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Dec 11, 2024 | 
lawliberty.org | Mary Beard |Sarah Skwire |Rachel Lu |Mark Pulliam
Mary Beard’s excellent new book, Emperor of Rome, begins with a timeline of Roman emperors from Julius Caesar to Alexander Severus that gives each emperor’s years of reign, a quick fact or two, and often, his manner of death. But these three pages are the last time that Beard presents her readers with anything like a forced march through Roman history. Indeed, her book is specifically designed not to do that, and Beard sounds somewhat exhausted by the idea that she might.
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Jan 23, 2024 | 
theimaginativeconservative.org | Sarah Skwire
Rules are good things to have. We need to learn not to wipe our noses on our sleeves, not to take stuff that isn’t ours, not to scream at people when we’re debating them on television, not to shout abuse at politicians even if they deserve it. But as useful as rules like that can be, they’re limited in significant ways.
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Oct 14, 2023 | 
econlib.org | David Henderson |Sarah Skwire
One of Frederic Bastiat’s most basic, and most important, insights is the distinction between the seen and the unseen. In what is arguably his most famous essay, “What is Seen and What is Not Seen,” he wrote:In the sphere of economics an action, a habit, an institution or a law engenders not just one effect but a series of effects. Of these effects only the first is immediate; it is revealed simultaneously with its cause, it is seen.
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Oct 13, 2023 | 
econlib.org | Sarah Skwire |David Henderson |Scott Sumner
I don’t remember when I first encountered Claudia Goldin’s work, but I do know that the first piece of hers that I read was her Ely lecture, titled, “The Quiet Revolution that Transformed Women’s Employment, Education, and Family.”It blew me away. And it blew me away not just because it was one of the first pieces of economic history I’d read, in contrast to the piles of economic theory I’d be working through, and not just because it was written with both beauty and clarity.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
The book is carefully but not ornately bound in maroon cloth, with gilding on the spine. The Marie Eleonore Godefroid portrait of de Stael that is used for the frontispiece is the same that is used on the cover of Liberty Fund's edition of her Considerations on the French Revolution. It's a simple book, in its presentation.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
Recently, I was putting together a course on George Orwell's Animal Farm. Naturally, I got distracted and began researching the beast fables that provided Orwell with some of the background literary inspiration for his work. I had grown up with the fairy tales and beast fables collected by the Brothers Grimm. As I got older, I became familiar with the tales told by Aesop, and later beast fables created by Kipling and others.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
Had Marvel gone ludicrously woke? Had a universe with a giant green rage monster, a guy who shoots spider webs from his wrists, and a woman who created an alternate universe based on classic TV sitcoms finally gone too far? Or were the comics finally just getting an update to drag their gender politics into the 21st century? Fans of Norse mythology and of Snorre Sturlason and his Prose Edda were somewhat less titivated.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
One of the real pleasures of working at Liberty Fund is having the chance to bring office visitors into our rare book room to explore its hidden treasures. One of the books I get particularly excited about is our beautiful two volume set of Johnson's Dictionary--the first real dictionary of the English language. Liberty Fund's copy of Johnson's dictionary is the tenth edition, dating from 1810.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
But Collins was also a master of the creepy suspense of the Gothic novel. The Woman in Whiteprovides readers with all the secret skullduggery, hidden madwomen, possible ghosts, and atrocious villians that anyone could ask for in a Gothic. It also, like much of Collins's work, is clear eyed about social and legal issues that affected women's liberty in the Victorian era. While less well known The Law and the Lady combines all these aspects of Collins's work.
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Oct 9, 2023 | 
oll.libertyfund.org | Sarah Skwire
Particularly after years of Marie Kondo, tiny homes, and capsule wardrobes, a push towards ornate furniture, charming clutter, and wild prints and colors feels transgressive, exciting, and dangerous. Expect lively arguments about what, exactly, constitutes “too much.”The debate over what is necessity and what is luxury, and when fulfilling a need tips over into indulgence is surely as old as wealth itself.
