The New Deal in Old Rome

H.J. Haskell was a journalist and an expert in ancient history. He catalogs the remarkable government interventions of ancient Rome that led to the empire's eventual fall. He shows the spending, the inflating, the attempt to fix prices and raise wages, the infrastructure boondoggles, the gross displays of public entertainment, the welfare scams, and much more.

 

The Rise and Fall of Society

Rothbard wrote of this book: “Frank's final flowering was his last ideological testament, the brilliantly written The Rise and Fall of Society, published in 1959, at the age of 72.” This book explores how economic forces most notably the conflict between production and the State, drive societal change. Excessive state power erodes individual liberty and always leads to economic decline.

 

Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom

Everyone agrees that brutal dictators and despotic rulers deserve scorn and worse. But why have historians been so willing to overlook the despotic actions of the United States’ own presidents? The founders imagined that the president would be a collegial leader with precious little power who constantly faced the threat of impeachment. Today, however, the president orders thousands of young men and women to danger and death in foreign lands, rubber stamps regulations that throw enterprises into upheaval, controls the composition of the powerful Federal Reserve, and manages the priorities of swarms of bureaucrats that vex the citizenry in every way.

 

Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre

The Western genre has long been associated with conservative and libertarian ideologies, and is often said to promote individualism and free-market economics. Ryan McMaken, however, shows that the Western is in fact often anti-capitalist, and in many ways, the genre attacks the Victorian, bourgeois ideals of nineteenth-century middle-class America.