A Treasure in Leather

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A Treasure in Leather

13th Nov 2006, 19:04 GMT

We've thought long and hard about the ultimate gift from the Mises Institute store. Of course, giving the complete Mises Collection or Rothbard Collection would be generous, to say that least. But let's say you could pick a single treasure from the whole catalog, something that would elicit a lifetime of appreciation, not only for its content but also for its beauty and quality. What would it be? Here is what we suggest: A full, top-grain, leather-bound edition of Murray's Rothbard's two-volume Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought. This is the sort of treasure you acquire once in a lifetime. A student of liberty, at any stage of life, would thrill to own a set. In fact, books aren't made this way anymore, certainly not for sale at the retail level. Most leather books are of the "bonded" sort—which is to leather what glued sawdust is to solid mahogany. We wanted the real thing. To make this possible, we went looking for an old-world bindery that could the job by hand and only with the best materials. We were so pleased to find a company named Grimm Binder that was founded in 1854. It maintains its high standards to this day. We reserved some copies out of the first print run, and had the bindery prepare them in the most special way to make a book for the ages. The goal was to create a book that would appreciate in value not only for its contents but also for its physical beauty and durability—a "luxury book" that would stand out in any collection, a perfect unity of intellect and art. The result is awe inspiring. As for the contents, this is Rothbard's masterpiece of intellectual history, the product of a lifetime of study and research, 1084 pages of dazzling scholarship. The history of thought has never been so engagingly and thoroughly presented. It takes the reader through an energetic tour of ideas from the ancient world through the late 19th century. Economics was the last of the sciences to be subjected to scientific analysis. It has been a field of study populated by amazing geniuses and dangerous crackpots. Rothbard has a remarkable knack for showing who is who and why. In particular, he has a nose for the personal detail that led to theoretical error and finally economic catastrophe. Academic reviewers love his treatment, but so do lay readers. Here is a customer review posted on Mises.org site: "Rothbard's two-volume book is simply stupendous. But as I'm now an aspiring student of liberty, rather than a Marxoid fool, staring out nervously from my own Platonic cave, I always try to follow Robert LeFevre's dictations on subjectivity by trying to be as objective as possible. Apparently, this means I have to pick some kind of fault with even the greatest of texts. So what's wrong with this book? Just one thing. As with Tolkien's own opinion of Lord of the Rings, it simply isn't long enough." It deserves to be honored, and, more than that, read and understood by every generation of students. Such will be the case 100 years from now.

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