The Enhanced Edition of The Rights of War and Peace (1625) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014).

The Best of the OLL: A Reader on Individual, Economic, and Political Liberty (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014).

The Best of the OLL No. 65: Destutt de Tracy, “Of Society” (1817) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014).

This is part of “The Best of the Online Library of Liberty” which is a collection of some of the most important material in the OLL. A thematic list with links to HTML versions of the texts is available here. This extract comes from Destutt de Tracy’s Treatise on Political Economy (1817) which so impressed Thomas Jefferson that he had it translated into English and published in America. Here he argues that commerce, or voluntary exchanges, is the glue which binds society together.

The Principles of Sociology, in Three Volumes (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898). Vol. 3.

The Principles of Sociology, in Three Volumes (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1898). Vol. 2.

This is a 3 vol. set of the third revised edition of Herbert Spencer’s magnum opus on sociology which was first published in 1876. In vol. 1 he defines what his theory of sociology is, how human beings associate with each other in communities, how institution evolve over time, and begins his analysis of institutions with a section on the family, marriage, women and children. In vol. 2 he covers “ceremonial” institutions and political institutions (with his famous distinction between militant and industrial types of society). In vol. 3 he discusses ecclesiastical institutions, professional institutions, and “industrial” (or economic) institutions.

The Collected Liberty Matters: Nos. 1-10 (Jan. 2013 - July 2014), ed. David M. Hart and Sheldon Richman (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2014).

This volume is a collection of the first ten “Liberty Matters” online discussion forums which began in January 2013 and have appeared every two months since. The discussions have focused on authors whose work is well represented in the Online Library of Liberty. A leading scholar is asked to write an interpretative essay about a chosen author, to which other invited scholars respond in a formal essay which is then followed by a free form discussion over the ensuing month. The topics have included “John Locke on Property”, “James Buchanan: An Assessment”, “Gustave de Molinari’s Legacy for Liberty”, “Bastiat and Political Economy”, “George Smith on the System of Liberty”, “Arthur Seldon and the Institute of Economic Affairs”, “Ludwig von Mises’s The Theory of Money and Credit at 101”, “Hugo Grotius on War and the State”, “Tocqueville’s New Science of Politics Revisited”, and “Deirdre McCloskey and Economists’ Ideas about Ideas”. The Forums are also available individually in HTML and a variety of ebook formats.

The economist and economic historian Deirdre McCloskey is over the halfway point of her 3 volume work on The Bourgeois Era. Two volumes have already appeared, Bourgeois Virtues (2006) and Bourgeois Dignity (2010), and the third is close to appearing. This Liberty Matters online discussion will assess her progress to date with a Lead Essay by Don Boudreaux and comments by Joel Mokyr and John Nye, and replies to her critics by Deirdre McCloskey. The key issue is to try to explain why “the Great Enrichment” of the past 150 years occurred in northern and western Europe rather than elsewhere, and why sometime in the middle of the 18th century. Other theories have attributed it to the presence of natural resources, the existence of private property and the rule of law, and the right legal and political institutions. McCloskey’s thesis is that a fundamental change in ideas took place which raised the “dignity” of economic activity in the eyes of people to the point where they felt no inhibition in pursuing these activities which improved the situation of both themselves and the customers who bought their products and services. See the Archive of "Liberty Matters".