Book Hints

A selection mention of books received

Entrepreneurs and others interested in surviving the times ahead might want to consult Franz Serdahely and Murray Miller's How to Win the Battle against Inflation with a Small Business (Wilmington: Enterprise Publications, 1980, 158 pp., $14.95). It suggests inflation-proof business opportunities, where not to put your money, how to use the barter system profitably, and some unusual tax shelters.

REASON contributors are showing up in several publications these days. Jerome Tuccille's 1978 guide to investment, The Optimist's Guide to Making Money in the 1980s, is now out in paperback (New York: Morrow Quill Paperbacks, 1980, 203 pp., $4.95). Viewpoint columnist Alan Reynolds appears in a collection of lectures given at the 1979 Ludwig von Mises Lecture Series at Hillsdale College (to which von Mises willed his entire personal library). The booklet, Champions of Freedom (Hillsdale, Mich.: Hillsdale College, 1979, 96 pp., $1.50), also includes lectures by William Simon, Benjamin Rogge, Dan Quayle, and George Bush (yes, the George Bush). Editor Robert Poole's December 1977 editorial on the minimum wage has been reprinted in the course book accompanying a college-level text called Economics: Private and Public Choice, edited by James Gwartney and Richard Stroup (New York: Academic Press, 1980, 880 pp., $14.95). Like a growing number of economics texts, this one points out the shortcomings of government intervention as it actually operates. Reason Foundation advisor and Nobel prize winner F. A. Hayek is the subject of an American Enterprise Institute pamphlet, A Conversation with Friedrich A. von Hayek: Science and Socialism, (Washington, AEI, 1979, 21 pp., $1.25, paper), an edited transcript of his "thinking aloud" at an AEI discussion, with a questions and answer period included.

Other interesting pamphlets include the new series of monographs on industry and the State put out by the Center for Education and Research in Free Enterprise at Texas A&M University (College Station, Tex.; all pamphlets 50 cents): The Economics of Industrial Democracy: An Analysis of Labor Participation in the Management of Business Firms, by Eirik G. Furubotn (26 pp.); International Price Stabilization and the Less Developed Countries: Lessons from History, by John R. Hanson II (23 pp.); and Distortions in Official Unemployment Statistics: Implications for Public Policy Making, by Kenneth W. Clarkson and Roger E. Meiners (15 pp.). Then there is the Center for Libertarian Studies' Occasional Paper No. 9, Medical Malpractice: The Case for Contract (New York: CLS, 1979, 67 pp., $2.50), in which author Richard A. Epstein attacks the rigidity of present laws as a return to the society of status and advocates contract standards.

And lastly, some comic relief. An amusing commentary on our overorganized society features illustrations by REASON's Randall Hylkema. It's called Haga's Law and is put together by William James Haga and Nicholas Acocella (New York: William Morrow, 1980, 191 pp., $8.95). And the wry, dry cartoons of Alexis Gilliland are collected in The Iron Law of Bureaucracy (Mason, Mich.: Loompanics Unlimited, 1979, 51 pp., $4.95).