I’m going to be interviewed on a podcast soon about how to become an Austrian. I have my own ideas, but what I’m going to build up is the perfect list of ten books that take you from being a reasonably intelligent conventional person, who realises something is wrong in the world, to a hard-core Rothbardian, in ten literary steps.
If you have your own list of books (even if only a couple), I’d be pleased to see them in the comments, either here, or on Facebook. Freely available online is good, though not essential, and fiction works too.
Here’s my own tentative list:
1. Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt
(Other contenders, Gene Callahan, ‘Economics for Real People’, by Thomas Taylor, ‘An Introduction to Austrian Economics’, but I think Hazlitt wins)
2. The Mystery of Banking, by Murray Rothbard
3. The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, by Ludwig von Mises
4. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein
5. What Has the Government Done to Our Money?, by Murray Rothbard
6. The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle, by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Roger Garrison, Gottfried Haberler, and Murray Rothbard
7. The Road to Serfdom, by Friedrich Hayek
8. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
9. Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises
10. Man, Economy, and State, by Murray Rothbard
If you can get through those, then ‘The Ethics of Liberty’, ‘For a New Liberty’, and ‘Egalitarianism as a Revolt against Nature’, by Rothbard might be up next, then ‘Socialism’ and ‘A Theory of Money and Credit’ by Mises, followed perhaps by ‘Democracy: The God that Failed’ by Hoppe, ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ by George Orwell, and ‘The Economics and Ethics of Private Property’ by Hoppe.
After that, you should be well on the way…
A couple more I’d throw in:
The Creature from Jekyll Island, by G. Edward Griffin and Gold Wars, by Ferdinand Lips.
Andy,
Jeff Harding, of The Daily Capitalist blog, has a good list here: http://dailycapitalist.com/reading-list/
I would add:
- Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles – by Jesus Huerta de Soto (http://mises.org/resources/2745/Money-Bank-Credit-and-Economic-Cycles)
- Epistemological Problems of Economics – by Ludwig von Mises (http://mises.org/resources/116/Epistemological-Problems-of-Economics)
- The Ethics of Money Production – by Jörg Guido Hülsmann (http://mises.org/document/3747/The-Ethics-of-Money-Production)
- Time Will Run Back – Henry Hazlitt (http://mises.org/resources/3060/Time-Will-Run-Back)
Excellent suggestions. I’ll have to knock out the fiction books from my own list, and squeeze a couple of those in.
Thanks. Note that Hazlitt’s “Time Will Run Back” in a novel. However, it is really a treatise on economics disguised as a novel.