Description Details
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. (Summary from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics is a leading economics textbook by Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period.(Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all. (Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Bastiat asserted that the only purpose of government is to defend the right of an individual to life, liberty, and property. From this definition, Bastiat concluded that the law cannot defend life, liberty and property if it promotes socialist policies inherently opposed to these very things. In this way, he says, the law is perverted and turned against the thing it is supposed to defend....

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Marx's tract which lays out the tenets of Communism ( Summary by Mark )

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all.(Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. (from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Macht oder ökonomisches Gesetz? by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (1851 - 1914) Language: Deutsch (German) Böhm-Bawerk, Mitbegründer der Österreichischen Schule der Nationalökonomie, erörtert, ob ökonomische Gesetze auch für den Staat gelten. (Zusammenfassung von redaer) Böhm-Bawerk, Macht oder ökonomisches Gesetz? Zeitschrift für Volkswirtschaft, Sozialpolitik und Verwaltung, Bd. XXIII (S.205–271)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics....

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist Adam Smith, published on March 9, 1776 during the Scottish Enlightenment. It is a clearly written account of political economy at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and is widely considered to be the first modern work in the field of economics. (from Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all. (Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all. (Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
This lengthy political essay by noted Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock was written while he was professor of political economy at McGill University. He argues for a middle ground between capitalism and pure socialism. Listeners in the early 21st century may find this 90-year old essay oddly topical. (Summary by Sean Michael Hogan)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all. (Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Principles of Economics was a leading economics textbook of Alfred Marshall (1842-1924), first published in 1890. Marshall began writing the Principles of Economics in 1881 and he spent much of the next decade at work on the treatise. His plan for the work gradually extended to a two-volume compilation on the whole of economic thought; the first volume was published in 1890 to worldwide acclaim that established him as one of the leading economists of his time. It brought the ideas of supply and demand, of marginal utility and of the costs of production into a coherent whole, and became the dominant economic textbook in England for a long period. The second volume, which was to address foreign trade, money, trade fluctuations, taxation, and collectivism, was never published at all. (Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Birdseye Views of Far Lands is an interesting, wholesome presentation of something that a keen-eyed, alert traveler with the faculty of making contrasts with all classes of people in all sorts of places, in such a sympathetic way as to win their esteem and confidence, has been able to pick up as he has roamed over the face of the earth for a quarter of a century. The book is not a geography, a history, a treatise on sociology or political economy. It is a Human Interest book which appeals to the reader who would like to go as the writer has gone and to see as the writer has seen the conformations of surface, the phenomena of nature and the human group that make up what we call a world. The reader finds facts indicating travel and study set forth in such vigorous, vivid style that the attention is held by a story while most valuable information is being obtained. The casual reader, the pupil in the public school and student in the high school, professional men and women, will all find the book at once highly interesting and instructive. In no other book with which I am acquainted can so much that is interesting be learned of the worl...

Excerpt Details
Travel

Description Details
Jack London lived for a time within the grim and grimy world of the East End of London, where half a million people scraped together hardly enough on which to survive. Even if they were able to work, they were paid only enough to allow them a pitiful existence. He grew to know and empathise with these forgotten (or ignored) people as he spoke with them and tasted the workhouse, life on the streets, ... and the food, which was cheap, barely nutritious, and foul. He writes about his experiences in a fluid and narrative style, making it very clear what he thinks of the social structures which created the Abyss, and of the millionaires who live high on the labours of a people forced to live in squalor. ... The food this managing class eats, the wine it drinks, ... the fine clothes it wears, are challenged by eight million mouths which have never had enough to fill them, and by twice eight million bodies which have never been sufficiently clothed and housed. (Summary by Peter Yearsley)...

Excerpt Details
Memoirs, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Orignally written as a series of newspaper articles in 1847, Wage-Labour and Capital was intended to give an overview of Marx’s central threories regarding the economic relationships between workers and capitalists. These theories outlined include the Marxian form of the Labour Theory of Value, which distinguishes “labour” from “labour-power”, and the Theory of Concentration of Capital, which states that capitalism tends towards the creation of monopolies and the disenfranchisement of the middle and working classes. These theories were later elaborated in Volume 1 of Capital, published in 1867. This edition of Wage-Labour and Capital, published in 1891, was edited and translated by Friedrich Engels, and remains one of the most widely read of Marx’s works. (Description by Carl Manchester)....

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Politics

Description Details
This nonfiction collection of sketches, by members of the New York press, takes the reader on a tour of 1866 New York City after dark, with stops along the way to vividly depict scenes ranging from the splendid to the squalid - but focusing largely on the latter! (Summary by Grant Hurlock)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Essay/Short nonfiction, History

Description Details
The Three Essays on Religion were written at different times during Mill's life, and only published after his death. The first two, 'Nature' and 'The Utility of Religion' date from the 1850s - the period between the publication of 'The Principles of Political Economy' and 'On Liberty'. The third longer essay, 'Theism' was written between 1868 and 1870. The three essays were published posthumously in 1874. (Summary by Justin Brett)...

Excerpt Details
Advice, Essay/Short nonfiction, Religion

Description Details
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) is best known for his work as an art critic and social critic, but is remembered as an author, poet and artist as well. Unto This Last is an important work of political economic though that influenced Gandhi, among others. (Hugh McGuire/Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Politics, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
This little book shows, in a short, clear, and systematic manner, how the principle of Non-Resistance, about which Tolstoy has written so much, is related to economic and political life. (Summary by Aylmer Maude, Translator)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Politics

Description Details
In 1623, Francis Bacon expressed his aspirations and ideas in New Atlantis. Released in 1627, this was his creation of an ideal land where people were kind, knowledgeable, and civic-minded. Part of this new land was his perfect college, a vision for our modern research universities. Islands he had visited may have served as models for his ideas. ( Summary by Wikipedia )...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Politics, Science, Religion, Myths/Legends

Description Details
Written in a conversational style that will appeal to the younger person as well as seasoned professional, Thinking as a Science is timeless classic. Through eleven chapters, the last being a descriptive, annotated bibliography, Henry Hazlitt systematically takes the step-by-step on the process of introducing logic and context into the thinking process. The rather long chapter on Reading and Thinking clarifies several notions on where one needs to understand where mere knowledge acquisition ends and using reading the stimulate thinking begins. For an individual who was largely self taught, Hazlitt's contribution to the process of thinking is a must-read.(Summary by Chiquito Crasto)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Psychology

Description Details
“(T)he past is what man should not have been. The present is what man ought not to be. The future is what artists are.” Published originally as “The Soul of Man Under Socialism,” this is not so much a work of sober political analysis; rather it can be summed up as a rhapsodic manifesto on behalf of the Individual. Socialism having deployed technology to liberate the whole of humanity from soul-destroying labour, the State obligingly withers away to allow the free development of a joyful, anarchic hedonism... “Is this Utopian? A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing.” Far from abandoning the epigram in favour of the slogan, Wilde wittily assails several of his favourite targets: the misguided purveyors of philanthropy; life-denying ascetics of various kinds; the army of the half-educated who constitute themselves the enemies of Art - and those venal popular journalists who cater to them... “Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, ca...

Excerpt Details
Essay/Short nonfiction, Economics/Political Economy, Politics

Description Details
Margaret Sanger was an American sex educator and nurse who became one of the leading birth control activists of her time, having at one point, even served jail time for importing birth control pills, then illegal, into the United States. Woman and the New Race is her treatise on how the control of population size would not only free women from the bondage of forced motherhood, but would elevate all of society. The original fight for birth control was closely tied to the labor movement as well as the Eugenics movement, and her book provides fascinating insight to a mostly-forgotten turbulent battle recently fought in American history. (Summary by Becky)...

Excerpt Details
Advice, Children, Economics/Political Economy, History, Politics

Description Details
Jane Addams was the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In a long, complex career, she was a pioneer settlement worker and founder of Hull House in Chicago, public philosopher (the first American woman in that role), author, and leader in woman suffrage and world peace. She was the most prominent woman of the Progressive Era and helped turn the nation to issues of concern to mothers, such as the needs of children, public health and world peace. She emphasized that women have a special responsibility to clean up their communities and make them better places to live, arguing they needed the vote to be effective. Addams became a role model for middle-class women who volunteered to uplift their communities....

Excerpt Details
Memoirs, Politics, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
In the 1880s William Morris, the artist and poet famously associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, left the Liberal Party and threw himself into the Socialist cause. He spoke all over the country, on street corners as well as in working men's clubs and lecture halls, and edited and wrote for the Socialist League's monthly newspaper. Signs of Change is a short collection of his talks and writings in this period, first published in 1888, covering such topics as what socialism and work should be, and how capitalism and waste developed. (Summary by Deborah Brabyn)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, History, Politics

Description Details
Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It is a collection of essays written by Louis Brandeis published as a book in 1914. The book attacked the use of investment funds to promote the consolidation of various industries under the control of a small number of corporations, which Brandeis alleged were working in concert to prevent competition. Brandeis harshly criticized investment bankers who controlled large amounts of money deposited in their banks by middle-class people. The heads of these banks, Brandeis pointed out, routinely sat on the boards of railroad companies and large industrial manufacturers of various products, and routinely directed the resources of their banks to promote the interests of their own companies. These companies, in turn, sought to maintain control of their industries by crushing small businesses and stamping out innovators who developed better products to compete against them. Brandeis supported his contentions with a discussion of the actual dollar amounts -- in millions of dollars -- controlled by specific banks, industries, and industrialists such as J. P. Morgan, noting that these interests had ...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, Instruction

Description Details
Capital, Volume I is the first of three volumes in Karl Marx’s monumental work, Das Kapital, and the only volume to be published during his lifetime, in 1867. Marx’s aim in Capital, Volume I is to uncover and explain the laws specific to the capitalist mode of production and of the class struggles rooted in these capitalist social relations of production. Marx said himself that his aim was “to bring a science [i.e. political economy] by criticism to the point where it can be dialectically represented”, and in this way to “reveal the law of motion of modern society”. By showing how capitalist development was the precursor of a new, socialist mode of production, he aimed to provide a scientific foundation for the modern labour movement. In preparation for his book, he studied the economic literature available in his time for a period of twelve years, mainly in the British Museum in London.(Summary by Wikipedia)...

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Politics, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
This biography is actually a series of essays by prominent personalities of the time that shed light on John Stuart Mill's life and areas of endeavor. Those areas include his experiences in India House, his moral character, certain botanical explorations, how effective he was as a critic, studies in morals and the law, and discoveries concerning political economy. They also explore ideas concerning his influence on institutions of higher learning, accomplishments as a politician, and fame as a philosopher. (Summary by Bill Boerst)...

Excerpt Details
Biography, Economics/Political Economy, History, Philosophy, Nature, Politics

Description Details
Lysander Spooner (1808 – 1887) was an American individualist anarchist, entrepreneur, political philosopher, abolitionist, supporter of the labour movement, and legal theorist of the nineteenth century. Here he gives his views on the role of Governments in the private lives of their citizens (Summary by Annise)...

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
Read in English, this is a pivotal document in the history of Zionism and the State of Israel. Herzl designed this work to elevate the discussion of the Jewish Question so it would no longer take the form of violent abuse or sentimental vindication but of a debate, practical, large, earnest, and political. While few of Herzl's proposals were actually carried out, the importance of A JEWISH STATE was in the groundswell of support for a Jewish homeland engendered by its solutions to the practical problems of establishing a new state. In the words of a contemporary, [Herzl] made it seem possible. Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl (1860-1904) was a Hungarian writer, political economist, and Jewish activist. (Summary by Adrian Praetzellis)...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, History, Religion

Description Details
This is Mill’s first work on economics. It foreshadows his _Political Economy_ which was the standard Anglo-American Economics textbook of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mill’s economic theory moved from free market capitalism, to government intervention within the precepts of Utilitarianism, and finally to Socialism. [Summary written by the reader]...

Excerpt Details
Philosophy, Economics/Political Economy

Description Details
This investigation of Bacon the scholar and man of letters begins with a look at the early days ang progresses to his relationships with Queen Elizabeth and James I. It includes accounts of his positions as solicitor general, attorney-general, and chancellor. The book concludes with Bacon's failure, his overall philosophy, and summaries of his writings. ( Summary by Bill Boerst )...

Excerpt Details
Biography, Economics/Political Economy, History, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Science

Description Details
Wells considered this book one of his most important, a natural follow-up to such works as his Man of the Year Million and The Time Machine. His goal was to get people to think and act in new ways. The book starts with a look at how humans get along socially and how they carry out their business ventures. It then discusses how these elements influence others, such as politics, the world of work, and education. H. G. tried to make clear how the current social order was disintegrating without preparing another to take its place. He then traced the roots of democracy, which in its present state he saw as unworkable. Instead, he proposed a new republic. He also critiqued modern warfare. (Summary by Bill Boerst)...

Excerpt Details
Advice, Economics/Political Economy, Instruction, History, Philosophy, Politics, Psychology, Science

Description Details
After the American Civil War, John R. Lynch, who had been a slave in Mississippi, began his political career in 1869 by first becoming Justice of the Peace, and then Mississippi State Representative. He was only 26 when he was elected to the US Congress in 1873. There, he continued to be an activist, introducing many bills and arguing on their behalf. Perhaps his greatest effort was in the long debate supporting the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to ban discrimination in public accommodations. In 1884 Lynch was the first African American nominated after a moving speech by Theodore Roosevelt to the position of Temporary Chairman of the Republican National Convention in Chicago, Illinois. During the Spanish-American War of 1898, he was appointed Treasury Auditor and then Paymaster under the Republicans. In 1901, he began serving with the Regular Army with tours of duty in the United States, Cuba, and the Philippines. Lynch retired from the Army in 1911, then married Cora Williams. They moved to Chicago, where he practiced law. He also became involved in real estate. After his death in Chicago 1939 at the age of 92, he was buried with milita...

Excerpt Details
Economics/Political Economy, History, Memoirs, Politics