| Barbara Branden is the author of “The Passion of Ayn Rand.” She writes occasionally at the “Objectivist Living” site. |
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These recommendations feel very personal to me. I want to introduce you to two books that have touched and affected me profoundly. They are among the handful of books that I reread every few years or sooner. They have enriched my life, and I hope they will enrich yours.
The first is “The Gadfly,” by E.L. Voynich (Kessinger Publishing).
Bertrand Russell said of this extraordinarily dramatic, fiery, and thoughtful book, “It is still one of the most exciting novels I have read in the English language.” First published in Europe in 1897, where it has sold more than 12 million copies, and translated into more than 30 languages, “The Gadfly” has been described by Harrison Salisbury as “a story of revolutionaries and conspiracies, of an effort to overthrow an established order and to destroy the grip of a powerful State and Church.” It is that, and it is more than that.
At its heart, this novel is a love story, but not of the usual kind. It is the story of the incorruptible love between Arthur, the passionate, courageous revolutionary who is the Gadfly of the title, and the young English girl who is his co-revolutionary. It tells of Arthur’s equally incorruptible love for Italy, his country, and of the danger and agony into which that love propels him. It tells of the devotion to his Church of Cardinal Montanelli, Arthur’s mentor, who holds locked within himself the secret of Arthur’s birth. But most of all, this novel is the story of the desperate love and the equally desperate antagonism between two men of heroic stature, the atheist Arthur and the God-intoxicated Cardinal. Love and antagonism reach their climax in the novel’s final chapters, chapters of such power and drama as to be almost unbearably intense.
When I first read this magnificent novel many years ago, I raced through it, half-skipping passages because the excitement of the events led me on to discover what happened next. I then immediately reread it, slowly and carefully; its intellectual drama made me want to savor every page, to think about it, to shake my head in wonder at its climax. This is a philosophical novel of the highest order.
“My Name is Asher Lev,” by Chaim Potok (Anchor) is my second remarkable book.
Asher Lev was born with a gift: the gift of experiencing the world in the manner of a painter, through line and color and shape and texture and composition; the gift of finding his spirit’s expression through the medium of paint on canvas. “What color is feeling cold?” the young boy asks his mother. From early childhood, he is a member of the religion called painting.
Asher Lev, the son of devout Hasidic Jews, was born with a curse: the curse of loving the father who sees in the boy’s choice of a painter’s life the abandonment of his sacred heritage, and who turns from his only son; the curse of loving the intense and narrow world of the Hasid, its rituals and beliefs and passionate concerns, a world that turns against him as he follows the path of his gift.
He must learn to be true to himself, the young Asher knows. But which self?
This powerful novel, written with great beauty and subtlety, and exquisite simplicity, follows the destiny of the young man torn between art and religion, and we, the readers, follow the growth of a prodigy. But only on one level is it the story of a conflict between art and religion. More profoundly, it is the story of a young man who must make a wrenching choice between two passionate loves.
It is said that a man approached Somerset Maugham and said: “I would give ten thousand pounds not to have read ‘Of Human Bondage.’” As Maugham bristled angrily, the man added: “So that I could have the pleasure of once again reading it for the first time.” I think that is how you will feel when you turn the final pages of these two novels.
| John Hospers is a philosopher and author of “Human Conduct: Problems of Ethics,” “Meaning and Truth in the Arts,” “Libertarianism,” and other books. He was the presidential candidate of the Libertarian Party in 1972 and finished third in the Electoral College. |
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I’d like to recommend some books that were crucial to me.
Works from ancient times that have most influenced me are Plato’s “Theatetus,” Aristotle’s “Poetics” and “Nicomachean Ethics,” and Marcus Aurelius’ “Meditations.”
All the writings of David Hume are crisp and clear and full of philosophical bite, but the one that proved a lifesaver for me as I was approaching philosophical maturity was his “Dialogues concerning Natural Religion.” Also very influential were John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” and “Three Essays on Religion.”
In our own time, of course I was greatly influenced by “Atlas Shrugged,” though it didn’t come on the scene until I was almost 40 years old, and I came to know Ayn Rand personally shortly thereafter. By that time I had been influenced by Hayek’s “Road to Serfdom” (in later years I taught his “Constitution of Liberty” to graduate classes at USC) and by Henry Hazlitt’s “Economics in One Lesson” (Fox & Wilkes), recommended to me early on by Ayn Rand, followed by his “Foundations of Morality” (Foundation for Economic Education), after which we became personally acquainted. Many books in the Objectivist-libertarian tradition also influenced me, such as Isabel Paterson’s “God of the Machine” (Transaction), also recommended to me by Rand; Rose Wilder Lane’s “Discovery of Freedom” (Fox & Wilkes); and Edmund Contoski’s “Makers and Takers” (American Liberty Publishers).
The 20th-century person I would most like to have known is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. I was greatly influenced by his novels and, when they appeared in translation, the three volumes of his magnum opus, “The Gulag Archipelago,” one of the crowning literary achievements of the century. Today, even years later, whenever I learn of some catastrophic turn of events in international relations, or of some example of political blindness or malevolence which could all too quickly turn the tide between war and peace, I turn again to Solzhenitsyn’s descriptions of actions which have brought suffering and death to millions of people, and ask, “What is there to keep it from happening all over again?” I wonder which of these two Russians, Rand or Solzhenitsyn, will in the end be the more influential in delivering the world from such a fate.
| Garrett Brown is an acquiring editor in the book division at the National Geographic Society. |
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For good summer reading, you could try any of the novels of Mario Vargas Llosa. Or you could make a journey into the distant past.
Our classical liberal forebears took it for granted that the ancient Anglo-Saxons marked a significant episode in the history of liberty. Among his many other accomplishments, Jefferson should be given credit for almost single-handedly reviving the study of the Anglo-Saxon language, Old English. He was at first “obliged to that source for explanation of a multitude of law terms” and later, like David Hume, saw the Anglo-Saxon period as a foundation for his political philosophy: “The difference between the Whig and the Tory of England is that the Whig deduces his rights from the Anglo-Saxon source and the Tory from the Norman.” Eventually Jefferson suggested the study of Anglo-Saxon in its own right and even established a curriculum at the University of Virginia to further that end.
Today, more than at any other time in history, there is a wealth of interesting literature and scholarship about the Anglo-Saxons. It extends well beyond the popular and wildly overrated verse translation of the “Beowulf” poem by Irish poet Seamus Heaney. An excellent place to start is Kevin Crossley-Holland’s “Anglo-Saxon World” (available in a cheap Oxford paperback), which includes a complete translation of “Beowulf” along with “The Battle of Maldon” and other important poems, excerpts from the “Anglo-Saxon Chronicle” (where we find much about their law and politics), and key charters and wills.
“Beowulf” is widely known as the greatest literary work of Old English (not Middle English, as the writers of “West Wing” would have us believe). Preserved in a single manuscript in the British Library, it remained unpublished until 1815 and was probably unknown to Jefferson. Some people may be acquainted, from their undergraduate days, with the very decent prose translation by E. Talbot Donaldson, first published in 1966. A good recent verse translation is by Alan Sullivan and Timothy Murphy (Longman). For those interested in checking out the original, “Beowulf: An Edition” (Blackwell), by Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson, is an exemplary work of scholarship, complete with a glossary and many other aids. Tolkien fans will want to read his essay “‘Beowulf’: The Monsters and the Critics” (HarperCollins). It’s still the most important work on the Anglo-Saxon epic.
Dorothy Whitelock’s “The Beginnings of English Society” (Penguin) is the best and liveliest short introduction to Anglo-Saxon England. A fuller, authoritative account is Frank M. Stenton’s “Anglo-Saxon England” (Oxford University Press). Another book, which is hard to find but considerably more fun than Stenton’s, is R.I. Page’s “Life in Anglo-Saxon England” (Putnam). And the best overall introduction to the literature and language of the period is Peter Baker’s robust and very recent “Introduction to Old English” (Blackwell).
The Anglo-Saxons, as removed from us today as their language, are still with us in our songs of heroism, our struggle for freedom, and what “Beowulf” calls our “eagerness for fame.”
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Here are some books that I’ve spent time with over the last year. I think that other people will like them, too.
First, “The State,” by Anthony de Jasay (Liberty Fund). “The State” is an encyclopedic look at the many problems with that singularly problematic institution. Since the time of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan” most people have (tacitly) assumed that almost any government is preferable to life in the state of nature. Not so fast, Tom, says de Jasay. Maybe it’s not such a deal after all. He writes: ‘‘It is not hard to interpret history in a way which should make me prefer the harm people do to my interest, to the harm people organized into a state and capable of coercing me, can do to my interest.’’ After all, “The state . . . has got all the guns. Those who armed it by disarming themselves, are at its mercy.” Thanks, Tom, but no thanks. De Jasay shows that it is the advocates of limited government, not the anarchists, who are the wild-eyed utopians. Expecting a state to limit itself is like expecting a wolf to choose dandelions over lamb at lunchtime. And no, a constitution is no solution.
Second, “Our Enemy the State,” by Albert Jay Nock (Fox & Wilkes). Speaking of constitutions . . . Nock is one of the godfathers of the modern libertarian movement, but who’s read this book lately? Its substance and tone are different from standard libertarian fare. Except for Jefferson, Nock has no time for the “Founding Fathers,” who were intent on leaving the British Empire so they could start their own exploitative “Merchant-state.” The Constitution was the result of a “coup d’etat” in Philadelphia, where men who were supposed to make only marginal adjustments to the Articles of Confederation opted for a whole new system featuring a strong tax-collecting central government. Thus was born America’s Corporate State. Yet, for reasons that escape Nock, constitutional sentimentalism lives — even among libertarians. Go figure.
Third, “Studies in Mutualist Political Economy,” by Kevin Carson (self-published). The author is a self-proclaimed “free-market anti-capitalist,” a fan of the 19th-century American individualist anarchist Benjamin Tucker. I disagree with some of what Carson has to say, but he is dead on when he writes that libertarians “use the term ‘free market’ in an equivocal sense: they seem to have trouble remembering, from one moment to the next, whether they’re defending actually existing capitalism or free market principles.” As a result, the people he calls “vulgar libertarians” defend the reigning property distribution and the dominant corporations as though they had arisen under laissez faire. He throws down the gauntlet to libertarians: either stop apologizing for the corporate elite or stop complaining about government intervention in the economy.
Fourth, “Faith in Freedom: Libertarian Principles and Psychiatric Practices” (Transaction Publishers), by Thomas Szasz. One of the latest books by one of my favorite people, “Faith in Freedom” examines the writings of a slew of classical liberals and libertarians, and finds that in most cases, they are inexplicably nonchalant about the systematic violation of the rights of people branded “mentally ill” by the pseudomedical specialty called psychiatry. It’s another case of libertarians needing to wake up.
| Henry Mark Holzer, a constitutional lawyer, is Professor Emeritus at Brooklyn Law School. He is the author of “Sweet Land of Liberty?”, “Speaking Freely,” “Why Not Call It Treason?”, and other books. |
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Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White Liberals” (Encounter Books) is a stunning collection of lengthy essays about race. The principal essay identifies the surprising genesis of redneck culture in America, and its devastating effect on black culture; and it puts the blame exactly where it belongs: on white liberals. Other essays are equally informative and provocative. Sowell’s chapter “Black Education: Achievements, Myths and Tragedies” is at once revealing and heartbreaking. He writes that “[r]acial discrimination barriers kept educated blacks out of some . . . occupations but, until perhaps the middle of the 20th century, there were relatively few [educated] blacks to be kept out by such barriers.”
If there were two major issues that divided this nation in the 20th century, race being one, the other certainly was radicalism. And there is no better exegesis of the radical experience, personally, politically, and culturally, than that provided by David Horowitz. He rejected the radicalism of his Communist parents and embraced the principles of national security and individual rights that are today the cornerstone of American conservatism. Horowitz’s “Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey” (Free Press) is the compelling story of his time on the battlefields of the political and cultural wars that were fought in America from the 1940s to the end of the 20th century. In prose often rising to the poetic, he unsparingly bares his personal, psychological, and political soul. In the end, he openly admits that “[i]f I knew at the beginning what I have learned, I would not have given my life to the socialist fantasy, or the Panther cause, or marriage to a woman addicted to an illusion. But I would not now give up the impulse to love or dream that brought me these travails, either. Or the passion for justice. Or the will to make myself better. If ever I were tempted to give up hope, I would only have to look at how far I have come.”
The wars over race and radicalism are, in the end, disputes about the fundamental issue of the nature of this country and the scope of individual rights. Accordingly, and at the risk of being accused of self-promotion, I make a third choice for summer reading: “The Keeper of the Flame” (written by me and available at booklocker), an examination and analysis of Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinions during his 14 terms on the Supreme Court. These opinions show that Thomas understands the appropriate role of a Supreme Court justice. They also show his methodology for proper decision-making and his position on fundamental constitutional questions, among them federalism, separation of powers, judicial review, and such Bill of Rights issues as abortion, affirmative action, the death penalty, and the alleged rights of prisoners. (As such, “Keeper of the Flame” is also a primer for the major areas of modern American constitutional law.) Justice Thomas’ opinions prove that his originalist jurisprudence is rooted in the Founding, and thus aims at preservation of the constitutional fabric and the individual rights it was designed to protect.
| David Boaz is the author of “Libertarianism: A Primer” and editor of “The Libertarian Reader.” He blogs at the Guardian’s “Comment is free” site and at Cato@Liberty. |
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I recommended plenty of libertarian books in “Libertarianism: A Primer” and “The Libertarian Reader,” so I’ll venture a little further afield here.
Does anyone still read Robert Heinlein? At the founding convention of the Libertarian Party, 16% of the delegates called themselves Heinleinian (or so I’ve heard), but I don’t hear his name much these days. “The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress” (Orion) is his most explicitly libertarian novel, a rollicking story of a thinking computer, a polygamous marriage (truly polygamous, neither polygynous nor polyandrous), and a revolution of the moon against the earth.
Kay Nolte Smith was an actress and a member of Ayn Rand’s inner circle. Like most of Rand’s associates, she didn’t start writing until she left that world. And then, in the far-too-short time between breaking with Rand and her untimely death, she wrote seven wonderful novels. The first, “The Watcher” (Pulpless.com), was the most deeply Randian. In the second, “Catching Fire” (Coward McCann), the intense Randianism is gone; what remains are the Objectivist principles that values are important, and that one’s choices will have consequences. In “Elegy for a Soprano” (PaperJacks) she wrote about the circle of people who surround a great and greatly difficult singer, and what they were willing to put up with to be in the presence of greatness; Smith said it was the closest she would come to writing about Rand. These and her other novels are all terrific reading.
Tom Wolfe is a staunch conservative and a great writer. He writes huge sprawling novels about modern America — about sex and money and real estate and prison and character. Although he has a bit of trouble wrapping up his multiple plotlines, the books are totally engaging. I also recommend his collection of essays “Hooking Up” (Picador), especially “My Three Stooges,” his response to his critics John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving; and “Two Young Men Who Went West,” about the parallels between Congregationalist minister Josiah Grinnell and microchip inventor Robert Noyce.
Fran Lebowitz was the Dorothy Parker of the ‘70s. Perhaps she’d be the Dorothy Parker of the ‘00s if she ever seemed to write anything. For now, we must console ourselves with her essays collected in two thin books (or one fat one) and with collecting her aphorisms — like “In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra,” and “The outdoors is what you must pass through in order to get from your apartment into a taxicab.”
“Fahrenheit 451” (Del Rey), by Ray Bradbury, is a classic novel about censorship, about a society in which firemen burn books and about the people who memorize books in order to save the world’s knowledge. Be sure to buy an edition with Bradbury’s “Coda” — about how, over the years, his publisher had secretly censored this very book in response to various pressure groups.
Read these books, and you’ll have a great summer.
| Mark Skousen is the author of “The Making of Modern Economics.” |
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“Where is human nature so weak as in a bookstore?”
— Henry Ward Beecher
My favorite pastime is to drift into a used bookstore during a lazy summer afternoon, and discover a new world. I figure that 80% of used books can’t be found in a new bookstore like Barnes & Noble or Borders, but oh, what treasures they are. You’ll discover novels, biographies, and words of wisdom that have somehow been lost in today’s busybody world. I well remember the day I sauntered into a bookstore in the small college town of Durango, Colo., and discovered the Chinese-American philosopher Lin Yutang and a first edition of his masterfully wise and entertaining “The Importance of Living” (John Day). I’ve read it many times, and have memorized and repeated his musings and missives on American life — his listing of the “three American vices,” and his old Chinese counsel to venerate the old, enjoy the conversation of the female voice, and “lie on a plot of grass under tall beautiful trees of an idle afternoon and just do nothing.”
So “The Importance of Living” is my first recommendation. Buy it in a used bookstore if you can, and on Amazon if you must (you probably won’t find it in most new bookstores, even though Little, Brown has issued a new printing).
For those inclined toward pecuniary gain, may I suggest that you avoid Donald J. Trump’s ramshackle “How to Get Rich” and focus your attention on a real classic published originally in Playboy — “How to Be Rich,” by J. Paul Getty, America’s first billionaire. (Note the difference between the verbs in those two titles.) What a tale of enterprise, intrigue, and obsession! The first chapter, “How I Made My First Billion” is a hoot, and the chapter on “The Wall Street Investor” is the most profound twelve pages ever written on the subject. Although the book was published in 1965, every page rings true today. Pick up a hardback first edition, or if you can’t find one, try the 1983 Penguin Jove edition in paperback.
My third recommendation is a math book. No, not a boring textbook on algebra or calculus, but a delightful and captivating work on the beauty and magic of numbers. It’s “Mathematical Mysteries,” by Calvin C. Clawson. You’ll be mesmerized by Euler’s Theorem, the Golden Ratio, Fibonacci numbers, and the magnificent harmonic series. Clawson also tells the unbelievable stories of famous mathematicians such as Gauss and Ramanujan. Published ten years ago by Perseus Books, “Mathematical Mysteries” is both entertainment and education.
There is no doubt in my mind that if you read any of these three books on the beach, you will be surrounded by admirers in no time. Buen provecho.
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