Janet Reno Is No Hero
A new biography by Judith Hicks Stiehm ignores Janet Reno's many failures as attorney general.
Books
The Good Samaritans Who Saved Syrian Refugees
When government relief efforts fail, individuals step up.
Milton Friedman Was No Conservative
A new Friedman biography ably explores the economist's ideas but sidesteps the libertarian movement he was central to.
Inside a 20-Year Effort To Clean Up the Oakland Police Department
The Riders Come Out at Night frames it as a hopeful sign that police reform is possible.
Did Evolution Give Us Free Will?
Author Kevin J. Mitchell makes a neuroscientific case against determinism.
Power and Progress Is a Wrongheaded Critique of Tech Progress
An undercurrent of the book is that common people want whatever progressive intellectuals want them to want.
Free Market Book Misstates the History of Free Market Thought
Author Jacob Soll's commitment to an untenable historical thesis distorts the facts.
We Don't Need a War on Screen Time
Unwired makes an unconvincing argument for heavy-handed tech regulation.
The Chicago Boys' Deal With the Devil
The Chile Project surveys neoliberalism's most polarizing experiment.
Thank Dutch Merchants, Not a Strong State, for Capitalism
Pioneers of Capitalism chronicles centuries of bottom-up economic evolution in the Netherlands.
How Pirates in Madagascar Spread Enlightenment Ideas
Pirate Enlightenment documents an interracial experiment in stateless self-governance.
Oppression in the South Was Not an Expression of Freedom
Freedom's Dominion argues Southern history was animated by "racialized radical anti-statism." The case is lacking.
Beware the 'Christian Prince'
The Case for Christian Nationalism advocates for an ethnically uniform nation ruled by a "Christian prince."
An Anarchist's Guide to War
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon's most controversial book has finally been fully translated into English.
E.E. Cummings Celebrated Libertarian Utopia
His most popular book, The Enormous Room, was recently reprinted for its 100th anniversary.
Who Owns Your Brain Data?
Nita A. Farahany's The Battle for Your Brain shows how neurotech can help, or hurt, human liberty.
Waco Offers New Insights From ATF Agents
Historian Jeff Guinn's account focuses on the ATF's oft-overlooked fiasco in the 1993 affair rather than the FBI's widely reported involvement.
The Big Myth Is Full of Recycled Anti-Capitalist Cheap Shots
A new entrant in the anti-neoliberalism genre fails to land any blows.
The Militant Pacifists of World War II
War by Other Means tells the story of those conscientious objectors who did not cooperate with the government's alternative-service schemes.
Libertarian History/Philosophy
The Founding Mothers of Libertarianism
Freedom's Furies tells how three women offered their own unique defenses of individual liberty and how their disagreements anticipated the differences among libertarians and classical liberals today.
Public Unions vs. the Public Good
Elected leaders come and go, but public unions just say no.
How the Fed Redistributed Wealth and Encouraged Reckless Corporate Behavior
The Lords of Easy Money argues that the Fed created an economy with nearly irresistible incentives for foolish choices.
The Case for 50 Percent Open Borders
A call for restricting immigration in The Culture Transplant accidentally makes the case for radical liberalization.
How Venture Capital Made the Future
Sebastian Mallaby's The Power Law explores how venture capital and public policy helped shape modern technology.
Psychiatrists Do Not Know What They Are Treating
The mysteries of the mind are harder to unravel than psychiatrists pretend.
The End of Astronauts: Should We Send Robots to Space Instead?
Robots don't get cabin fever, develop cancer from cosmic radiation, miss their families, or go insane.
What We Owe the Future Is Liberalism
What does "longtermism" offer those of us who favor limited government and free markets?
America's Biggest Political Division Isn't Left vs. Right
It's the superpolitical vs. everyone else.
A Belated Vindication for School Reopeners
The Stolen Year acknowledges public school COVID failures but refuses to hold anyone responsible.
Should Libertarians Root for the Abolition of Police and Prisons?
Libertarians have some common ground with the abolitionists—but if they insist on anti-capitalism as a litmus test, abolitionists will find themselves isolated and marginalized.
Are We Past 'Peak Petrostate'?
It's the economics of energy production that make petrostates more trigger-happy, Emma Ashford argues in Oil, the State, and War.
How the U.S. Paid for the Civil War
Lincoln's wartime governance had dire, and longstanding, economic consequences.
Review: The Brutality of British Empire on Display in Legacy of Violence
Caroline Elkins' book raises an important question for people today, particularly liberals—an issue that Elkins herself sidesteps.
The Missing Cryptoqueen Details the Rise and Fall of Ruja Ignatova's OneCoin Con
Jamie Bartlett's gripping look at the schematics and psychology of a scam
A New History of the Old Right
On the American right, populism has always been lurking in the shadows.
The Quest for a Libertarian Island Paradise
Raymond B. Craib's new book recounts how Michael Oliver repeatedly tried to create a new country with a government funded entirely by voluntary contributions.
In The Listeners, Brian Hochman Details History of Eavesdropping
Wiretapping and eavesdropping used to be the norm. Perhaps privacy was always an illusion after all.
Former New York Times Reporter Denies in New Book That Hugo Chávez Was a Socialist
A new book vividly portrays human beings coping with daily existence in a disintegrating society but offers an incoherent analysis of what went wrong.
Secret City Recounts the Gay History of D.C.
In his new book, James Kirchick focuses on homosexuals' relationship with national politics during a time when gays were banned from working for the federal government.
Book Review: The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
Early cities' concentrated populations and burgeoning scale didn't spontaneously summon pharaonic god-kings or bureaucrats.
Was Censorship the Greatest COVID Threat to Freedom?
It wasn't just autocrats who were frequently tempted to address "fake news" about the pandemic through state pressure and coercion.
![book1 | Photo: Uncle Sam rounding up men labeled “Spy,” “Traitor,” “IWW,” “Germ[an] money,” and “Sinn Fein,” with the United States Capitol in the background](https://d2eehagpk5cl65.cloudfront.net/img/c331x186-w331-q60/uploads/2022/03/book1-331x186.jpg)
Speaking Freely Through the Ages
As long as there have been laws, there have been attempts to silence people.
Maria Montessori's 'Libertarian View of Children'
The education pioneer's authoritarian personality was at odds with her commitment to children's independence.
The Fuzzy Moral Line Between Drinkers and Bartenders
Were liquor suppliers across the world guilty of outrageous abuses that explain the prohibitionist response?
Expanding Our Understanding of the Revolution
Despite all the controversy it has courted, Woody Holton's newest book doesn't stray very far from other scholarly interpretations of the American Revolution.
