Books To Read

Listed here are some classic books on history, political freedom, market economics, honest money, and Constitutional government that are essential to gaining an understanding of what is really going on in America today. These books expose the myriad fallacies that are taught in our schools and spewed out by our politicians under the guise of truth. They will give you the ammunition you need to contest the dictatorial forces taking over our country. All of these books are in print, and available through either amazon.com, or AbeBooks.com, or Laissez-Faire Books.

Patrick J. Buchanan, Where the Right Went Wrong. America's premier spokesman for true conservatism takes on the invidious forces of collectivism that now consume the Republican Party. Whether the issue is curbing the runaway profligacy of the welfare state, or stopping the alien invasion from Central America, or reigning in the imperial overreach of foreign policy mavens in Washington, Buchanan is the epitome of the literary pit bull. Prose-wise and history-wise, no conservative equals this great American patriot. He was born in an era when America still believed in the old values -- the real Republic, the validity of freedom. And he pours their inspiration out on paper resplendently. The Republican Party has defaulted on everything it was meant for, which is to act as a principled counterpoint to the New Deal Democrats and their drive to change America from an independent Republic to a servile arm of a collectivist global government. This is a scathing indictment of the sycophants and mindless courtiers that dominate the GOP today. (Thomas Dunne Books, 2004, 254 pages.)

Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto. Congressman Paul, in the words of Barry Goldwater, Jr., has "taken a wrecking ball to the political establishment" with this book. He is what the Founders had in mind for legislators when they fashioned our government. Congress was to be made up of citizen statesmen like Cincinnatus of the ancient Roman Republic, not career politicians in Washington obsessed with accruing power. Our legislators were supposed to literally obey the Constitution above all else. Who in Washington today does this other than Ron Paul and a handful of like-minded conservatives? This book gets into the major issues that are tearing us apart as a country -- egregious welfarism, the evil of nation building in foreign policy, the Federal Reserve's addictive peddling of debt, etc. Paul points the way out of our government dominated society that destroys the rights of America's self-reliant producers to convey privileges to America's leftist shirkers. (Grand Central Publishing, 2008, 167 pages.)

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged. Big, philosophical novel about the future collapse of America as political collectivism increases its suffocating grip over our economy. Rand's moral vision of egoism is flawed, but her grasp of economics is brimming with truth. So read the book for its wisdom and dismiss its folly. It's a riveting mystery story saturated with powerful insights on human nature and the evils of government growth. Profoundly demonstrates the necessity of a free-market, showing that tyranny steals over a country because weak-minded men and women sanction it. The perfect starter book to understand the issue of individual freedom vs. government centralization that lies in the background of all our problems today, whether they be economic, social, political or cultural. (Random House, 1957, 1168 pages.)

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four. The famous dystopian novel foretelling a totalitarian future ruled by all-powerful, centralized government. The nations of the world have been consolidated into three regional tyrannies: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia, which are constantly at war with each other (Are these not archetypes toward which today's corporate statists are moving us?). Romance is outlawed and freedom has been redefined to mean slavery. Ignorance is strength. War is peace. Newspeak is the language spoken. The Ministry of Truth rewrites history and economic statistics to serve the State (Are not today's state schools and the BLS in Washington doing the same?). Life is insufferably bleak. The Party, with its "thought police," rules omnipotently and spies relentlessly on all its slave citizens to extract obedience from a people devoid of hope, love, and liberty. A frightening future, many aspects of which certainly await us if we continue on our present path. (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1949, 314 pages.)

Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom. For six-thousand years prior to the American Revolution, men died of hunger in droves. Why don't we in today's world? What changed things so dramatically? Here is a fascinating journey through history that answers these questions and identifies the fundamental source of progress. Ms. Lane has produced an impassioned testament as to what "individual liberty" is, how it developed in civilization, and why it is so important to human life. The old world view (collectivism) versus the new world view (individualism) is the central clash on the philosophical stage of history that Lane writes so fervently about. Our Founders ushered in the new world view, and it led to an explosion of freedom and genuine prosperity. Marxian-Keynesian collectivism has brought back the old world view, which now suppresses and impoverishes us. (Fox & Wilkes Publishers, 1993, 262 pages.)

Thomas J. DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America. For the past 50 years, our government run schools have very subtly taught that the American concept of free enterprise is an evil, unstable, exploitative, racist, warmongering system of economic organization in need of massive government control and wealth redistribution. DiLorenzo shows this to be a total myth. And he does it with facts, history, and reason. The socialist fallacies about poverty, monopolies, the Great Depression, our energy crisis are all analyzed with rigor and enlightenment. Capitalism is shown for what it is -- a dynamic, prosperity-producing way of life that is man's only hope to conquer the perils of existence and bring wealth to all industrious men and women. It is not capitalism that brings us problems, but government intervention into capitalism. Laissez-faire was the implicit belief of Jefferson and the Founders, and this book restores that belief to its rightful pedestal. (Crown Forum, 2004, 295 pages.)

Thomas E. Woods Jr., The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History. Woods comes to the rescue of historical truth and reveals countless facts that have either been omitted by our leftist academics, or purposely rearranged to serve their agenda. In order to take over a nation and enslave its people, the way has to first be paved intellectually. The socialists have been hard at this goal for many decades. One of their sinister tools is the rewriting of history to make the heroic American saga appear to be a nefarious and morally indefensible venture. From the canard that the Founders were aristocrats out for their own exploitative good, to the sophistries spewed out by today's Constitutional legalists, to the lies handed down about the Civil War, Rockefeller, the two World Wars, FDR, communism, civil rights, and the Great Society, statist intellectuals have woven a grand fabrication. Professor Woods decimates this fabrication. It is a corrective that is lively, scathing, and irrepressible. The "politically correct" apparatchiks of the left will hate his exposition; while truth seekers will revel in it. (Regnery Publishing, 2004, 270 pages.)

Henry Hazlitt, Economics in One Lesson. A wonderful introduction to the arcane world of economics. It gives the reader a clear, non-technical explanation of the glaring flaws in the welfare state view -- the most important one being the statist refusal to look beyond the immediate "benefits" of government market intervention to its long term disastrous consequences. Hazlitt wrote with a relaxed, mellifluous style, yet throughout all his works, he ruthlessly tore the Keynesian paradigm apart, showing it up for the sham that it is. (Crown Books, 1979, 218 pages.)

Mark Skousen, The Making of Modern Economics. Start with Hazlitt to get a grasp on economics, and then go directly to Skousen. No one writes better on the subject today, or more vibrantly. He makes the dismal science come to life. This book is a modern classic giving the reader a history of the economic thought that has been handed down from Adam Smith to the modern day. Not content to analyze the dry principles of economics themselves, Skousen creates an exciting story with a central character -- Adam Smith and his great "system of natural liberty" that he bequeathed to the world. Skousen tells us about all the intriguing personalities behind the principles that have been fought over since Smith and exposes where their ideas have led us for good and evil. Economics is so vitally important in understanding the "why" and "how" of wealth, poverty, freedom, tyranny, and human survival. Everyone needs to understand its truths. This book gives a virtuoso account of them to the reader. (M.E. Sharpe, Inc., 2001, 485 pages.)

A.J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started The American Revolution. An exciting history of how Americans won their independence. Delves brilliantly into the pivotal events, the intrigues, and the towering personalities of the men who launched our original revolt against tyrannical government. Shows how the "love of freedom" animated the heroes of this era, a love that we Americans today must recapture. All our Founding Fathers -- George Washington, John and Samuel Adams, James Madison, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and many more -- are given rich and vivid portrayals. America was born in one of the greatest ages of history in which giant intellects coalesced to forge the foundations of a free society. This book tells the tale of that era magnificently. (Simon & Schuster, 1988, 637 pages.)

Frederic Bastiat, The Law. Written over 150 years ago, this compact classic is still hugely relevant to today's great political issues. Bastiat was a gifted 19th century French economist who built upon the works of Adam Smith and the English free-traders. He wrote with a polemical style that exposed all socialist sophistries of his day for what they were -- legalized plunder of the productive people by the political people to use for their own aggrandizement. The same sophistries plague us today. The State, unleashed from a limiting Constitution, becomes "a great fictitious entity whereby everybody tries to live at the expense of everybody else." More and more Americans now vote for a living rather than work for a living. This jewel of a book packs a powerful explanation of why this is happening. (Foundation For Economic Education, 1950, 75 pages.)

John T. Flynn, The Roosevelt Myth. FDR is hailed by big government worshipers as the greatest president in our history. Flynn strips away the hype and partisan puffery, however, to show us the Roosevelt who destroyed our constitutional rights, stole our gold, initiated massive state authoritarianism, reprehensibly sold out the Polish people at Yalta, attempted to pack the Supreme Court, and introduced the prodigal madness of Keynesianism and fiat money to America. The Roosevelt that emerges from these pages is a ruthless opportunist as amoral as Richard Nixon, and a gullible tool as economically dense as Jimmy Carter. The communists infiltrated his administration like roaches stealing into three-day old garbage in the dead of night. His attempt to counter the depression of the thirties was, in Flynn's words, "the dance of the crackpots." His administration was a series of political "medicine shows" in which the most embarrassing economic quackery was offered to Americans as astute policy. This "grand heroic leader" of the left was anything but. He brought to America Mussolini's economic fascism, and he destroyed the Republic of States with which the Founders had so nobly endowed us. (Devin Adair, 1956, 445 pages.)

G. Edward Griffin, The Creature from Jekyl Island. The year 1913 was a watershed year for the American Republic. The seeds of our financial destruction were planted with the formation of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Griffin takes us on a spellbinding trip through time to expose the shocking deceptions, peacock egos, and sinister power plays that lie behind the fascist cartel we call the Federal Reserve System. This is not the history we were taught in the brainwash factories we call public schools. This is a blistering indictment of the biggest con in history along with the humbugs, dupes and power-lusters that brought it about. No one can understand the true nature of today's economic crisis until he has read this disturbing, provocative book. (American Media, 1998, 595 pages.)

Ferdinand Lips, Gold Wars: The Battle Against Sound Money. Gold has been true wealth for 5,000 years in all cultures and societies. Politicians hate gold because it cannot be inflated to fight wars and to buy votes. Ferdinand Lips was a prominent banker in Switzerland who understood the true essence of gold and why it is always denigrated by those bent on despotism. He explains its mystery and why its use as a standard is a must for stability, honor, liberty and justice -- all the values that build and sustain civilization itself. Gold is not just money. It is the watchguard of freedom and sanity. When it is circulating, tyrants are contained and peace prevails. When it is suppressed or manipulated, tyrants are unleashed and peace fades. Lips gives us a vivid portrayal of the wars that governments, central banks, and their henchmen have been fighting this past century to eradicate REAL money from the economies of the world. (The Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education, 2001, 280 pages.)

Gene Smiley, Rethinking the Great Depression. Due to the vice-grip that Keynesian theory has had on Western minds since 1936, the public still perceives economic depressions as "capitalist spawned evils" in need of powerful intervention on the part of the Federal Government to combat them. Smiley makes clear that this is a disastrous error. The real culprit in the Great Depression was not the system of capitalism, but government attempts to circumvent the natural economic laws of life. The Fed's wild expansion of the money supply in the 20's which brought on the inevitable monetary contraction, Hoover's obtuse employment of wage and price controls, Congress' Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, Roosevelt's moonshine economic programs all added up to stultify an economy that desperately needed to be free to purge the massive debt and malinvestment built up by Fed inflation policies. It was not to be, however. Big government spread over America like mange on a dog's skin. And it now threatens us with another economic depression. (Ivan R. Dee, 2002, 179 pages.)