Summer Reading Suggestions 2009

Ideas for books and articles on ancient history

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The Greeks by H. D. F. Kitto 
Kitto's The Greeks was a text for a graduate class in Greek Art I took at the University of St. Thomas in Houston some years ago. A wonderful and fascinating book. I read Gods, Graves and Scholars many times in my teen years, and many books on Greek mythology before that. An Amazon reviewer writes: "I got in touch with this book as a mandatory reading when I was applying to study at Buenos Aires University. As usually happens with prescribed readings, I eyed "The Greeks" with little enthusiasm. But to my big surprise it was a great read! Professor Kitto has done an outstanding work here. Now, after all this years, I treasure this volume in my library and read it again and again."

On my own I read Victor Davis Hanson's The Other Greeks. This is a terrific book and inspired me to write an article forThe Freeman ("Property Rights and Law Among the Ancient Greeks" where i discuss Hanson and other books I enjoyed reading). Hanson is a regular contributor to National Review and other conservative publications, and writes on the "Western Way of War" that we inherit from the Greeks. Hanson and John Heath are authors of Who Killed Homer?: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom. Here is an essay in Stanford Magazine by Heath and Hanson on Who Killed Homer?

Wonderful World History

Retired Harvard historian David Landes wrote The Wealth and Poverty of Nations: Why Some are so Rich and Some so Poor . This qualtiy paperback is $12.89 on Amazon (some 600 pages). Landes' book is a page-turner--all 531 of them, followed by many footnotes (you can preview the book on Amazon). For economic history, Rosenberg and Birdzell's How the West Grew Rich: The Economic Transformation of the Industrial World is excellent, though not as easy to read. Richard Pipes' great Property and Freedom: The Story of How Through the Centuries Private Ownership has Promoted Liberty and the Rue of Law. It is just $11.25 on Amazon, and you can "search inside"). Fernand Braudel's great Civilization and Capitalism series is much, much more in depth, and endlessly fascinating. Here is vol. 2, The Wheels of Commerce on Amazon. Instead of a history of just kings, aristocrats, and battles, Braudel draws on the recent historical research of everyday people which tells the story of the broad progress capitalism brings to the people of Western Europe. I discuss Braudel and the joys of jumping into real history in an essay for students struggling with history texts: Burn Your World History Textbook? (pdf).

 
Also highly recommended is Rodney Stark's The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Stark's book inspired Acton Media's moving documentary, The Birth of Freedom (watch trailer on LibertyFlix.org here). I don't know about Stark's theological discussion in the book, but the economic story he recounts of economic freedom vs. state control through Western history is great, great, great.

Amazing American History
There are many very good books on American history. My favorites include Thomas Sowell's Ethnic America and Paul Johnson's A History of the American People. I was reminded recently of the first books that aroused my interest in American history. They were the historically accurate novels of Kenneth Roberts. I used to scour used book stores for Robert's novels: Rabble in Arms, Oliver Wiswell (out-of-print on Amazon, short review here). Here is an in-depthTime magazine review from 1940, of Robert's novels. The reviewer calls Roberts "the finest U.S. historical novelist since James Fenimore Cooper." Northwest Passage is great (the WSJ just reviewed a related new book:Frontiersman Robert Rogers "The Pionee of Special Ops"). I enjoyed reading Robert's Lydia Bailey so much I took a vacation years ago to Haiti (where much had changed...). Lydia Bailey too is out of print, but many inexpensive used editions are available. Roberts Arundel is inexpensive and in print. Hollywood movies were made of Northwest Passage (1958) (with Spencer Tracy) and Lydia Bailey (1952), but I don't see these and they don't seem to be available.

Recent reading on American and World history, from Jamestown to Nutmeg, to Scots inventing the modern world, to important fish and oysters...

Well, here are recent books I started this morning wanting to recommend, but felt obliged to list everything above first:

   

These four recent history books are for the general public. They were written by capable and knowledgable authors interested in making money (rather than promoting socialism), and published by for-profit firms (rather than government-subsidized university presses). Each quality paperback is $10-12 on Amazon, and each was fascinating and eye-opening for me. Books that awaken student's interest in other places and times can launch them into a lifetime of exploration. Each book offers occasional discussion of economics and entrepreneurship along with reporting the regular depredations and distortations of arbitrary state power. These enjoyable books set pegs in the mind for key past events, and the social and economic forces that contributed to the rise of the west.

• Love and Hate in Jamestown: John Smith, Pocahontas, and the Start of a New Nation by David Price. Just $10 on Amazon, this account of the economic and social tensions between the monied aristocrats and the competent everyday people like John Smith at Jamestown is fascinating. Plus Price offers an historically-accurate alternative to the politically-correct textbook versions of these events.

• Nathaniel's Nutmeg: Or the True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader Who Changed the Course of History. Who knew an unknown spice trader's heroic defense of a tiny island allowed the British to take control of New York from the Dutch.

• How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It by Arthur Herman. A fast-paced introduction to the Scottish Enlightenment, and the economic and entrepreneurial powerhouse that Scotland became (after its' government was abolished...). Economics is more easily absorbed in small doses administered with interesting events of history. Not surprisingly, How the Scots... is particularly appealing to those with Scottish ancestory. I remember reading in Albert J. Nock's Mr. Jefferson, of the Scottish instructors responsible for Jefferson's grounding in classical liberalism and the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment. Highly recommended.

• Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World by Mark Kurlansky. Kurlansky's other books, Salt: A World History, and The Big Oyster: History on the Half-Shell, are also entertaining and insightful. It is just plain fun, or at least it was for me, to read about the importance of salt in world history, and of cod and oysters in American history.

Throughout Europe, Stretched the Silent Network of Liberalism

Stories for a Starting Place
I was reminded how I got started in the world of true (or classical) liberal ideas when a used book ordered on Amazon arrived. I started re-reading it and was again swept away.

In middle school I read The Lord of the Rings from start to finish each summer. It was a grand landscape of great adventure with higher meanings I didn't quite understand. But like Homer's Odyssey it was an adventure where boys (young Hobbits actually) were transformed through experiences into men (still hobbits, but tougher ones). I was a boy and becoming a man and I guess wondered what orcs and goblins there would be in my path to fight.

I read mostly science fiction in those years, having slowly graduated from Marvel comic books. Wandering the house one evening, I asked my mother for more science fiction. She suggested Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I read it quickly, wondering first about the amazing engine said to draw vast power from the Earth’s electricity. There was much more in Atlas Shrugged, but at 16 or 17, the bad guys and economic conflict were as alien to me as monsters in science fiction. Tolkien dreamed a world of orcs and goblins by nature evil and elves by nature good. Men's souls could be molded to live good lives or be seduced by evil. In Ayn Rand's world men could become just as evil and just as bent on destroying all that was good in the world. It didn’t seem real to me at the time (and became real only in college where I met people who claimed to believe the same anti-life philosophies I had only read about in Atlas Shrugged). But Atlas Shrugged planted seeds of an alternate world here on Earth where strong and silent people could oppose bad ideas and destructive policies.

I read most of the science fiction books by Ursula K. Leguin. Her Earthsea Trilogy was captivating, as were others of her early anthopology-based science fiction novels. In 1980 a new book appeared titled Malafrena. When I put this book down I knew what I wanted to do, though had no idea how to do it.

Malafrena sounded like a mystical place and I assumed the novel would be science fiction or fantasy. Sinking deeper into the story, I kept expected a door to open to another world, or a ancient power to appear. After a time I walked through that door and was immersed in another world. I stepped into the past, into the fierce and confusing struggle for freedom waged in Central Europe thirty years after the French Revolution. (I heard an historian say recently that "the past is like another country." So maybe the past in another country can be like another world.)

Itale Sorde grew up in the provinces learning to manage his father’s estate, but surrounded by his grandfather’s books. At seventeen, home from boarding school, he happens one evening to begin reading through old French newspapers his grandfather had saved, turning to the year 1790. LeGuin writes: “He held the French Revolution in his hands. He read the speech in which the orator called down the wrath of the people on the house of privilege, the speech that ended, “Vivro libre, ou mourir!”-- Live free, or die. The yellow newsprint crumbled under the boy’s touch; his head was bowed over dry columns of words spoken to a lost Assembly by men over thirty years dead…

“The speeches were full of rant, cant, and vanity; he saw that clearly enough. But they discussed freedom as a human need, like bread, like water. Itale got up and walked up and down the quiet little library, rubbing his head and staring blankly at the bookcases and the windows. Freedom was not a necessity, it was a danger, all the lawmakers of Europe had been saying that for a decade. Men were children, to be governed for their own good by the few who understood the science of government. What did this Frenchman Vergniaud mean by stating a choice--live free or die? Such choices are not offered to children. The words were spoken to men. They rang bald and strange; they lacked the logic of statements made in support of alliances, counter-alliances, censorships, repressions, reprisals…”

Itale then goes off, in September of 1822, to attend college in the provincial capital. In college he meets others and joins Amiktiya, a secret society, “The drank a lot of wine… passed contraband books around, discussed revolutions in France, Naples, Piedmont, Spain, Greece, talked of constitutional monarchy, equality before the law, popular education, a free press, all without any clear idea of what they were getting at, where it all led. They were not supposed to talk, so they talked.” (p. 16)

A dinner conversation is described with Itale and his father and uncle discussing the coming meeting of Estates, the first in thirty years. The uncle hopes for local control at least of taxes, “They might be able to do something about taxation at least. The Hungarian Diet’s won back control over their taxes from Vienna.” But Itale’s father answers “What if they did? Taxes won’t be decreased. Taxes are never decreased.” Itale replies “The money wouldn’t go to support a foreign police force, at any rate."

After college, it is time for Itale to return to his home in Malafrena. But instead he talks with his friends of going to Krasnoy, the capital, to fight, somehow, for freedom. “There must be men in the city who would welcome them and put them to work. There were said to be secret societies there, which corresponded with similar groups in Piedmont and Lombardy, Naples, Bohemia, Poland, German states: for through the territories and satellites of the Austrian Empire and even beyond, throughout Europe, stretched the silent network of liberalism, like the nervous system of a sleeping man. A restless sleep, feverish, full of dreams. … Itale went striding down the shady street like a summer whirlwind, his face hot, his coat open.” (p. 7). (from Malafrena by Ursula K. LeGuin).

Malafrena is not about free-markets or libertarian ideas. As I recall LeGuin gives glimpses of horrific early industiralization and abuse of workers. I will reread these parts to see if my early impressions, fresh from reading Ayn Rand and not knowing much history, are correct. Things were pretty terrible in the beginning of the industrial period for a lot of people. But they were better than available alternatives, including life on the farm. Otherwise people would have left crummy industrial jobs and moved back to the countryside to work for their old aristocratic masters. Or at least thousands then streaming into cities throughout Europe--as they do in the underdeveloped world today--would have stayed home.

(Early industrialization in Europe, following the destruction of the Napoleonic Wars, was especially dark. England had gone deeply in debt to pay for the war. All that wealth was destroyed and impoverished workers were taxed heavily to pay the debts. So things did get worse for many, but not because capitalism was somehow less productive or less fair, or was heading for an over-production crack-up.)

I read Malafrena in a fever similar to Itale Sorde's described above, and wished as well to leave the provinces and join the fight for (classical) liberalism. I attended an Institute for Humane Studies seminar that summer and visited the Cato Institute (as close as we had to secret societies in the 1980s) looking for an internship position. Instead I joined the Institute for Humane Studies and assisted with their Liberty and Society seminars and directed an program for high school speech and debate students.

So now, many years later, I am rereading the book that first got me thinking about joining “the movement.” And when students from this summer's IES-Europe Seminars write to ask about classical liberal ideas and internships (with today's "secret societies"), I write them to recommend Malafrena, North and South, and Atlas Shrugged.

A Student's Guide to Economics, review by Andrada Busuioc

Paul Heyne's "Student’s Guide to Economics is, indeed, a guide. Meant to offer basic information for students not very familiarized with economics, the guide has the advantage of a clear and concise presentation of the economic thinking and thinkers since the beginnings of this science, considered, as most professionals agree, with Adam Smith.

As he himself declared, the book is addressed to students who only take economics for one or, at most, two semesters. Therefore, we might as well see the “Student’s Guide to Economics” as a textbook that could be used even in teaching.

To support this idea it is enough to have a look on the content of the guide - shortly, in about 50 pages, Heyne compresses the history of economics. And it does it so good that he even gives the definition of microeconomics and macroeconomics, he enounces the principles economics is based on and presents short biographies of the most important economists. He even makes an analysis upon the name “economics” and “political economy” and the history of the names. And he concludes it in a very funny way - How appropriate that someone named Jean Baptiste should have christened the new science!

Proving an excellent capacity in underlining the main contributions of each economist, Paul Heyne also has the ability to point out the subtleties regarding their work. The best example in this case is the observation towards Adam Smith’s work - “his questions were better than his answers, though”, Paul Heyne says.

Although throughout the entire book you can smell a scent of liberal thinking, Heyne has the incredible ability, which few people involved in the economic thinking world have, of being objective. The passage below shows how deepen the problems are discussed, in spite of the apparent simplicity of the book (or maybe just because of that, because providing basic information means looking at the issues as objective as possible): Economists have often reasoned about the operation of markets as if all the actors possessed all the knowledge they required to make decisions that they would not later come to regret. The interactions of demanders and suppliers were assumed to produce smooth and rapid movements of prices and resources to their equilibrium states, where all intentions are reconciled. While markets processes do indeed coordinate the intentions of actors in a manner that could almost be called miraculous, it is not in fact a miracle and it is consequently not as smooth and rapid as economists have too often assumed.

The book is full of this sort of passages in which the economic theory is explained in such a simple way that you might just ask yourself “Why didn’t I think about that?”. Detaching himself and his book of the stiff, complicated explanations given to different issues by the economists during the time, Heyne presents them in simple manner, suitable for “economics amateurs”. The vision upon the failure of the socialism and the centralized planning is probably the clearest of all, especially for somebody not familiarized with the complexity of economic process: “No one is omniscient”. Short and straight to the point.

Heyne’s guide it that type of book once you start reading, you won’t let go of until you finish it. And because the style in which it is written is amazing - clear, concise, easy to understand, simple and even funny - it only takes a couple of hours to read it. It gathers so much information that you are tempted to take a pencil and note down some ideas.

Unfortunately, there are some important issues Heyne omitted, even though they might be obvious only for the advanced in economics. And here I would only mention one great figure of the economic history - Ludwig von Misses - not once mentioned in the guide.

And probably the weak point of Heyne’s guide is its structure. While reading it I couldn’t notice a logical line, nor historical, nor based on the types of economic thinking currents. The ideas just seem to derive from one another. Surprisingly, it doesn’t bother the reader and for a while it’s not even noticeable (the writing style helps too, of course), but at some point you start to feel the need of systematization. And a clear structure is more a “must have” as it is meant to give basic information for people not quite familiarized with the field. Achieving knowledge is easier when information is systemized.

In spite of this lacks, the book remains a necessary instrument in understanding the science of economics. “A Student’s Guide to Economics” should be one of the top choices for anyone interested in this field.

Paul Heyne's A Student's Guide to Economics is available from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute here: http://www.isi.org/books/bookdetail.aspx?id=417b797a-f055-444e-9424-b1638e31d9f5

More than Scotch Came from Scotland...

Cristina Tanase reviews Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World



It is either about making a phone call, getting to the most remote islands by the modern successor of Orvile and Wilbur Wright’s plane, reading a James Bond novel or a ‘Daily’ tabloid newspaper, drinking Lipton tea or having a Johnny Walker whisky. In all these there is as much Scottish influence as it is in Adam Smith’s, David Hume’s or Francis Hutchenson’s writings.

How the Scots Invented the Modern World is historian Arthur Herman’s testimony in support of that Scottish spirit that led to some of the most amazing discoveries of the ‘modern world’. When one reads ‘discoveries’, he/she should not only think of the material/scientific ones, but also of those sets of ideas on economics, political philosophy, education, literature, architecture. In each of these categories, Herman says, we can nominate at least one Scottish leader.

The funny part of the book is that it gives us a flavor of the old Scottish language, by comparing some words with their English counterparts. Thus, craik stands for ‘talk’, nekkid for ‘naked’, critter for ‘creature’.

Herman links a chain of historic events into a smooth, captivating story that does not simply tell, but explains causes and effects, analyses good points and bad points, debates pros and cons. The book is divided into two parts, the first handling the Scottish development from the 16th to the late 18th century, the second completing the portrait of the Scottish Diaspora and its underlying contribution to the development of the Birtish colonies of United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and even Africa.

Religion, education, economics and law played important roles in the Scottish people’s progress. Scotland was, the author says, Europe’s first modern literate society. By 1696, every parish was supposed to have a school and a teacher, according to the provisions of Parliament’s “Act for Setting Schools”. The act had important effects on commerce: it contributed to the flourishing of book trade, paper making, bookselling and printing.
Abandoning the Catholic Church, Presbyterian Scotland and Episcopalian England had to share a common history, as their close geography could not be changed.

The Act of Union (1707) united England and Scotland into Great Britain, governed by a single monarch and a single British Parliament. It is this, the author says, that actually spurred Scotland’s economic growth, moving its economy away from a “Third World country” stage to that of a “modern society”. It is this that made the Scots innovate and use the advantages of laissez-faire private sector into a Union that rendered English-style public order, enforced law and a standing army and navy. The price of this economic boom was the loss of political autonomy, the author explains.

This was exactly the perfect moment for the Scottish Enlightenment to make herself conspicuous, showing its scientific side and concern for mathematics, medicine, law, natural philosophy. The concepts of liberty, free society, rights and obligations became popular within the theories of Pufendorf, Hutchenson and Shaftsbury. The term liberty was especially associated with refined tastes, sophistication, and even politeness.

During the 18th century, we find an innovative, industrial and mercantile Glasgow and an artistic and literary Edinburgh leading the intellectual trend of the Scottish society. At the same time, we find Edinburgh jammed, blackened, and totally lacking sanitation. The reader will find Daniel Defoe’s description of the city interesting.

Arthur Herman also tackles the problem of the Scottish cultural identity, bound to its English side. He says the two nations are distinct in political, as well as cultural terms. Yet, as Herman beautifully explains, although Scots became English speakers and culture bearers, they stuck to their Scottish roots.

What you get out of this book is an understanding of the true Scots’ spirit; concepts like commercial society, monopoly, means of production, no longer seem created solely as flamboyant explanations by self-interested entrepreneurs. Instead, they become alive and more humane with the author’s excellent effort to bind them to those things that created them: liberty, refinement, progress of the human spirit and commerce.

Personalities like Adam Smith and David Hume receive a whole sub-chapter in Arthur Herman’s book. The historian thoroughly examines their theories and, adopting a fairly balanced tone, emphasizes the innovations in their theories. The author’s balance is evident when, after having extolled concepts like Smith’s division of labour, he also points out the Scottish thinker’s worries about other effects of capitalism: corruption and cultural costs.

In the second part of his book, Herman shows how Scottish personalities like James Watt, Charles Darwin, David Livingstone, Samuel Finley Breese Morse, Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Watson influenced the rest of the world. This influence is a blend of values, judgments and education received by the Scottish leaders, a blend that Herman says refers to what we are tempted to call the ‘American cultural type’ but which in fact is of Scottish origin. This part is also a short history of the Scots’ colonization of North America, Australia – a former British penal colony – and New Zealand.

Following the Scottish example of education, colonists in North America – of which many were, in fact, Scottish-born – developed a humanistic curriculum comprising the study of ancient as well as modern political thinkers. No wonder that this system based on the principles of free society firmly stood against Parliament’s efforts to tax and regulate internal affairs, the author says. No wonder that the feelings that animated the spirit of the American Revolution first originated in this Scottish-like prototype, characterised by “an independent intellect combined with an assertive self-respect, and grounded by a strong sense of moral purpose” and vigorously promoting the free exchange of ideas.

Literature stands as another example of Scottish cultural representation. What Walter Scott created by his Rob Roy and Guy Mannering was, according to Herman, an identity highly perceived as ‘national’ and ‘characteristic’ for the Scots: the myth of the noble Highlander attired in kilts, bonnets, tartans, bagpipes and singing Gaelic battle songs.

The author uses two interesting terms in this section. The first, brain-drain, has exactly the same meaning as today, but importantly its advantages were already self-evident in the 19th century. The second, liberal imperialism, points to the spreading of the liberal philosophy across the world. In the author’s view, this kind of imperialism has good connotations, because it imposes “better schools, more just laws, more prosperous towns and cities, more money in ordinary people’s pockets and more food on their tables.”

The danger in this phrase lies in the word “better”, as good is hard to define in, let’s say, an Islamic or Buddhist society. It was a positive good that Charles James Napier succeeded in India: economic, as well as religious reforms – the banning of ‘suttee’ (a widow is burned on a funeral pyre after her husband’s death); however, according to the Brahmin priests, this kind of good faced allegations of ‘interfering with an important national custom’.

Arthur Herman’s book is intellectually challenging. The reader need not remember figures, as the important ones will speak for themselves. What he will get, instead, is a flow of occurrences that will naturally be borne in his mind and will explain the ‘why’ and ‘how’. Additionally, he will cast a thorough glance on how great Scottish intellects intertwined to give birth to, as the author says, “the true story of how Western Europe’s poorest nation created our world and everything in it”.

Cristina Tanase is a journalist in Romania and attended the 2005 IES-Europe Seminar in Varna

APEE Essay Contest

The Association for Private Enterprise Education (www.APEE.org) is holding an essay contest for students aged 25 and under.

First place is $2500, second is $2000, and third is $1500. There will be several $150 honorable mentions. The essay needs to be 1000-2000 words (which amounts to about 2-4 pages) on one of the following topics:

What causes prosperity?
What is the proper role of regulation in a free economy?
Can free markets protect the environment?

For more information: www.apee.org/essay/essaycontest.html

More books for IES-Europe students

I'm headed to IES-Europe in Aix and bringing more books. If you've read a book from our Varna seminar and want one of these to read and review, let us know.

You Have to Admit It's Getting Better

(You can read excerpts from this book on the Amazon website)

You can also order a copy from Laissez Faire Books (www.lfb.com). Here is some information about the book from the LFB website. And comments below are student reviews from IES-Europe seminars.
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From Economic Prosperity to Environmental Quality
edited by Terry L. Anderson
Hoover Institution Press, 2004, paperback

What the doomsayers don't want you to know

Okay. Maybe nobody has to admit it. But as the contributors to this volume show, things really are getting better. For example, they explain why economic growth and environmental quality are hardly opposites -- and why the institutions of a free society like property rights, the rule of law, and limited government are exactly what you need to promote both. Plus:

* How international trade can improve environmental quality.

* How exploitation of natural resources and capital formation in fact help the "future generations" that some environmentalists claim we're shortchanging.

* Why carbon emissions -- if they're a problem at all -- will likely prove much less of a problem in richer (freer) countries than in poorer ones.

* Privatization versus rule of law: Milton Friedman's big mistake. What he says now.

The book also includes a chapter in which "skeptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg confronts critics of his own optimistic book, exposing shoddy statistics and cheap rhetorical tricks.

"With data, extrapolations, and plain evidence, the authors make the case that overall environmental quality is improving. No innovative, specialized, and in some cases alarmist environmental programs or wide-reaching legislation is required to ensure desirable environmental quality.... The essays deal with the major facets of growth-technology, rising standard of living, free trade, laissez-faire economics, and population growth."
--Midwest Book Review

212 pages