Book Reviews

Dr. Gordon reviews Quinn Slobodian‘s latest book trashing the Austrians, especially Murray Rothbard. Not surprisingly, Slobodian shows little understanding of the Austrians and economic history.

In Nicholas Wolterstorff‘s Understanding Liberal Democracy, he assails a vastly influential school of thought in a way that libertarians will find useful.

Herbert Marcuse took pride in his dense, but incomplete writings on philosophy. Dr. Gordon examines Jacob McNulty‘s futile attempt to interpret the thinking of someone who supported Marxian socialism but never successfully explained it.

In this week‘s Friday Philosophy, Dr. David Gordon reviews Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction by Jim Downs, who exposes the high death rates from disease suffered by newly-freed slaves because of neglect by Union armies.

While historian Walter A. McDougall was not a libertarian, nonetheless he had some Rothbardian insights on Woodrow Wilson and his reckless intervention into World War I. David Gordon notes that while McDougall‘s views on intervention were inconsistent, they still are useful.

Joe Stiglitz is a man with a large ego who believes he holds a special knowledge about economics. In his latest book, however, The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society, his description of what he thought F.A. Hayek believed is a caricature of Hayek‘s thought.

Marx failed to grasp that there are laws of human action that apply universally. His understanding of economics was far inferior to that of Nassau Senior, whom he derided as the quintessential “bourgeois” economist.

In a post-Cold War world, there is an opportunity to find useful insights among even the New Right that Rothbard loathed. James Burnham‘s The Managerial Revolution produced important points about the relationship of government and business.

David Gordon revisits Richard Weaver‘s 1948 classic Ideas Have Consequences and finds that this volume has much to tell us today. This review takes us through Weaver‘s views on property rights and the welfare state, and he found the latter wanting.

Robert Paul Wolff, who recently died, understood that the state is incompatible with individual rights. While he faltered in his views on economics, he helped lay the groundwork for a reasoned and coherent opposition to state-sponsored power.