We’ve thought long and hard about the ultimate gift from the Mises Institute store. Of course, giving the complete Mises Collection or Rothbard Collection would be generous, to say that least. But let’s say you could pick a single treasure from the whole catalog, something that would elicit a lifetime of appreciation, not only for its content but also for its beauty and quality.
What would it be?
Here is what we suggest: A full, top-grain, leather-bound edition of Murray’s Rothbard’s two-volume Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. This is the sort of treasure you acquire once in a lifetime. A student of liberty, at any stage of life, would thrill to own a set.
In fact, books aren’t made this way anymore, certainly not for sale at the retail level. Most leather books are of the “bonded” sort—which is to leather what glued sawdust is to solid mahogany. We wanted the real thing.
To make this possible, we went looking for an old-world bindery that could the job by hand and only with the best materials. We were so pleased to find a company named Grimm Binder that was founded in 1854. It maintains its high standards to this day. We reserved some copies out of the first print run, and had the bindery prepare them in the most special way to make a book for the ages.
The goal was to create a book that would appreciate in value not only for its contents but also for its physical beauty and durability—a “luxury book” that would stand out in any collection, a perfect unity of intellect and art. The result is awe inspiring.
As for the contents, this is Rothbard’s masterpiece of intellectual history, the product of a lifetime of study and research, 1084 pages of dazzling scholarship. The history of thought has never been so engagingly and thoroughly presented. It takes the reader through an energetic tour of ideas from the ancient world through the late 19th century.
Economics was the last of the sciences to be subjected to scientific analysis. It has been a field of study populated by amazing geniuses and dangerous crackpots. Rothbard has a remarkable knack for showing who is who and why. In particular, he has a nose for the personal detail that led to theoretical error and finally economic catastrophe.
Academic reviewers love his treatment, but so do lay readers. Here is a customer review posted on Mises.org site: “Rothbard’s two-volume book is simply stupendous. But as I’m now an aspiring student of liberty, rather than a Marxoid fool, staring out nervously from my own Platonic cave, I always try to follow Robert LeFevre’s dictations on subjectivity by trying to be as objective as possible. Apparently, this means I have to pick some kind of fault with even the greatest of texts. So what’s wrong with this book? Just one thing. As with Tolkien’s own opinion of Lord of the Rings, it simply isn’t long enough.”
It deserves to be honored, and, more than that, read and understood by every generation of students. Such will be the case 100 years from now.
{ 14 comments }
Why was it really necessary for all those cows and trees to die for your vanity? Is liberty for YOURSELVES all that you care about? What about God’s other creatures? Have you ever heard of PDF?
To answer your first two questions: Pretty much.
I second Angelo.
God can worry about His creatures, and we’ll worry about ourselves, until God finds it fit to pay a bit more attention to us now and again.
The only way you can stop man from using animals for his purposes (such as binding books with their pelts) is by violently restraining him from doing so. Are you willing to kill a man for killing a cow so he could bind a book? If you are, society will likely deal with you as they would any man guilty of murder.
If you aren’t, you have no business pretending you speak from a higher moral throne than the rest of us sit in.
People are God’s animals too, so killing a person for killing a cow would be just as bad as killing the cow in the first place. Having a good reason for killing the person (i.e. some kind of utilitarian revenge/punishment for killing the cow) doesn’t make it right anymore than having a good reason for killing the cow (i.e. to make him into book bindings).
Contrary to your obvious Statist leanings, violent restraint isn’t the only way to accomplish something, it’s possible to use reason to persuade people to stop hurting God’s creatures.
So back to my original point, was it really NECESSARY to kill all those trees and cows to make them into these books and their book bindings… in this ubiquitous digital age where nothing has to die to make ebooks (that wasn’t already dead, i.e. oil), especially when they have such a remarkably low marginal cost per copy after the first and generate no waste when you’re done with them. The truth is that these trees and cows are dieing, not for your vanity (which would be bad enough), but for your backwardness and your unwillingness to move past primitive physical literature, which when you think about it is the last thing that needs to exist in physical form (Do you know anyone that insists on printing out webpages just to read them? I have seen this. And it’s about comparable in backwardness to your insistence on having literature in physical form).
And I’m sorry you don’t think God pays attention to you, God gave us PDF so we wouldn’t have to kill his creatures (or more correctly God gave us the people that gave us Adobe that gave us PDF).
Pat Love,
Despite visiting this site, you appear to remain woefully ignorant of the Austrian notion of the subjective theory of value.
Can you reconcile the idea that perhaps I value paper and leather binding over e-books with your notion of a right and just world? Can you imagine that perhaps you and I have differing subjective value systems?
If you can, then we have no disagreement it seems. If you can’t, you might want to reconsider who is the statist in this situation, because a state is the only entity I could see you utilizing to impose your value system on me.
Not that you have advocated for such a thing outright, just as I never said anything about a state either.
When lions stop eating gazelles I will stop eating cows.
Pat,
This: “(PFDs) generate no waste when you’re done with them.”, might be true in regard to PDFs themselves, but, as you know PDFs themselves are useless.
What tools do we need to utilize PDFs? Laptop? PC? PDA? SmartPhone? eBook? something like that. Electronic devices all. As you would be able to easily learn: Electronic devices, including their oft-attending batteries, are some of the worst pollution threats to our Environment.
The irresponsible disposal, to address just one aspect of the life-cycle, of electronic devices does far more harm as it leeches its heavy-metals, concentrated, back into our soil and water.
Here’s a hint: The Mercury in your Cow’s milk doesn’t come from “coal-fired” electricity generation plants, alone.
If I were a cow, I’d be honoured to donate my skin to a Rothbard book. Of course, if I were a cow, I’d have no idea what “honour”, “skin” or “books” were, being, ya know, a cow and all.
That said, I’m sure there are plenty of leather-bound editions of General Theory or Affluent Society around. Talk about cruel and inhumane.
You statements “because a state is the only entity I could see you utilizing to impose your value system on me” and “If you are, society will likely deal with you as they would any man guilty of murder.” reveal your own Statist bias, you can’t conceive that a person would do or not do something without state coercion.
That “society will likely deal with me…” is hardly a good reason not to kill someone. Any more than hurting animals is right just because no one can stop you (without committing a greater atrocity… unenforceability). Legalism is not the source of right and wrong. I never claimed to have any interest in ‘imposing’ anything on anyone… again you read your own biases into it (that subjective values must be imposed on others… in the same way that you’re imposing your own subjective preference for leather bindings on the helpless cow).
I guess if Mr Pigou Mankiw is a libertarian… then it must be a pretty big tent affair… letting in statists of all colors.
If I come back as a cow in my next life, I hereby give my permission to use my hide for such a beautiful book-binding for a Moo-ray Rothbard or Ludwig von Moo-ses book. I’ll be like one of those Douglas Adams cows, offering people the best cuts for their meal!
In my opinion eat cows or not every man chooses himself!
Cow hides are a by-product of the meat industry. Cows are not killed for their hides but for their meat, so utilizing the hides for bookbinding is an environmentally responsible act.
Printed books, especially those which are professionally bound with archival papers and leathers, can last literally for hundreds or thousands of years. Go to ebay, click on books and then choose pre-1700. You’ll see an amazing number of auctions. These books not only preserve the text but tell us a great deal about the art, culture, and economics of the period. PDFs cannot compare.
Dear Pat,
Were you aware that some of the most valuable books from the middle ages were bound, not in animal hide, but in human skin? We’ve come along way since then.
I just got my set of the full, top-grain, leather-bound edition of Murray’s Rothbard’s two-volume Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought from the Mises store. These books are absolutely spectacular in presentation. Mises is correct in stating: “This is the sort of treasure you acquire once in a lifetime. A student of liberty, at any stage of life, would thrill to own a set.”
I’m thrilled to own a set, Pat, and I believe YOU would be thrilled to own a set if you were to set aside your bias. There are only 200 of these gems and they’re still available two years after you shared your thoughts about the virtues of PDF files. Perhaps you’ve finally come around to appreciate there is absolutely nothing wrong with the age old technique used to deliver this set?
Besides, Margie said it best. Binding in leather is the environmentally responsible way to go.
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