The Essential Liberty Reading List

A friend of Young Americans for Liberty, Mark Monoscalco, has shared his essential liberty reading list. 

I firmly believe that a knowledge of the fundamental principles of individual liberty is a prerequisite to becoming an effective advocate.

Recently, I decided that a curated reading list might prove to be a more effective method for advancing individual liberty. I initially developed a very large list of books on the philosophy, economics, and history of individuals. Today, the “Full Reading List consists of 238 titles”.  That is, of course, too large to be useful. I decided that an “Essential Reading List” consisting of a small number of compelling readings was necessary. One of the most interesting projects I have worked on was choosing a small number of books and essays that together would provide all the building blocks for understanding individual liberty. The “Essential Reading List” is composed of 12 essays and books. An average reader can complete all 12 readings in approximately 28 hours. Each reading has a dedicated webpage that links to text, audio, and printed versions of the book or essay. The book or essay’s webpage also has a “book club” type of discussion and a few questions. The reading lists and associated materials are at this link:

www.TheRootOfLiberty.com

Please visit this website, read the brief descriptions on the home page, follow the instructions, and watch the 5-minute video.  After this small investment of time, you will be ready to begin the Essential Reading List.

 

Essential Reading List

• I Pencil
• That Which Is Seen and that Which Is Not Seen
• The Candlemakers’ Petition
• The Law
• The Politics of Obedience: The Discourse of Voluntary Servitude
• Not Yours to Give
• The Road to Serfdom
• The Tale of a Slave – Excerpt from “Anarchy, State and Utopia”
• The State
• The Myth of the Rule of Law
• The Right and Wrong of Compulsion by the State
• For a New Liberty

Full Reading List

• No Treason: No. 1, No. 2: “The Constitution”, No. 6: “The Constitution of no Authority”
• 1984
• Liberalism: In the Classical Tradition
• The Fatal Conceit
• The Creature From Jekyll Island
• Basic Economics
• A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
• Animal Farm
• The Ethics of Liberty
• Anarchy, State and Utopia
• Dumbing Us Down
• Anatomy of the State
• America’s Counter-Revolution: The Constitution Revisited
• 33 Questions About American History You’re Not Supposed to Ask
• A Conflict of Visions
• Anthem
• Bitcoin Whitepaper
• Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All
• Capitalism and Freedom
• Chaos Theory: Two Essays on Market Anarchy
• Atlas Shrugged
• Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming
• Crisis and Leviathan
• The Economics and Ethics of Private Property
• Anything That’s Peaceful
• Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
• Free to Choose
• Give Me Liberty
• Democracy the God that Failed
• Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People
• Modern Times
• Persuasion vs. Force
• Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse
• The Black Book of Communism
• Discourses Concerning Government
• Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality?
• Defending the Undefendable
• Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
• The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels
• The Intellectuals and Socialism
• The Machinery of Freedom
• The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism
• The Most Dangerous Superstition
• Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil
• War is a Racket
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History
• The Privatization of Roads and Highways
• The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey
• Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century
• Socialism
• The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
• The Communist Manifesto
• The Fountainhead
• The Constitution of Liberty
• The Production of Security
• The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
• The State Against Blacks
• The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Real Dissent: A Libertarian Sets Fire to the Index Card of Allowable Opinion
• The Fiat Standard
• The Revolution: A Manifesto
• The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics
• What Has Government Done to Our Money?
• Fahrenheit 451
• Our Enemy the State
• The Rothbard Reader
• Two Treatises of Government
• When Money Dies
• A Treatise on Political Economy
• Against Intellectual Property
• America’s Great Depression
• The Wizards of Ozymandias
• The Virtue of Selfishness
• Brave New World
• The Voluntaryist Handbook
• Conceived in Liberty
• Economics in One Lesson
• Fake Invisible Catastrophes and Threats of Doom
• I’d Push the Button
• Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles
• Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
• Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
• Springtime for Snowflakes: ‘Social Justice’ and Its Postmodern Parentage
• Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth
• The Case Against the Fed
• The Church & The Market
• The Friedman Doctrine – The Social Resopnsibliity of Business is to Increase its Profits
• The Theory of Money and Credit
• 20th Centruy Motor Works (Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged)
• A Brief Enquiry into the True Nature and Character of Our Federal Government
• A Liberty Primer
• An Arrow against all Tyrants
• An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought
• Applied Economics
• Back on the Road to Serfdom: The Resurgence of Statism
• Beyond Politics: The Roots of Government Failure
• Beyond Woke
• Cato’s Letters
• Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise, and Human Action
• City of God
• Civil Disobedience
• Common Sense
• Critique of Pure Reason
• Das Kapital
• Delusions of Power: New Explorations of the State, War, and Economy
• Democracy in America
• Diary of a Psychosis: How Public Health Disgraced Itself During COVID Mania
• Discovery, Capitalism, and Distributive Justice
• Disquisition on Government
• Economic Freedom of the World
• Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow
• Economic Sophisms
• Education: Free and Compulsory
• End the Fed
• Essays Moral, Political, Literary
• Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
• False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions
• Francisco d’Anconia’s speach: Money is the root of all good (Excerpt from Atlas Shrugged)
• Freedom and the Law
• Freedom’s Progress?: A History of Political Thought
• Freedom’s Progress?: A History of Political Thought
• From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
• Give Me a Break
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal
• Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse than You Think
• Harmonies of Political Economy
• Healing Our World
• Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate
• How an Economy Grows and Why It Crashes
• How Inflation Destroys Civilization
• How to Think About the Economy
• Human Action
• In Defense of Global Capitalism
• Kant’s Principles of Politics, including his essay on Perpetual Peace
• Knowledge and Decisions
• Laissez-Faire Banking
• Lessons for the Young Economist
• Lessons for the Young Economist Teacher’s Manual
• Letter from Thomas Burke to Richard Caswell
• Liberty Defined
• Lord of the Flies
• Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980
• Lost Rights
• Man, Economy, and State, with Power and Market
• Market Anarchism as Constitutionalism
• Meltdown: The Classic Free-Market Analysis of the 2008 Financial Crisis
• Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism
• Nothing to Fear: A Bright Future for Fossil Fuels
• On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth
• On the Duty of Civil Disobedience
• On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
• Politics
• Principles of Economics
• Private Property and Collective Ownership
• Production of Money on the Market
• Race And Culture
• Radicals for Capitalism
• Refounding America
• Report From Iron Mountain
• Suicide of the West
• Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government
• The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible
• The Apology
• The Austrian School
• The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle and Other Essays
• The Best of Burke: Selected Writings and Speeches of Edmund Burke
• The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel
• The Conscience of a Conservative
• The Conservative Mind
• The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories
• The Discovery of Freedom
• The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
• The Essential von Mises
• The Ethics of Money Production
• The Forgotten Depression: 1921
• The Forgotten Man
• The Free Market and Its Enemies: Pseudo-Science, Socialism, and Inflation
• The Global Currency Plot
• The God of the Machine
• The Great Deformation: The Corruption of Capitalism in America
• The Great War
• The Gulag Archipelago, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3
• The Harvest of Sorrow
• The Incredible Bread Machine
• The Invisible Heart
• The Left, The Right and The State
• The Logic of Freedom
• The Making of Modern Economics
• The Man Versus the State
• The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047
• The Market for Liberty
• The Mystery of Banking
• The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America
• The Myth of Neutral Taxation
• The Myth of the Rational Voter
• The Nature of Man and His Government
• The Panic of 1819
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change
• The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution
• The Principles of Ethics, 2 vols.
• The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey
• The Quest for Community: A Study in the Ethics of Order and Freedom
• The Republic
• The Republic and the Laws
• The Society of Tomorrow
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• The Tuttle Twins (book series)
• The Use of Knowledge in Society
• The Wealth of Nations
• The White Man’s Burden
• The Works and Correspondence of David Ricardo, Vol. 1 Principles of Political Economy and Taxation
• The Works of Voltaire, Vol. I (Candide)
• The Virtue of Selfishness
• To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice
• War, Peace, and the State
• Warning to the West
• We the Living
• We Who Dared to Say No to War: American Antiwar Writing from 1812 to Now
• Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?
• While You Slept
• Who Killed the Constitution?: The Federal Government vs. American Liberty from World War I to Barack Obama
• Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All
• Why Liberty
• Why Not Capitalism?
• Why Not Socialism?

This list is curated by Mark Monoscalco.