Here is the book for the Age of Rothbard, precisely the primer that is needed at a time when his influence—as the most radical and compelling intellectual force in the second half of the 20th century—is higher than during any time during his lifetime.
And so this book is a landmark in Rothbardiana: the first, full, rigorous intellectual biography of Murray N. Rothbard, one that takes a candid look at his public and private papers to cover not only his economic thought but also his historical method, his political ideology, the Rothbardian cultural outlook and social theory, and guides the reader through the whole of his vast output. It even includes a complete (and massive) bibliography.
The beauty of this book consists in its original research (David Gordon had full access to the private correspondence of his subject) and also its brevity: the biographical portion is 125 pages, and so the pace is super fast and the prose compact and riveting.
It is more difficult than it may seem to produce a book of this scale. The author must be well-read in five different fields, and have absorbed the whole of Rothbard’s output. And there is the balancing act of not only covering all these fields but integrating them with unified themes, just as Rothbard did.
Here is where Gordon is most dazzling. He provides the reader an overview of Rothbard’s thought and times but not in a piecemeal fashion but with an eye to conveying the Rothbardian worldview. All the while, he reports on such tantalizing treats as the notes that Murray took in graduate school. One can just imagine him scribbling furiously during class.
Those who remember Rothbard’s own monograph The Essential von Mises know what an impact that had. This does the same for Rothbard. And so the book will be useful for students, professors, reading groups, or just the curious multitudes who are asking: who is this Rothbard anyway, and what did he contribute?
Gordon begins with his schooling, to show his early influences, and continues through his early career. He discusses how Rothbard slowly built the edifice, a full science of liberty, and how he managed to stay so active in public life as well. He even covers material that is yet to be published, so that the reader knows what Rothbard said about a range of topics that has yet to become part of the published corpus.
The are many Rothbardians but few are prepared to do what this author has done.
180 pages with index
Contents
* Introduction
* The Early Years
* Rothbard’s Treatise on Economic Theory
* More Advances in Economic Theory
* Rothbard on Money
* Austrian Economic History
* A Rothbardian View of American History
* The Unknown Rothbard: Unpublished Papers
* Rothbard’s System of Ethics
* Politics in Theory and Practice
* Rothbard on Current Economic Issues
* Rothbard’s Last Scholarly Triumph
* Followers and Influence
* Bibliography
* Index
{ 10 comments }
Awesome! Thank you very much David, thank you very much everybody at the LvMI! Do not forget to put the date of publication, place of publication, publisher as well as ISBN of this book as well as each & every other book in your catalog. This will be most helpful for people doing bibliographical searches. Christoph, citizen-soldier-slave in the land of the Switzers. “There Is But One Goddess, Freedom!
) ;o) 
)
Murray N. Rothbard Is Her Prophet
& the Libertarian Movement Her Church.”
Thank you Mr. Gordon and Mises Institute for making this book possible. While Justin Raimondo’s biography is excellent, given Murray Rothbard’s outstanding achievements and importance, additional biographical material is certainly required and much appreciated.
Excellent!
I cannot think of a more appropriate person than David Gordon for this project. I’m looking forward to reading this!
Best to all of you!
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com
Bought it, read it (well, I still have six pages to go), and liked it. I found the first two chapters (after the brief bio) a bit disorientating (the author plunges the read into Rothbard quickly), but after that, the book is “as advertised”: quick hitting highlights of Rothbard’s thinking, but not superficially so.
Thank you so much Eric! That’s great to hear. I thought he did just a splendid job, and the whole time I was reading I kept thinking: thank goodness that I wasn’t assigned this job!
“Here is the book for the Age of Rothbard, precisely the primer that is needed at a time when his influence—as the most radical and compelling intellectual force in the second half of the 20th century—is higher than during any time during his lifetime.”
When I read this statement I couldn’t help but think of the closing paragraph in William F. Buckley’s horrible obituary of Murray Rothbard:
“It was a great pity, but his problem ought not to be thought of as tracing to the seamless integrity of libertarian principles. In Murray’s case, much of what drove him was a contrarian spirit, the deranging scrupulosity that caused him to disdain such as Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan, Milton Friedman, and–yes–Newt Gingrich, while huffing and puffing in the little cloister whose walls he labored so strenuously to contract, leaving him, in the end, not as the father of a swelling movement that ‘rous[ed] the masses from their slumber,’ as he once stated his ambition, but with about as many disciples as David Koresh had in his little redoubt in Waco. Yes, Murray Rothbard believed in freedom, and yes, David Koresh believed in God.”
Rothbard has more disciples dead than Buckley ever had in his lifetime.
Buckley? Who was Buckley?
As is said in the Australian idiom, he’s got Buckley’s chance of being remembered for anything at all!
Sione
Just in time for Murray’s 81st birthday on Friday.
As far as Mr. Buckley’s tasteless obituary is concerned, what matters most is not the numbers of followers, but accuracy and truth, and by these two measures, Rothbard’s intellectual achievements are in an entirely different class than Mr. Buckley’s.
By the way, Hitler had the large majority of one of the world’s most advanced countries following him and his ideas, but was Hitler correct?
And regarding Herbert Hoover, my understanding is that Rothbard’s documentation and analysis of his interventionist policies is now enjoying much wider acceptance than in the 1960s. Rothbard, and not Buckley, was correct.
Sounds tantalizing. I’ll probably pick up a copy while I’m in Auburn for ASC.
Is anyone working on publishing The Collected Works of Murray Rothbard? There really needs to be a well-planned out multi-volume series. Including all important as-yet-unpublished material. One for Mises too. All in uniform format, numbered 1-30 or whatever.
Keep up the good work! And thanks for all the pdfs of formerly out of print works by other authors like Hazlitt and Kuehnelt-Leddihn.
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