In Good Money economist George Selgin narrates a lively tale of enterprising manufacturers and struggles over the right to mint legal money. In the 1780s, when the Industrial Revolution was gathering momentum, the Royal Mint in England failed to produce enough coinage for factory owners to pay their workers. As the currency shortage threatened to derail industrial progress, manufacturers began to mint custom-made coins. These tokens served as the nation’s most popular currency for wages and retail sales until 1821, when the Crown outlawed all moneys except its own. In this fascinating story of British manufacturers’ challenge to the Crown’s monopoly on coinage, the author illuminates the role of private enterprise and provides a noted historical lesson for entrepreneurs today.

After decades of silence on the Second Amendment, the U.S. Supreme Court has presided over the case of District of Columbia vs. Heller. At issue is whether the Second Amendment protects a private citizen’s right to keep and bear arms. While much has been written about gun control and related issues, no book has delved so deeply into the nature of the right to keep and bear arms as it was understood and practiced during the first generation of the American Republic. Stephen Halbrook captures the intent of the Founders in their own words to reveal that the Second Amendment was indeed designed to protect the individual’s rights.

Half the people in the world live on two dollars or less per day and roughly 600 million live on no more than one dollar per day. With thousands of international relief organizations, strategic government programs, and billions of dollars in foreign aid, why do so many underdeveloped countries remain unable to grow their economies beyond mere survival?

Most Americans don’t think of their government as an empire, but in fact the United States has been steadily expanding its control of overseas territories since the turn of the twentieth century. Now, through political intimidation and more than 700 military bases worldwide, the U.S. holds sway over an area that dwarfs the great empires of world history. The author shows how empire building is contrary to both liberal and conservative principles and exposes the imperial motives of U.S. policy.

In Twilight War, Mike Moore argues that the U.S. merely provokes conflict when it circumvents treaties and presumes to station weapons of mass destruction in space. Rejecting treaty negotiations while further militarizing space renders America unable to lead by example. Instead of trying to stop an arms race in space by starting one, Moore concludes the U.S. must radically rethink its strategy.

Why do some nations become rich while others remain poor? Making Poor Nations Rich demonstrates that pro-market reforms are essential to promoting the productive entrepreneurship that leads to economic growth, and where this institutional environment is lacking, sustained economic development will remain elusive.

For more than a century U.S. foreign policy has been based on the assumption that Americans’ interests are served best by intervening abroad. Before the twentieth century, however, a foreign policy of nonintervention was widely considered more desirable, and Washington’s and Jefferson’s advice that the republic avoid foreign entanglements was largely heeded.

Economist and historian Robert Higgs illustrates the false trade-off between freedom and security by showing how the U.S. government’s economic and military interventions have reduced the liberty, prosperity, and genuine security of all Americans.

Anarchy and the Law assembles for the first time in one volume the most important classic and contemporary studies exploring and debating non-state legal and political systems, especially involving the tradition of natural law and private contracts.

Can forces handle the delicate matter of transmitting electricity when the simple model of supply and demand must be more precise that other goods and services? How much regulation does the electric industry need? Electric Choices explores these difficult questions and proposes a new, market-based plan to improve America’s electrical future.

Depression, War, and Cold War offers a powerful, solidly grounded interpretation of U.S. political economy from the early-1930s to the end of the Cold War, and refutes many popular ideas about the Great Depression and New Deal, the World War II economy, and the postwar national-security state still so pervasive today.

Examines private, market-based alternatives for road services, both in theory and practice including at least four such possible directions for private services: testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned road facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership.

The Challenge of Liberty restores the ideas and ideals of classical liberalism and shows how its contemporary exponents defend such pillars of free societies as individual rights, human dignity, market processes, and the rule of law.

Nearly four decades after his death, the legend of Che Guevara has grown worldwide. With eyewitness accounts, Vargas Llosa sets the record straight regarding Che’s murderous legacy, brutally crushing any and all dissent, and concentrating wealth in the hands of an elite.

With inordinate amounts of money spent in the United States on lawyers and lawsuits and multibillion-dollar settlements growing each year, the very timely book Judge and Jury asks, “Is the tort system benefiting the public?”

Resurgence of the Warfare State is Robert Higgs’s real-time analysis of the U.S. government’s tragic but predictable response to 9/11: the quick enactment of the USA PATRIOT Act, the federal takeover of airport security, the massive increase in defense and other government spending, and the carnage in Afghanistan and Iraq wrought by leaders unaccountable for their costly and deadly mistakes.

Plowshares & Pork Barrels provides the historical and economic context necessary to make sense of U.S. agricultural policy and examines possible market-based alternatives that could benefit consumers and ensure the advancement of American agriculture in an increasingly interdependent global economy.

Re-Thinking Green exposes the myths that have contributed to failed environmental policies and proposes bold alternatives that recognize the power of incentives and the limitations of political and regulatory processes. It addresses some of the most hotly debated environmental issues and shows how entrepreneurship and property rights can be utilized to promote environmental quality and economic growth.

Donald Downs addresses a major problem in contemporary American higher education: deprivations of free speech, due process, and other basic civil liberties in the name of favored political causes.

In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America’s woes—and a prescription for finally getting the region on the road to both genuine prosperity and the protection of human rights.

The Empire Has No Clothes advocates a return to the Founding Fathers’ policy of military restraint overseas and argues that the concept of empire is contrary to the principles of both liberals and conservatives. Eland warns that in recent years, blowback from this overextended empire has begun to threaten the American homeland and curtail the very liberties and well-being U.S. interventions were supposed to protect.

In Against Leviathan, economist and historian Robert Higgs offers an unflinching critical analysis of government power. Topics include Social Security, the paternalism of the FDA, the “War on Drugs”, the nature of political leadership, civil liberties, the conduct of the national surveillance state, and governmental responses to a continuing stream of “crises,” including domestic economic busts and foreign wars both hot and cold.

The “War on Drugs” claims thousands of lives every year in the United States. Each year, the U.S. government spends over $30 billion on the drug war and arrests 1.5 million American citizens on drug-related charges. There are now nearly half a million Americans imprisoned for drug offenses. The official claim is that drug prohibition deters drug use, reduces crime, and improves public health. But is this claim valid?

As debate accelerates over the declining standards in higher education, academic tenure is viewed with suspicion by many, who see it merely as job protection for incompetent teachers. Even many professors believe tenure is a guarantee of lifelong entitlement, whereby only the commission of a crime can lead to dismissal. Faulty Towers sets the record straight by elucidating the history, legal status, and common misunderstandings regarding tenure.

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison saw John Adams’ Alien and Sedition Acts as a threat to individual liberty and a precursor to federal government with unlimited power. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions sought to return the nation to the tenets of the Constitution, in which rights for all were protected by checked federal power. Watkins examines this important and timeless controversy and demonstrates the Resolutions' crucial relevance to the major issues facing us today.

Oxford University economist Wilfred Beckerman puts “sustainable development” to the test, questioning several of its core claims: Will economic growth burn itself out by depleting the natural resources it requires? Will global warming wreak widespread havoc? Does human activity threaten to throw a delicate planet dangerously “out of balance”?

Changing the Guard is an authoritative book on one of the most controversial aspects of criminal justice and corrections: the growing use of private prisons.

After Prohibition ended in 1933, many states passed laws regulating the sale of alcoholic beverages, now known as Franchise Termination Laws. Ostensibly intended to protect wholesalers from shady suppliers, and the public from the harmful effects of alcohol, these laws in fact created government-protected monopolies.

The Voluntary City assembles a rich history and analysis of private, locally based provision of social services, urban infrastructure, and community governance. Such systems have offered superior education, transportation, housing, crime control, recreation, health care, and employment by being more effective, innovative, and responsive than those provided through special interest politics and bureaucracy.

Recent years have seen the rise of new theories of market failure based on asymmetric information (wherein one party in a transaction knows more than the other) and network effects (the more popular a product, the more valuable it becomes). According to this new paradigm, we would expect substantial failures in a variety of markets. But despite the new market-failure theories, no systematic critical examination has been available—until now.

Economist John Merrifield shows that the school choice movement has become mired in false alternatives, petty distinctions, and diminished vision. Yet, he argues that the school choice program must not be allowed to fail like so many other government programs– a freely competitive market for education must remain the ultimate goal. School Choices charts a course for the achievement of this goal.

Entrepreneurial Economics is the best of applied economics with a twist of fun. Chapters in this stimulating book ingeniously apply simple economic principles to create new solutions to problems of genetic testing, patents, health and wealth insurance, legal gridlock, probation and parole, urban transit, the shortage of human organs and much more. An ideal way to really learn what economics is all about.

Liberty for Women is an eye-opening book that vividly charts a new individualist feminism for the 21st century in a highly lucid, provocative, and inspiring way. “Choice” is the key, and every woman’s choices and expressions of self-ownership must be equally and legally respected, from housewives to CEOs. Only then can a meaningful debate arise over which choices may be the best ones for women to make freely.

While multi-million dollar environmental lawsuits proliferate and Superfund has spent billions on hazardous waste cleanups, there appears little evidence of progress in cleaning up toxic threats to the environment. This book examines whether current regulation and policies benefit lawyers, bureaucrats and special interests diverting attention away from the real health and safety risks; creating disincentives for industry to safeguard against actual hazards.

Fire and Smoke carefully examines so-called government “recoupment” lawsuits over firearms and tobacco and finds them to be flagrant abuses of the constitutional separation of powers, seriously undermining over two hundred years of common-law torts adjudication.

Tax-exempt foundations have grown tremendously in the late 20th century. They have moved away from improving the status of the less fortunate members of society to programs evaluating and changing public policy. Foundations use money earned by others to promote their own causes and ideas. Writing Off Ideas examines the relationship between America’s non-profit foundations and the tax law.

A powerful new book that examines why harmful consequences too often follow when government sets out to direct our health care systems. It contrasts government programs and private market alternatives for supplying health care services. Required reading for health policy-makers, economists, historians, and health care professionals.

Economist Richard Vedder examines the economics, history and politics of education and shows how public schools could be radically improved by being privatized—through giving teachers a direct equity stake in the outcome of their services.

Media reports often assert that global warming is real, imminent, and a threat to human life. But, have such predictions been established scientifically? Studies by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have been used (or misused) to call for extensive government controls to reduce fossil fuel use. Yet, the IPCC’s own report—and statements by leading scientists—indicate that the issue is far from settled.

Few issues in high technology are as divisive as the current debate over competition, innovation, and antitrust. This book makes the case that free markets in high technology industry deliver better products to consumers, at lower prices, without government bureaucratic intervention.

Are the current structures of monetary and financial institutions in keeping with today’s economic realities? Money and the Nation State makes a strong case that long-overdue market-based reforms are necessary to overcome financial crises, economic stagnation and decline, and banking instability.

A vivid, powerful exploration of the debilitating impact that politically-correct “multiculturalism” has had upon higher education and academic freedom in the United States.

Government expenditures on police, courts, prisons, and other elements of the criminal justice system are at record levels. However, crime statistics show that our political-bureaucratic criminal justice system neither protects the innocent nor dispenses justice. To Serve and Protect analyzes private-sector alternatives that have the potential to reduce crime while offering greater protection of civil liberties.

State-dominated economies were once the norm throughout Latin America. Now, free market capitalism, deregulation, and privatization are driving rapid development and growth in nations like Chile, Argentina, and Mexico. This book is an insightful portrait of this turn-around and its implications for the United States.

Taxing Choice argues that taxes, more than just a way for government to collect revenue, are also a powerful tool to coerce people to behave in “politically correct” ways.

Private Rights and Public Illusions reveals that few problems concern most members of society in any uniform way, and contrary to conventional belief, both “public” and “private” realms are driven by the self-interests of those involved. Social problems have not only persisted despite massive government programs; such bureaucracies have produced even greater problems, undercut the private solutions of civil society, and given license to some individuals to misuse power over others.

Some have described the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as a scientific bureaucracy with police powers. Does a “cult of infallibility” exist within the FDA, leading to decisions that are contrary to the best interests of patients and their physicians?

Government funding for higher education exploded after World War II and is at an all-time high. But who has really benefited from this flood of money? Have universities gained from increased government funding, or have they been corrupted?

The power of firearms has stirred passions over the right of the citizenry to own and bear weapons throughout western civilization. Authored by the principal legal expert on the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, That Every Man Be Armed is the authoritative book on the ideas, history, and legal precedent that the citizen’s right to possess arms is as essential to democracy as is freedom of speech.

Government intervention is frequently justified on the theory that “market failures” prevent the private sector and civil society from serving the “public good.” However, this pathbreaking book shows that “government failures” are far more common and harmful to society.

Despite the best intentions, government programs to solve unemployment have not been successful. Instead, government at all levels actually worsens unemployment through poorly conceived and counterproductive approaches. Out of Work offers devastating evidence that the major cause of unemployment in the United States is the government itself.

Wendy McElroy draws a distinction between early feminists who supported the principles of the American Revolution and later scholars who favor a more activist government. The feminist movement began as a quest to rid women of governmental infringement upon their individual rights, but gradually evolved into advocates for a more intrusive state.

Severance taxes on the extraction of oil, gas, and other natural resources are very popular with politicians because, since they are spread among a large, diffuse taxpayer base, they apear to be “invisible”. But do such taxes have serious negative consequences overlooked by legislators?

Despite record expenditures, government farming programs have not solved the “farm problem.” However, farm programs still command powerful political support. This book is a hard-hitting analysis of how farm programs have mainly benefitted large corporate farming interests at the expense of small farmers and the general public.

The first edition of this seminal book in 1971 pointed out the fatal defects of Marxist theory that would lead to the collapse of the Soviet economy. In this revised edition, Paul Craig Roberts examines how reality triumphed over Marxist theory and the implications for the future of Russia and eastern Europe.

The stated purpose of antitrust laws is to protect competition and the public interest. But do such laws actually restrict the competitive process, harming consumers and serving the special interests of a few politically-connected competitors?

The U. S. Department of Defense is actually one of the world’s largest planned economies. Like all planned economies, it has gross inefficiencies. This book is a penetrating analysis of the military-industrial-Congressional complex, and offers new insights into how meaningful reform can be achieved.

Was the so-called “Reagan Revolution” a disappointment regarding the federal systems of special-interest regulation? Many of that administration’s friends as well as its opponents think so. But under what criteria? To what extent? And why?