Austrian Economics, Libertarianism, and Academic Writing in the Humanities – A Bibliography

A preliminary list of books and articles that may be of interest to libertarian and classical liberal humanists (last updated 6/21/22)

I am grateful to the friends and colleagues who helped me compose this list. If you have additions or edits, please email me at [email protected] (providing full references as well as links if online versions are available). Foreign language publications are listed separately at the bottom. I’m especially interested in including critical studies of literature and film that use Austrian economics and/or libertarian philosophy. Thank you!

Jo Ann Cavallo, Professor of Italian, Columbia University

Adamo, Stefano. “Animal Spirits in Designer Suits. The Representation of Finance in Walter Siti’s Resistere non serve a niente.” Rivista di storia economica 3 (2016): 351–80. https://doi.org/10.1410/85082.

—. “The Crisis of the Prato Industrial District in the Works of Edoardo Nesi: A Blend of Nostalgia and Self-Complacency.” Modern Italy 21.3 (August 2016): 245–59. https://doi.org/10.1017/mit.2016.30.

—. “The Italian ‘Economic Miracle’ in Coeval Cinema: A Case Study on the Intellectual Reaction to Italy’s Social and Economic Change.” Italian Quarterly 50 (2013): 46–64.

—. “The Italian Financial Novel: Finance As Told By Financial Professionals.” Estudios Libertarios 3 (2020): 49-73.

Blanco, María, and Alberto Mingardi, eds. Show and Biz: The Market Economy in TV Series and Popular Culture. Forthcoming 2023. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60912547-show-and-biz

Block, Walter E. “Ayn Rand, Religion and Libertarianism.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies Vol., 11, No. 1, Issue 21, July 2011, pp. 63-79.

—. “Justifying a Stateless Legal Order: a critique of Rand and Epstein.” Journal of Private Enterprise; 29(2) Spring 2014: 21-49. http://journal.apee.org/index.php/Category:Spring_2014; http://journal.apee.org/index.php?title=2014.Spring.JPE_part2.pdf

—. “‘The Libertarian Minimal State?’ A critique of the views of Nozick, Levin and Rand.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2002, pp. 141-60; reprinted in Younkins, Ed, ed., Philosophers of Capitalism: Menger, Mises, Rand and Beyond, 2004; http://www.walterblock.com/publications/minimal_state.pdf

—. “On Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard and Thick Libertarianism” June 1, 2014;

https://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2014/06/walter-block-on-ayn-rand-murray.html

Camplin, Troy Earl. “Atlas Shrugged as Epic.” Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 19.2 (2019): 192-242. https://aynrandstudies.com/past-issues/volume-19/

Cantor, Paul. “Flying Solo: The Aviator and Libertarian Philosophy” May 24, 2007. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/cantor5.html

—. Gilligan Unbound: Pop Culture in the Age of Globalization. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

—. The Invisible Hand in Popular Culture: Liberty vs. Authority in American Film and TV. University Press of Kentucky (illustrated edition), 2012.

—. Pop Culture and the Dark Side of the American Dream: Con Men, Gangsters, Drug Lords, and Zombies. University Press of Kentucky, 2019.

—. Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire. c. 1976. University of Chicago Press (enlarged edition), 2017.

Cantor, Paul, and Stephen Cox. Literature and the Economics of Liberty: Spontaneous Order in Culture. Auburn, Mises Institute, 2009. https://mises.org/library/literature-and-economics-liberty-spontaneous-order-culture

Cavallo, Jo Ann. “Contracts, Surveillance, and Censure of State Power in Arienti’s Triunfo da Camarino novella (Le porretane 1.1).” In Cavallo and Lottieri, 141-62. http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8XS5VRF

—. “The Ideological Battle of Roncevaux: The Critique of Political Power from Pulci’s Morgante to Sicilian Puppet Theatre Today.” In Luigi Pulci in Renaissance Florence and Beyond. Eds. James K. Coleman and Andrea Moudarres. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. 209-32.

—. “Malaguerra: The Anti-state Super-hero of Sicilian Puppet Theater.” AOQU (Achilles Orlando Quixote Ulysses). Rivista di epica 1 (July 2020): 259-294. https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/aoqu/article/view/13907/13061

—. “Marco Polo on the Mongol State: Taxation, Predation, and Monopolization.” Libertarian Papers 7.2 (2015): 157-168.

http://libertarianpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/article/2015/11/lp-7-2-42.pdf

—. “National Political Ideologies and Local Maggio Traditions of the Reggio Emilia Apennines: Roncisvalle vs. Rodomonte.” Conquistare la montagna: la storia di un’idea. Conquering Mountains: The History of an Idea. Eds. Carlo Baja Guarienti and Matteo Al Kalak. Milan: Mondadori, 2016. 121-134. http://dx.doi.org/10.7916/D8P84C8N

—. “On Political Power and Personal Liberty” in The Prince and The Discourses.” Machiavelli’s The Prince at 500. Ed. John McCormick. Social Research: An International Quarterly 81:1 (Spring 2014): 107-32.

https://academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8H70CXR

—. “Pietro Marcello’s Martin Eden: The Man versus the State.” January 1, 2021. Mises Institute. https://mises.org/wire/pietro-marcellos-martin-eden-man-versus-state

—. “Purgatory 17: On Revenge.” Purgatory: Lectura Dantis. Eds. A. Mandelbaum, A. Oldcorn, C. Ross.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008. 178-90.

—. The Romance Epics of Boiardo, Ariosto, and Tasso: From Public Duty to Private Pleasure. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.

Cavallo, Jo Ann, and Carlo Lottieri, editors. Speaking Truth to Power from Medieval to Modern Italy. Annali d’italianistica 34 (2016).

Cox, Stephen. “Adventures of ‘A Little Boy Lost’: Blake and the Process of Interpretation.”  Criticism 23 (1981): 301-316.

—. “The Art of Fiction.”  The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 1 (2000) 313-31.

—. “Ayn Rand.” American Philosophers, 1950-2000. Ed. Philip B. Dematteis and Leemon B. McHenry. Detroit: Gale – Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2003. 255-72.

—. “Ayn Rand: Theory versus Creative Life.” The Journal of Libertarian Studies 8 (1986): 19-29.

—. “The Cather Correspondence.”  American Literary History 26 (Summer 2014) 418-29.

—. “Completing Rand’s Literary Theory.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 6 (2004): 67-89.

—. Culture and Liberty: Writings of Isabel Paterson. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2015.

—. “Devices of Deconstruction.” Critical Review 3 (Winter 1989) 56-76.

—. “The Devil’s Reading List.”  Raritan 16 (Fall 1996) 97-111.

—. “Having Your Say.”  The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies (2002) 339-47.

—. “‘It Couldn’t Be Made Into a Really Good Movie’: The Films of Ayn Rand.” Liberty 1 (August 1987): 5-10.

—. “Literary Theory: Liberal and Otherwise.” Humane Studies Review 5 (Fall 1987) 1, 5-7, 12-14.

—. Love and Logic: The Evolution of Blake’s Thought.  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992.

—. “Merely Metaphorical?: Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson, and the Language of Theory.” The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 8 (Spring 2007) 237-60.

—. “Methods and Limitations.”  Critical Paths: Blake and the Argument of Method.  Ed. Dan Miller, Mark Bracher, and Donald Ault.  Durham NC: Duke University Press, 1987.  Pp. 19-40, 331-34.

—. “Nathaniel Branden in the Writer’s Workshop.”  The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies 16 (December 2016) 245-60.

—. The New Testament and Literature: A Guide to Literary Patterns.  Chicago: Open Court, 2006.

—. “Public Virtue and Private Vitality in Shadwell’s Comedies.” Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Theatre Research 16 (1977): 11-22.

—. “Representing Isabel Paterson.” American Literary History 17.2 (2005): 244-58.

—. “Sensibility as Argument.”  Sensibility in Transformation: Creative Resistance to Sentiment from the Augustans to the Romantics.  Ed. Syndy McMillen Conger.  Rutherford NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1990.  Pp. 63-82.

—. “The Significance of Isabel Paterson.”  Liberty 7 (October 1993) 30-41. 

—. “The Stranger Within Thee”: Concepts of the Self in Late-Eighteenth-Century Literature.  Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980.

—. “The Titanic and the Art of Myth.”  Critical Review 15 (2003) 403-34.

—. “Willa Cather.”  Literary Genius, ed. Joseph Epstein.  Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2007.  Pp. 192-98. 

—. The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America. New Brunswick NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2004.

Fernandez-Morera, Dario. American Academia and the Survival of Marxist Ideas. Praeger, 1996.

Friedman, David. “Thoughts on Literature, Economics and Education.” Ideas. May 1, 2017. http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2017/05/thoughts-on-literature-economics-and.html

Giménez Cavallo, Maria. “Elsa Morante’s La storia: A Posthumanist, Feminist, Anarchist Response to Power.” In Cavallo and Lottieri, pp. 425-47.

Hazlitt, Henry. The Anatomy of Criticism: A Trialogue. Simon & Schuster, 1933.

Long, Roderick T. Rituals of Freedom: Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism. The Molinari Institute, 2016. Expanded version of his essay “Austro-Libertarian Themes in Early Confucianism” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 17, no. 3 (Summer 2003): 35-62.

McCloskey, Deirdre. “Economics With a Human Face: Adam Smith did not believe people are merely economic maximizers. Instead, we balance self- interest with humane sympathy for others. Deirdre N. McCloskey reviews Cents and Sensibility by Gary Saul Morson and Morton Schapiro.” Wall Street Journal, September 13, 2017. https://www.wsj.com/articles/economics-with-a-human-face-1505343242

McMaken, Ryan. Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. 2012.

Mendenhall, Allen. Literature and Liberty: Essays in Libertarian Literary Criticism. Lexington Books, 2014.

—. Shouting Softly: Lines on Law, Literature, and Culture. St. Augustine Press, 2021.

Mingardi, Alberto. “A Lesson in Humility, a Lesson for Our Times: Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed,” The Independent Review 25.3 (2020): 369–84. https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=13135

—. “Manzoni’s unfulfilled legacy. On the economic lessons of Alessandro Manzoni’s The Betrothed.” The New Criterion 36.6 (2018): 35-38. ISSN:0734-0222.

Monsen, Anders. “Fifty Works of Fiction Libertarians Should Read.” Prometheus Newsletter of the Libertarian Futurist Society Volume 30, Number 3, Spring 2012. http://lfs.org/newsletter/030/03/FiftyWorks.shtml.

Nock, Albert J. Francis Rabelais the Man and his Work. Harper & brothers, 1929.

Perdices de Blas, Luis, and John Reeder. “Quixotes, Don Juans, rogues and arbitristas in seventeenth century Castile. Oeconomia. Editions NecPlus, vol. 3-4 (2013): 561-91. https://journals.openedition.org/oeconomia/702

Pinker, Steven. The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin, 2011.

—. Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. Viking, 2018.

Rand, Ayn. The Romantic Manifesto: A Philosophy of Literature. Signet; Revised edition, 1971.

Rectenwald, Michael. Beyond Woke. New English Review Press, 2020. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books

—. Google Archipelago: The Digital Gulag and the Simulation of Freedom. New English Review Press, 2019. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books

—. Springtime for Snowflakes: ‘Social Justice’ and Its Postmodern Parentage. New English Review Press, 2018. https://www.michaelrectenwald.com/books

Rothbard, Murray. “Movie Reviews.” The Rothbard Reader, edited by Joseph T. Salerno and Matthew McCaffrey. The Mises Institute, 2016. 293-303. https://cdn.mises.org/The%20Rothbard%20Reader.pdf. Many other reviews can be found dispersed throughout The Complete Libertarian Forum 1969-1984 under the rubric “Mr First Nighter.”

Skousen, Jo Ann. Movie reviews for Liberty. https://libertyunbound.com/author/joannskousen/

Movie reviews for Anthem Film Festival https://anthemfilmfestival.com/reviews/

Sarah Skwire, Amy Sturgis, Fred Turner, William Patterson. Liberty, Commerce and Literature. Cato Unbound. July 2012.https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/july-2012/liberty-commerce-literature/

Skwire, Sarah, Ross Emmett, Maria Pia Paganelli, and Michelle Vachris. The Prehistory of Public Choice. Special issue of Cato Unbound (March 2017). https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/march-2017/prehistory-public-choice/

Skwire, Sarah, and Steve Horwitz. “Lady Pecunia at the Punching Office: Two Poems on Early Modern Monetary Reform,”Journal of Private Enterprise. The Association of Private Enterprise Education, vol. 30 (Spring 2015): 107-20.

Skwire, Sarah, William H. Patterson, Jr., Frederick Turner, and Amy H. Sturgis. Liberty, Commerce, and Literature. Special issue of Cato Unbound (July 2012). https://www.cato-unbound.org/issues/july-2012/liberty-commerce-literature.

Skwire, Sarah “Curse, Interrupted: Richard III, Jacob and Esau, and the Elizabethan Succession Crisis” in a special issue of Religions on Shakespeare and Religion, 2019.

—. “History through a Classical Liberal Feminist Lens” in What is Classical Liberal History? Ed. Michael J. Douma and Phillip W. Magness. Lexington Books, 2018.

—. “Edna Ferber’s Business Stories” in Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature, Lexington Press 2016.

—. “Without Respect of Persons: Gender Equality, Theology, and the Law in the Writing of Margaret Fell” Social Philosophy and Policy, 2015.

—. “Take Physic, Pomp’: King Lear Learns Sympathy” in Sympathy: The History of a Concept, Ed. Eric Schliesser, Oxford University Press, 2015.

—. “Eating Brains and Breaking Windows” (with Steven Horwitz), in Economics of the Undead, Glen Whitman and James Dow, Eds. Rowman and Littlefield, 2014.

—. “Not-So-Bleak House” in New Developments in Economic Education, Eds. Franklin G Mixon and Richard J. Cebula, Edward Elgar, 2014.

Spivey, Matt. Re-Reading Economics in Literature: A Capitalist Critical Perspective. Lexington Books, 2020.

Sunderland, Luke. Rebel Barons: Resisting Royal Power in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Thomas, William, ed. The Literary Art of Ayn Rand. Poughkeepsie NY: Objectivist Center, 2005.

Torres Louis, and Michelle Marder Kamhi. What Art Is: The Esthetic Theory of Ayn Rand. Open Court, 2000

Turner, Frederick. The Culture of Hope. Free Press, 1995.

—. Shakespeare’s Twenty-first Century Economics. Oxford University Press, 1999.

Van Es, Bart. Shakespeare in Company. Oxford UP, 2015.

Watts, Michael. The Literary Book of Economics: Including Readings from Literature and Drama on Economic Concepts, Issues, and Themes. Intercollegiate Studies, 2003.

Wright, Robert. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny. Pantheon, 2000.

Younkins, Edward W., ed. Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”: A Philosophical and Literary Companion. Aldershot, Hampshire: Ashgate, 2007.

—, ed. Capitalism and Commerce in Imaginative Literature: Perspectives on Business from Novels and Plays. Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2015.

—. Exploring Atlas Shrugged: Ayn Rand’s Magnum Opus. Lexington Books, 2021.

—. Exploring Capitalist Fiction: Business through Literature and Film. Lexington Books, 2013.

Interdisciplinary journals and magazine that include the Humanities:

Journal of Ayn Rand Studies https://aynrandstudies.com/

Journal of Libertarian Studies (1977-2008) https://mises.org/archives/the-journal-of-libertarian-studies

Libertarian Papers, 2009- http://libertarianpapers.org/

Liberty https://libertyunbound.com/pdf-archive/

Literature of Liberty (1978-1982), Institute of Humane Studies https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/liggio-literature-of-liberty-a-review-of-contemporary-liberal-thought

Film reviews:

Anthem Film Festival, reviews https://anthemfilmfestival.com/reviews/

In Spanish:

Blanco González, Maria. “La reforma urbanística de París y la especulación bajo el mandato de Haussmann. Una aproximación a la obra de Zola.” Economy and Literature. Eds. Luís Berdices de Blad and Luís Manuel Santos Redondo. Ecobook-Economics Publisher, 2006. 295-330.

Estudio libertarios. [interdisciplinary journal] www.estudioslibertarios.com

Krause, Martin. Borges y la Economía. Unión Editorial, 2021.

In Italian:

Lottieri, Carlo. “Manzoni e i diritti individuali.” Manzoni oggi. Edited by Luigi Marco Bassani et al. Piacenza, Banca di Piacenza, 2008, pp. 37-51.

Mingardi, Alberto. “La distopia dell’evoluzione. L’«anti-utopia evoluzionista» di The Time Machine di H.G. Wells.” Nuova storia contemporanea 21.1 (2020): 51-74. ISSN:1126-098X

—. Introduction. Sciabole e Utopie. Visioni dell’america latina. By Mario Vargas Llosa. Macerata: Liberilibri, 2020. xi-lxvii. ISBN:9788898094745.

—. “Luigi Einaudi lettore di Alessandro Manzoni.” Libro Aperto 16 (105bis).2 (2021): 303-10. ISSN:1121-9661.

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