is not necessarily a friend of free enterprise. True free markets would mean an end to cartelizating regulations, tariffs, business subsidies, and every form of privilege that business has learned to love throughout the New Deal period. In some ways, he writes, free enterprise represents a challenge to business that it would rather avoid completely.

Watts was a prominent economist before World War II, taking his degrees from Harvard in the pre-Keynesian period and teaching at various colleges. He became a tireless champion of free markets during the years when it was most unfashionable. You can read Rothbard’s obit here.

His great classic is Away From Freedom, from 1952, which is a  strong challenge to the secure Keynesian consensus in the profession. It was Joseph Salerno who told us of this book. And he is right: it is beautifully written and powerfully argued. This one is coming back in print.

You might think there surely couldn’t be any more Henry Hazlitt books extant but, sure enough, here is Thinking as a Science from 1916 -- and it is, quite simply, a tutorial on how to think clearly. It is an excellent read, and one we will bring back in print soon enough.

Some months ago, but with no fanfare, we posted a rare collection of editorials from the old, early magazine edited by Albert Jay Nock called The Freeman. This book is a collection that he personally edited. The original table of contents was rather useless. So BK Marcus put together a new one, which is now added to this pdf book. There are many aspects of this book that will surprise Nockians. It provides a snapshot of liberal/anarchist opinion in the United States circa 1920-1924.