The book devotes a long section to Machiavelli himself as well as to such modern Machiavellians as Gaetano Mosca, Georges Sorel, Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto. Burnham contends that the writings of these men hold the key both to the truth about politics and to the preservation of political liberty.

    Ambedkar

    It must be read by anyone who is seriously interested in the heritage of liberty--not just in America, but the world over. And reading it is a joy. Lane, who is said to have written the book 'at white heat,' was at once a brilliant thinker and a gifted storyteller.This book is a withering attack on statism, nationalism, and what Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek calls the 'fatal conceit' of national economic planning. It is an intellectual tour de force that stood up to the collectivist paradigm of its time and pointed the way to rediscovering the principles of the American Revolution--a true revolution unlike those of the Old World that 'are revolutions only in the sense that a wheel's turning is a revolution.' Her exciting description of the revolutionary period (you can tell she wishes she'd been there to lend a hand to Paine, Mason, Jefferson and the gang) is the best of a brilliant book.Rose Wilder Lane was a truly remarkable woman. Like Jefferson, she attacked life, living it to the fullest, as adventurer, journalist, world traveler, iconoclast, and just prior to her death, war corespondent in Vietnam. Not surprisingly, the clear-eyed determination and supercharged energy she brings to attacking the enemies of liberty in Discovery is unique among prominent pro-liberty writers. (Free download at mises.org)

    Memoirs of a Superfluous Man By Albert Jay Nock 1994 Paperback

    Written soon after his immigration to the United States, he signed the book "Francis Stuart Campbell" because he was a refugee from Austria and didn't want to endanger them. The contents: a relentless attack on the idea of mass government based on the egalitarian ethic, and its tendency toward the total state of Stalin and Hitler. And yet there is more here, more than can possibly be recounted in a paragraph. The author was a remarkable 19th-century-style liberal intellectual, startling in his erudition and wisdom. A bit disorganized, perhaps, and not as friendly to the market as it might be but a book overflowing with insight into the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. To read him is to experience something of an intellectual liberation from every sort of conventional wisdom. This is a dazzling work from a man who seemed to be an impossibility in the modern age.

    The diversity of its themes and the broad perspectives applied to them make the book a work of general history as much as a history of the theory and practice of war from the Renaissance to the present. Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age takes the first part of its title from an earlier collection of essays, published by Princeton University Press in 1943, which became a classic of historical scholarship. Three essays are repinted from the earlier book; four others have been extensively revised. The rest--twenty-two essays--are new.The subjects addressed range from major theorists and political and military leaders to impersonal forces. Machiavelli, Clausewitz, and Marx and Engels are discussed, as are Napoleon, Churchill, and Mao. Other essays trace the interaction of theory and experience over generations--the evolution of American strategy, for instance, or the emergence of revolutionary war in the modern world. Still others analyze the strategy of particular conflicts--the First and Second World Wars--or the relationship between technology, policy, and war in the nuclear age. Whatever its theme, each essay places the specifics of military thought and action in their political, social, and economic environment. Together the contributors have produced a book that reinterprets and illuminates war, one of the most powerful forces in history and one that cannot be controlled in the future without an understanding of its past.

    When it was published in 1943, Isabel Paterson's work provided fresh intellectual support for the endangered American belief in individual rights, limited government, and economic freedom. The crisis of today's collectivized nations would not have surprised Paterson; in The God of the Machine, she had explored the reasons for collectivism's failure. Her book placed her in the vanguard of the free-enterprise movement now sweeping the world.Paterson sees the individual creative mind as the dynamo of history, and respect for the individual's God-given rights as the precondition for the enormous release of energy that produced the modern world. She sees capitalist institutions as the machinery through which human energy works, and government as a device properly used merely to cut off power to activities that threaten personal liberty.Paterson applies her general theory to particular issues in contemporary life, such as education, .social welfare, and the causes of economic distress. She severely criticizes all but minimal application of government, including governmental interventions that most people have long taken for granted. The God of the Machine offers a challenging perspective on the continuing, worldwide debate about the nature of freedom, the uses of power, and the prospects of human betterment.Stephen Cox's substantial introduction to The God of the Machine is a comprehensive and enlightening account of Paterson's colorful life and work. He describes The God of the Machine as "not just theory, but rhapsody, satire, diatribe, poetic narrative." Paterson's work continues to be relevant because "it exposes the moral and practical failures of collectivism, failures that are now almost universally acknowledged but are still far from universally understood." The book will be essential to students of American history, political theory, and literature.

    No doubt every subsequent work on this explosive topic owes a great debt to this original research. By crusading investigative journalist George Seldes, the book is in three parts: 1) The Big Money and Big Profits in Fascism, 2) Native Fascist Forces, and 3) Our Press as a Fascist Force. The first part reveals the backing of U.S. and British big business behind the rise of Fascism and militarism, with chapters on Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain, the Nazi cartels and the National Association of Manufacturers. The author was a reporter in Italy in the early 20's as Fascism got its start, and wrote a full-length, critical portrait of Mussolini. In "Native Fascist Forces," Seldes first tells the story of the botched putsch by J. P. Morgan and the American Legion against FDR in 1934 - surely one of the most hushed-up episodes in US history. Next Seldes dissects the Ford empire's support for Nazism and its repressive, even murderous labor practices, and Nazi apologists like Lindbergh, Father Coughlin and the Reader's Digest. The third part explores and deplores acts of treason by war-profiteering heavy industry and by the major newspaper chains. He exposes their habit of faking news for their political agenda, going back to the 1850's in support of black slavery, and white servitude - that is, with attacks on labor and social justice. The last chapter discusses profiteering from a different form of slavery, the tobacco addiction. Among the appendices is one on the definition of Fascism, and data on Who Owns America - thirteen plutocratic families.

    During the years leading up to the outbreak of war, Buller defied her critics and social norms by leading delegations of British intelligentsia to Germany to learn about and confront the appeal of the Nazis.The book speaks of how Hitler and the Nazis stripped the German people of their freedoms and oppressed them, and how young people were swept along with the tide of hate. It tells the stories of the Germans whom Buller met, including their positivity about the forces uniting the country, and their terror that Hitler was the man at the helm.Darkness Over Germany is Amy Buller’s recollection of these unlikely encounters and her analysis of how National Socialism took hold. It tells a remarkable and largely forgotten story of British-German relations in the 1930s. The book speaks resonantly of the need to stay vigilant and maintain dialogue in times of change and discord.