My note to the author of Last Knight
Here is a note that I wrote Guido Hulsmann, author of Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism:I have finally finished reading your great book about Mises. When I use the word "great," I mean not simply that it weighs at least a kilo and contains more than 1,000 pages. I mean most of all that it is a magnificent scholarly achievement. I can't remember when I have taken more pleasure from a book. It is a joy to read, in every way. The English is precise and polished, and everything is put just right. The research is amazingly broad, yet deep, too. The judgments are sensible and mature. The coverage--from the personal details to the content of Mises's ideas to the context in which he lived and worked--is extraordinary, and the organization puts everything into comprehensible order. The bibliography is more than impressive. All in all, the book is simply an amazing accomplishment, and a fitting tribute to its great subject.
The Mises Institute deserves great credit, too, not only for its support of your work on this project, but also for producing a book that is a fine example of the publisher's art: the typeface is clean and clear, and large enough to permit effortless reading; the layout is spacious and proper; the footnotes are where they should be, and they, too, are large enough to be read without a magnifying glass; the illustrations are splendid complements to the text; and the indexes are terrific. The work is thus not simply beautiful intellectually, but beautiful physically, as well.
If I had ever written anything half so wonderful--and I recognize that I lack the abilities to do so--I would consider my career a complete success, and feel myself justified in taking my ease, to rest on my laurels. I do not perceive that you have this plan in mind for yourself, and therefore the world will be the better, not only for your great book on Mises, but also for all the great achievements that lie in your future. I salute you, my friend, not without a touch of envy, but with my whole heart.
Comments (8)
Gil Guillory
I have only read about 200 pages into the biography, but I agree. In those 200 pages, I have learned more about the social and political background of Mises and Vienna than I thought possible. In particular, I now understand to some degree the rise of anti-semitism in Vienna during Mises's adolescence: how it was a political wedge issue, how it played to anti-immigration sentiment, etc. And the description of the continental gymnasia of the turn of the 20th century makes one positively nostalgic for classical education!
Guido's going to have one heck of a time with the queue of people at ASC getting signatures on this book!
Published: February 25, 2008 12:03 PM
Michael G.R.
I'm just 130 pages in, but so far I agree. Great book, very well done. I've already learned a lot about turn-of-the-century Vienna.
Published: February 25, 2008 12:47 PM
Curt Howland
I have not bought nor read the book, but I have heard the recording of Mr. Hulsmann's talk at the Mises 25th. If his writing is as uplifting as his speaking, then this is a book not to miss.
Maybe I'll pick it up with my Fed "rebate" check.
Published: February 25, 2008 1:35 PM
Greg Feirman
That's beautiful. Can't wait to get my copy!
Published: February 25, 2008 3:21 PM
Peter
I bought it a while back, but I have a rather large stack of books to get through so I lent it to my father before reading it. Haven't got it back yet; don't know how he's getting on with it.
Published: February 25, 2008 5:39 PM
gene berman
I check out the site every day. I bought the book as soon as I saw it announced. Am I the first customer? I don't know, of course.
But, since I read it from start to finish at a single "sitting" (quotations because that sitting was necessarily interrupted by about 5 hours of laying-down sleep). So I may very well be the first to read it.
Mr. Higgs aspires to envy the author. I am considerably more modest in my pretensions and would be quite content to have written the letter he has.
Published: February 26, 2008 7:58 AM
gene berman
Gil:
On a tangent, I remember (from over 50 years ago) that Mark Twain wrote about the keenness of antisemitism in Austria in: 1.) "Stirring Times In Austria"; and, 2.) "Concerning the Jews." Just by way of a generality--nothing by Twain is not worth reading.
Published: February 26, 2008 3:19 PM
Duncan
I finished Hulsmann's biography a week or so and found it to be compulsively good reading.
It is a truly majestic portrait of a brilliant man, by turns humble and forceful, and yet in the end possessed of a serene patience borne from complete confidence in sound reasoning and clearly ordered priorities.
After about 100 pages or so, I dedicated two full days to polishing off the final 900 pages in a handful of sittings. I simply could not put it down!
The sheer span of Mises' life is amazing, beginning in the year of the gunfight at the OK Corral and ending a year after we'd completed six manned missions to the moon.
Hulsmann convinced me to tackle Mises' 1919 Nation, State & Economy, which I now regard as the most perceptive commentary on the roots of WWI I've read. Not that it isn't free of a certain youthful preciosity! Reading it made me think deeply upon our current, deep descent into utterly mindless statism and imperialism.
Looking at the headlines in this election year, one is reminded of the mordant tone of Mises' own Notes & Recollections in the dark days of 1940 — especially his empathetic assessment of Menger's late melancholy. One cannot help but be moved by gradual but perceptible erosion of literacy, intelligence and freedom we're witnessing and the events Mises experienced as Western European culture fell apart, chunk by chunk, decade after decade.
My sole caveat is that Hulsmann relies almost exclusively on memoirs for recounting Austrian history from about 1890 to 1930, bypassing a rich and vibrant vein of historical scholarship that would round out the foundations of his larger, more sweeping historical characterizations.
Perhaps the best thing about the book is Hulsmann's ability to balance chronological events with conceptual explanations of the evolution of Mises' own intellectual growth. An amazing performance, all in all.
Highly recommended.
Published: February 26, 2008 9:29 PM