P.S. - Recommended libertarian books

Discussion
1

Dear All

see below and attached a list of some 135 books mainly 99% Amazon a couple were
not Amazon as being on von Mises. not all specifically Libertarian but of
interest such as Black Book of Communism etc.

The click through may work if not see the attached word.doc where the click
through should work - yeah right unh hunh.

Ron Getty

Amazon.com: Alexander Hamilton: Books: Ron Chernow
Amazon.com: At Canaan's Edge : America in the King Years, 1965-68: Books: Taylor
Branch
Amazon.com: Attention Deficit Democracy: Books
Amazon.com: Books: 101 Things to Do 'Til the Re...
Amazon.com: Books: A Constitutional History of ...
Amazon.com: Books: A Pretext for War : 9/11, Ir...
Amazon.com: Books: Abuse Of Power: How The Gove...
Amazon.com: Books: Against Leviathan
Amazon.com: Books: America's Right Turn: How Co...
Amazon.com: Books: Atlantis: A Novel About Econ...
Amazon.com: Books: Bad Trip : How the War Again...
Amazon.com: Books: Becoming Rich : The Wealth-B...
Amazon.com: Books: Bitter Fruit: The Story of t...
Amazon.com: Books: Blowback : The Costs and Con...
Amazon.com: Books: Born Fighting : How the Scot...
Amazon.com: Books: Boston's Gun Bible
Amazon.com: Books: Capitalism
Amazon.com: Books: Charlie Wilson's War: The Ex...
Amazon.com: Books: Christianity and War and Oth...
Amazon.com: Books: Conceived in Liberty (4 Volu...
Amazon.com: Books: Confessions of an Economic H...
Amazon.com: Books: Crisis and Leviathan: Critic...
Amazon.com: Books: Death by Government
Amazon.com: Books: Democracy: The God that Fail...
Amazon.com: Books: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Ye...

Amazon.com: Books: Dying to Win : The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism
Amazon.com: Books: Economic Government
Amazon.com: Books: Economics for Real People
Amazon.com: Books: Ex America: The 50th Anniver...
Amazon.com: Books: Financial Reckoning Day: Surviving the Soft Depression of the
21st Century
Amazon.com: Books: Fire in the Minds of Men: Or...
Amazon.com: Books: Freakonomics : A Rogue Econo...
Amazon.com: Books: Green Ripper (Travis McGee M...
Amazon.com: Books: Hot Commodities : How Anyone...
Amazon.com: Books: How Capitalism Saved America...
Amazon.com: Books: In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against
Competition, 1918-1938
Amazon.com: Books: In the Rainforest : Report f...
Amazon.com: Books: John Adams: Party of One
Amazon.com: Books: Light and Liberty : Reflecti...
Amazon.com: Books: Living Well on Practically Nothing
Amazon.com: Books: Living Well on Practically Nothing: Revised and Updated
Edition
Amazon.com: Books: Lost in the Texas Desert
Amazon.com: Books: Man, Economy, and State with...
Amazon.com: Books: Mao : The Unknown Story
Amazon.com: Books: Masters of Illusion the Worl...
Amazon.com: Books: More Guns, Less Crime: Under...
Amazon.com: Books: On War (Everyman's Library (...
Amazon.com: Books: RebelFire: Out of the Gray Zone
Amazon.com: Books: Reclaiming Liberty
Amazon.com: Books: Reclaiming the American Revo...
Amazon.com: Books: Rube Goldberg : Inventions!
Amazon.com: Books: Schizophrenic in Japan : An ...
Amazon.com: Books: Speaking of Liberty
Amazon.com: Books: State Of Fear
Amazon.com: Books: Terrorism and Tyranny
Amazon.com: Books: The Alchemy of Finance (Wile...
Amazon.com: Books: The Art of War
Amazon.com: Books: The Bias Against Guns: Why A...
Amazon.com: Books: The Black Book of Communism:...
Amazon.com: Books: The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of
Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy
Amazon.com: Books: The Boys' Crusade: The Ameri...
Amazon.com: Books: The Bullet's Song : Romantic...
Amazon.com: Books: The Crumbling Wall Against T...
Amazon.com: Books: The Deep Hot Biosphere
Amazon.com: Books: The Experience of World War I
Amazon.com: Books: The Freedom Outlaw's Handboo...
Amazon.com: Books: The Helldivers' Rodeo : A De...
Amazon.com: Books: The Iron Butterfly
Amazon.com: Books: The Maxims Of Robert E. Lee ...
Amazon.com: Books: The Myth of Hitler's Pope: How Pope Pius XII Rescued Jews
from the Nazis
Amazon.com: Books: The New American Militarism:...
Amazon.com: Books: The Politics of Obedience: T...
Amazon.com: Books: The Prince
Amazon.com: Books: The Real Lincoln : A New Loo...
Amazon.com: Books: The Rules of the Game : Jutl...

Amazon.com: Books: The Seeds of Disaster: The D...
Amazon.com: Books: The Skeptical Environmentali...
Amazon.com: Books: The Sorrows of Empire: Milit...
Amazon.com: Books: The South Was Right!
Amazon.com: Books: The Traveler : A Novel
Amazon.com: Books: The True Believer : Thoughts...
Amazon.com: Books: The Tyranny of Good Intentio...
Amazon.com: Books: The Unconquerable World : Po...
Amazon.com: Books: The War for Righteousness: P...
Amazon.com: Books: The Western Front : Battlegr...
Amazon.com: Books: The Woman and the Dynamo: Is...
Amazon.com: Books: They Made America: Two Centu...
Amazon.com: Books: TRANSFORMATION OF WAR
Amazon.com: Books: Unintended Consequences
Amazon.com: Books: War Is a Force That Gives Us...
Amazon.com: Books: War Made Easy : How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us
to Death
Amazon.com: Books: When in the Course of Human ...
Amazon.com: Books: Why Not Freedom!: America's ...
Amazon.com: Books: You Did What?

Amazon.com: Calculated Chaos: Books: Butler D. Shaffer
Amazon.com: Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battl...
Amazon.com: Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq: Explore similar
items
Amazon.com: History of the United States of America During the Administrations
of Thomas Jefferson (Library of America): Books: Henry Adams
Amazon.com: Hitler's Prisons: Books
Amazon.com: I Love My Smith & Wesson : A Novel:...
Amazon.com: Liberty for All: Reclaiming Individual Privacy in a New Era of
Public Morality: Books: Elizabeth Price Foley
Amazon.com: Mao : The Unknown Story: Explore si...
Amazon.com: Myths of American Slavery: Books: Walter Donald Kennedy
Amazon.com: Neo-Conned! : Just War Principles: A Condemnation of War in Iraq:
Books
Amazon.com: Neo-Conned! Again : Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq:
Books: Joseph Cirincione,J. Forrest Sharpe,D. Lia
Amazon.com: Online shopping for electronics, ap...
Amazon.com: Our Endangered Values : America's Moral Crisis: Books: Jimmy Carter
Amazon.com: Resurgence of the Warfare State : The Crisis Since 9/11: Books
Amazon.com: State of War : The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush
Administration: Explore similar items
Amazon.com: The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and
Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy: Books
Amazon.com: The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized
Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land: Books: Andrew P. Napolitano
Amazon.com: The Constitution of Liberty: Explor...
Amazon.com: The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb (Vintage): Books: Gar Alperovitz
Amazon.com: The One Percent Doctrine: Books: Ron Suskind
Amazon.com: The Other Path: The Economic Answer to Terrorism: Books: Hernando De
Soto,June Abbott
Amazon.com: There's a Government in Your Soup :...
Amazon.com: Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation : A Biography : Books: Merrill
D. Peterson
Amazon.com: Thomas Jefferson: Books: R. B. Bernstein
Amazon.com: War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir
and Tibet, Revised Edition: Books
Amazon.com: What It Means to Be a Libertarian :...
America's Great Depression
Books, Audio and Video Cassettes - John Taylor ...
Conceived in Liberty
Economics for Real People: An Introduction to t...
Enemy of the State
Ethics of Liberty
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hi...
How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold Histor...
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market
Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
Myth of National Defense, The
The Best Book on Money Ever Written - Mises Ins...
The Black Arrow -- A Novel By Vin Suprynowicz
The Underground History of American Education -...
The Voluntary City: Choice, Community, and Civics
P.S. - To avoid a whole slew of duplicate postings, I suggest people
post replies in this thread strictly to the lpsf-discuss list. I
generally try to avoid posting to both lists except for the most
important messages because of their largely overlapping
subscriberships, and almost didn't cross-post in this case, but I
thought there might be a handful of people on the Activists list who
aren't on the Discuss list but would want to know about this.

Love & Liberty,
                ((( starchild )))

2

I am getting dizzy now. We are living in a ADD world! Five seconds is top attention span! Ok, so what is the plan? Starchild puts up his list? Each one of us picks our favorites as asks for them to be put up? We start a discussion on WHAT! GRAPES OF WHAT? ("When the I becomes we"....)

Thank you.

Marcy

3

I stopped reading when I saw Alexander Hamilton in that list.

Although the book is entertaining (I read 2/3 of it), not only is the book as long as the bible, it also glorifies a confirmed big-government socialist.

This man has nothing to do with libertarianism and should not be mentioned in lists of great books, even if to know what the other side is all about. I'd rather recommend Marx , as with him there is no mistake as to which ideas proved wrong.

4

Ron,

  Thanks for your submissions, but I guess I'm not entirely clear either -- do you want to be listed on our website as recommending each and every one of those books? Can you please send the list in the form of title/author for easier correlation with other peoples' lists? The Amazon links are potentially helpful, but perhaps they could be put in parentheses to the right of each title/author.

  Also, for the group, this list raises the additional question of whether we want to list books not available on Amazon in a separate category, or just mixed in with the others. I would lean toward just mixing them in, but I'd also sort of imagined this feature on our website having an introduction that not only talks about the importance of libertarian fiction/non-fiction, but touts the Amazon connection as a way for people to support the LPSF, so we might want a method to distinguish non-Amazon titles.

5

Dear Dragon lord or whomever you be;

On Alexander Hamilton it's there for part of the know thine enemy and to know
thy enemy you have to know what they did. The Burr Hamilton duel came way too
late to save America from that fool and his minions and his strong central
government and crony-capitalism and central banks and so on...

The Black Book of Communism is there as well - know thy enemy etc.

Ron Getty

6

Hi Ron,

I agree with everything that you just said, except there is one problem: words like "fool" "crony capitalism" are never mentioned in the book.

Far from it, in fact... I was not a libertarian when I read it, and the book had the net effect in my head of gloryfing the man!

You can't conclude a thesis is corrupt unless it has been proven to be so, or there is a conterargument to follow. The book doesn't suffer from either.

Promoting the book is the equivalent of exposing someone to O'relly for the first time without telling them that he has a history of not checking his facts and to edit interviews. The net result is that OReilly adds to his fan base.

I think libertarians as a whole are better off promoting libertarian books first, at least until libertarian ideas are widely understood.

Kurt

7

Dear Starchild -

what you see is what you get - it's an Amazon list done alphabetically of an
eclectic list of books which in one way or another are Libertarian or should be
required reading on a variety of topics. I developed that list going to amazon
getting the book title then copying the Amazon url for that book. If you can't
make use of that type of format of an alphabetical list of book titles on Amazon
by url so be it.

Ron Getty

8

Hi Starchild,

Thank you for your view on the Grapes. I hope I made my point too, helped by Dragon Lord and his aversion to Hamilton! Rob solved the challenge I perceive by simply saying "give me the name of your society, tell me what your society does, tell me who you are." So, for example, I support the Rubber Duckie Derby benefiting Oakland Children's Hospital, and that's what my entry says; period. And we just hope nobody recommends the Employment Development Department.

Now, returning to the Grapes. That is an amazing book, and in my view one of the powerful contributors to the advent of the socialist state. Yes, the protagonists could be seen as victims of the state, in the same way that New Orleans residents saw themselves during Katrina -- the state did not do enough!!

For a while we on the non-socialist side had some pretty powerful best sellers -- 1984, Animal Farm, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (I actually personally knew a woman who had to make the choice to continue running or stop to help her brother, shot by Soviet border guards). We need to find and promote this populist stuff read by the general public!!

Thank you also, Starchild, for revisiting this Amazon books idea in the first place!

Marcy

9

Dear Kurt

then put the book under a heading of Banned By the LPSF - Read At Your Own Risk
and put all the other books banned by the LPSF and the reason why

Ron Getty

10

Dear Marcy

The Grapes of Wrath is a good book but it could have been a great book if John
Steinbeck had included what was driving the vast swings and changes in food
prices at all the orchards everyone was showing up at...mainly FDR and his food
policies ...it was all one sided in his book...

Ron Getty

11

Oh, great idea! Then we will become real politicians! Or, we could remain ourselves and put up the individual books we recommend personally.

Marcy

12

Dear Marcy

real politicians??? As opposed to un-real politicians?

Ron Getty

13

Dear Ron,

To the contrary!!!! A great book is one that not only does the regular stuff of selling well, having staying power, being on school reading lists, but also is instrumental in effecting a chance in the social structure. Grapes of Wrath was all of that. Hands down. Whether the change that ensues in the social structure is libertarian or not is irrelevant in the context of determining how great a book is.

The books I mentioned previously, plus Atlas Shrugged or We the Living, achieved staying power and are in lots of reading lists, but fell short on the change category. The question I was attempting to pose is why? Until we face the "why" and understand our challenge, libertarians will continue to enjoy the political fringe (which is the stated comfort zone of many on this list, and that's OK with me).

Marcy