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. This essay on the nature of politicians and political parties comes from Trenchard and Gordon’s influential Cato’s Letters (1721). Trenchard provides an early example of a public choice analysis of political behavior.

The Best of the OLL No. 60: Thomas Gordon, “On the Nature of Power” (1721) (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. This one comes from Thomas Gordon’s collection of newspaper articles known as Cato’s Letters in which and John Trenchard warn about the dangers of a growing British imperial government. Gordon notes the tendency of power to always grow at the expence of liberty.

The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley from the original Editions. Edited, Prefaced, and Annotated by Richard Hearne Shepherd, in Two Volumes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1906).

The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley from the original Editions. Edited, Prefaced, and Annotated by Richard Hearne Shepherd, in Two Volumes (London: Chatto & Windus, 1906).

A 2 volume collection of prose writings. Vol. 1 includes 2 youthful prose romances, the Refutation of Deism, his Declaration of Rights, an essay on electoral reform, and other short pieces. Vol. 2 includes A Defence of Poetry, On a Future State, Speculations on Metaphysics, and Letters from Italy.

Epistemological Problems of Economics, Translated by George Reisman. Edited and with a foreword by Bettina Bien Greaves (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

First published in German in 1933 and in English in 1960, Epistemological Problems of Economics presents Ludwig von Mises’s views on the logical and epistemological features of social interpretation as well as his argument that the Austrian theory of value is the core element of a general theory of human behavior that transcends traditional limitations of economic science. This volume is unique among Mises’s works in that it contains a collection of essays in which he contested the theories of intellectuals he respected such as Carl Menger, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, and Max Weber. Mises describes how value theory applies to human action at all times and places as opposed to economic theory, which applies only to a human action guided by economic calculation.

Liberty Matters: George H. Smith and “The System of Liberty” (September, 2013) (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2013).

This online discussion is part of the series “Liberty Matters: A Forum for the Discussion of Matters pertaining to Liberty.” Jason Brennan, David Gordon, and Ralph Raico discuss with George Smith his new book The System of Liberty: Themes in the History of Classical Liberalism (CUP 2013). Smith describes how he came to write the book, the works of the history of political thought which inspired him, and the methodology he uses in approaching the history of ideas. He demonstrates his approach with a brief discussion of one of the key ideas he has identified in the history of classical liberal thought, namely, the idea of “inalienable rights.”