This is my archive

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Principles of Economics (8th ed.)

This is the 8th edition of what is regarded to be the first “modern” economics textbook, leading in various editions from the 19th into the 20th century. The final 8th edition was Marshall’s most-used and most-cited.

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The Rights of War and Peace (1901 ed.)

Grotius’s magnum opus on international law and the laws of war and peace. He wrote this volume while the Thirty Years’ War raged around him in the hope that rational human beings might be able to agree to legal limits on war’s destruction.

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Self Help; with Illustrations of Character and Conduct

An early Victorian self-help book for ordinary people - Smiles combines Victorian morality with sound free market ideas into moral tales showing the benefits of thrift, hard work, education, perseverance, and a sound moral character. He drew upon the personal success stories of the emerging self-made millionaires in the pottery industry (Josiah Wedgwood), the railway industry (Watt and Stephenson), and the weaving industry (Jacquard) to make his point that the benefits of the market were open to anyone.

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The Commonsense of Political Economy

Contemporaneously with, though slightly following, Marshall, this book was one of the first “modern” textbooks leading from the 19th into the 20th century. Wicksteed substantively furthered the work of John Bates Clark on marginal productivity theory. Although Marshall’s Principles generally receives more attention, Wicksteed’s explanations are sometimes clearer, more precise, and more modern.

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The Freedom of the Seas (Latin and English version, Magoffin trans.)

This edition of Grotius’ defence of the right of all nations (especially the Dutch) to use the international sea lanes for trade, was published during World War One by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as part of their International Law series. It is interesting because it has the Latin and English translation on facing pages (best viewed in the facsimile PDF version).

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Liberty and Liberalism (1888)

Smith was a follower of Herbert Spencer and the English Liberty and Property Defence League. His book is a critique of the growing intervention of the state in economic and civil matters in Australia and elsewhere in the late 19th century.

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Discourses Upon Trade

North ’s Discourses upon Trade is one of the earliest attempts to theorize as a whole the workings of a market economy in England. There are two discourses: one concerning “the abatement of interest” and the other on “coyned money”.

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In Praise of Folly

The personification of Folly comes to earth to expose the follies, foibles, and failings of humans. Illustrated with 77 woodcuts by Hans Holbein.

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