The Essential Rothbard

LARGE PRINT EDITION More at LargePrintLiberty.com 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, 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 that 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.