The Portable Enlightenment Reader

Here is a great collection not previously stocked by Laissez Faire, The Portable Enlightenment Reader, edited by Isaac Kramnick.

The Age of Enlightenment of the eighteenth century, also called the Age of Reason, was so named for an exultant intellectual movement that shook the foundations of Western civilization. In championing radical ideas such as individual liberty and an empirical appraisal of the universe through rational inquiry and natural experience, Enlightenment philosophers in Europe and America planted the seeds for modern liberalism, cultural humanism, science and technology, and laissez-faire capitalism.

This volume brings together the era’s classic works, with more than a hundred selections from a broad range of sources—including Diderot, Voltaire, Newton, Rousseau, Locke, Jefferson, Madison, Smith, Turgot and Paine—that demonstrate the pervasive impact of Englightenment views on philosophy and epistemology as well as on political, social, and economic institutions. Included are seminal discourses on science and religion, on the “social contract”, on the equality (and inequality) of the sexes and the races, and on economics and markets, as well as homages to nature and sexual pleasure, and poetry and opera librettos that embody the movement’s social ideals. Paperback, 670 pages, list price $18.00. Our price $12.95. To order call 1-800-326-0996 or e-mail details to laissezfairebooks@gmail.com.

Two new great sets of classics in stock.

Noble laureate James Buchanan is one of the most important libertarian thinkers in the world today. His “public choice school” of economics took the role of incentives and rewards and applied it to politics, much the same way it is applied in the market. Political decision-makers are just as greedy and self-interested as business owners. But the incentives they operate under are very different, leading to perverse results.

The Collected Works of James M. Buchanan is a vast and significant twenty-volume series that includes ten monographs and all of the important journal articles, papers, and essays that Buchanan has produced in a distinguished career spanning more than half a century. Among the monographs are such famous works as The Calculus of Consent and The Limits of Liberty, as well as such gems as Cost and Choice: An Inquiry in Economic Theory. The monographs have been cast into a new format, and in those cases in which no index, or only a partial index, was originally provided, new indexes have been created. In addition, each volume includes a foreword by one of the three editors of the series, each of whom is a distinguished economist in his own right.

Volume 20 presents a comprehensive index to the entire series and an annotated copy of the entire curriculum vitae, indicating in which volume in the series the various items appear and, correspondingly, those items that have been omitted. Here are the individual volumes.

Volume 1: The Logical Foundations of Constitutional Liberty
Volume 2: Public Principles of Public Debt
Volume 3: The Calculus of Consent
Volume 4: Public Finance in Democratic Process
Volume 5: The Demand and Supply of Public Goods
Volume 6: Cost and Choice
Volume 7: The Limits of Liberty
Volume 8: Democracy in Deficit
Volume 9: The Power to Tax
Volume 10: The Reason of Rules
Volume 11: Politics by Principle, Not Interest
Volume 12: Economic Inquiry and Its Logic
Volume 13: Politics as Public Choice
Volume 14: Debt and Taxes
Volume 15: Externalities and Public Expenditure Theory
Volume 16: Choice, Contract, and Constitutions
Volume 17: Moral Science and Moral Order
Volume 18: Federalism, Liberty, and the Law
Volume 19: Ideas, Persons, and Events
Volume 20: Indexes

All 20 volumes, 7,154 pages, $189.95.

In the history of classical liberalism one of the most important voices was that of John Stuart Mill. This collection includes 8 volumes of his work, 5,110 pages in all. Included in this set is the Autobiography, his Principles of Political Economy, Essays on Economics and Society, A System of Logic and his Essays on Ethics, Religion and Society. All eight volumes, 5,110 pages, $74.95.

To order either of these set you can call 1-800-326-0996 or email laissezfairebooks@gmail.com