One of our important on-going major initiatives has been to facilitate the translation, publication, and distribution of introductory free market books throughout the world.
Project
Publications
What We Do
Publishing, translating
How to Think about the Economy: A Primer, by Dr. Per Bylund
Per Bylund will make you excited about what economics has to offer. Economic literacy is mind-opening. Sound economic reasoning is an enormously powerful tool for understanding both the economy and society. Economic literacy uncovers what is going on under the surface and why things work out as they do. There is no magic to it. In fact, economic literacy is necessary to properly understand the world. This little book was written to accomplish something big: economic literacy. It is intentionally kept very short to be inviting rather than intimidating. You will gain life-changing understanding of how the economy works in practically no time.
Death by Regulation: How We Were Robbed of a Golden Age of Health and How We Can Reclaim It, by Dr. Mary J. Ruwart
This important new book exposes how the well-intentioned 1962 Kefauver Amendments greatly expanded the powers of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The new regulations tremendously increased the time and expenses of developing new drugs, forced the shutdown of small pharmaceutical companies, caused a major loss of innovation, and corrupted many sectors of the medical industry. Dr. Ruwart shows how these controls led to the premature deaths of millions of Americans, and how, because of the global power of the US government, threatens the health of people around the world. She suggests reforms that would improve drug safety, greatly reduce the costs of medicine, and increase individual liberty in health-care matters.
Healing Our World: The Compassion of Libertarianism (4th edition 2016, 451 pp. PB) by Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D..
The best primer on the principles and benefits of individual liberty. Dr. Ruwart shows how following the moral code of the Non-Aggression Principle as a Good Neighbor in both one’s personal life and political action can lead to enriching the poor, protecting the environment, deterring crime, defuse terrorism, and solve numerous other economic and social problems. The book contains over 1000 citations on how voluntary action has improved conditions in the real world. Her “kinder, gentler” approach has made Healing Our World an especially effective vehicle for explaining the compassion of libertarianism to liberals.
“Both those seeking an introduction to the libertarian philosophy and veteran libertarians looking for better ways to share their philosophy – especially with liberals, environmentalists, Christians, or pragmatists – will benefit from Healing Our World. I thank Dr. Ruwart for updating this wonderful book”.
From the foreword by former presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul
Short Answers to the Tough Questions: How to answer the questions Libertarians are often asked (Expanded Edition 2012, 286 pp. PB) by Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D.
As a libertarian, are you often frustrated that you cannot convince non-libertarians about how libertarian ideas will solve the questions they bring up like “What about the poor? What about the roads? What about this, that, and the other thing?”
Mary Ruwart, one of the liberty movement’s outstanding spokespersons, author of the award-winning liberty primer Healing Our World, and frequent Libertarian Party candidate (and current Board Chair for Liberty International), ran into these questions, and sat down to figure out short, persuasive answers. For many years she published them in a monthly column for the Advocates for Self Government entitled “Ask Dr. Ruwart”.
These hundreds of questions and answers are now compiled in this book. This is a great resource for any libertarian engaged in any form of outreach.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible by Ken Schoolland, Ph.D.
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible tells the story of a boy who becomes shipwrecked on an unfamiliar island after being swept out to sea in a storm. Having previously lived in a relatively free society, in this new strange land he experiences culture shock as he learns of bewildering laws and traditions of the island’s inhabitants. The story highlights the absurdities of the laws, the controls imposed on people’s lives, and the economic drawbacks of these laws.
The laws highlighted are recognizable as common to many countries throughout the world. As the story unfolds, the part individuals in society play in political decision-making and personal responsibility is introduced for discussion.
The book has now been translated into 54 languages! Click here for a full list.
Original Liberty International Pamphlets, various authors
While our main focus is on building the international liberty movement, we contributed substantially to U.S. movement outreach in past years with our Educational Pamphlet Series. These are single-sheet 8.5”x 11” tri-folds which concisely present the moral principles of liberty combined with practical solutions to our economic and social problems.
From the 1970s through the early 2000s, the original Society for Individual Liberty and then the merged International Society for Individual Liberty, Inc. distributed nearly 5 million copies through local Libertarian groups across the US and Canada. We even had our own printing press!
Times have changed, but the need for concise, effective presentation of liberty ideas has not. And for all the growth of the liberty movement in recent years, we face a stiff challenge from the prevalent and destructive ideas of political correctness, resurgent Marxism (particularly on campuses), Keynesian economics, nasty populism, and rising militarism around the world.