If you are fed up with Washington boondoggles, and you like the small-government, politically-incorrect thinking of Ron Paul, then you'll love Tom Woods's Meltdown. In clear, no-nonsense terms, Woods explains what led up to this economic crisis, who's really to blame, and why government bailouts won't work. Woods will reveal:

* Which brave few economists predicted the economic fallout--and why nobody listened
* What really caused the collapse
* Why the Fed--not taxpayers--should have to answer for the current economic crisis
* Why bailouts are band-aids that will only provide temporary relief and ultimately make things worse
* What we should do instead, to put our economy on a healthy path to recovery

With a foreword from Ron Paul, Meltdown is the free-market answer to the Fed-created economic crisis. As the new Obama administration inevitably calls for more regulations, Woods argues that the only way to rebuild our economy is by returning to the fundamentals of capitalism and letting the free market work.

This is Murray Rothbard's most famous monetary essay--the one that has influenced two generations of economists, investors, and business professionals.

After presenting the basics of money and banking theory, he traces the decline of the dollar from the 18th century to the present, and provides lucid critiques of central banking, New Deal monetary policy, Nixonian fiat money, and fixed exchange rates. He also provides a blueprint for a return to a 100 percent reserve gold standard.

The book made huge theoretical advances. He was the first to prove that the government, and only the government, can destroy money on a mass scale, and he showed exactly how they go about this dirty deed. But just as importantly, it is beautifully written. He tells a thrilling story because he loves the subject so much.

(This book is available free online and can also be downloaded as a pdf.)

Henry Hazlitt wrote this book following his stint at the New York Times as an editorialist. His hope was to reduce the whole teaching of economics to a few principles and explain them in ways that people would never forget. It worked. He relied on some stories by Bastiat and his own impeccable capacity for logical thinking and crystal-clear prose.

Written for the non-academic, it has served as the major antidote to fallacies in the popular press, and has appeared in dozens of languages and printings. It's still the quickest way to learn how to think like an economist. And this is why it has been used in the best classrooms more than sixty years.

Many writers have since attempted to beat this book as an introduction, but have never succeeded. Hazlitt's book remains the best.

(This book is available free online and can also be downloaded as a pdf.)

With insight and candor, Libertarianism In One Lesson answers all the common questions about the freedom philosophy: What exactly is libertarianism? What are its historic roots? Are libertarians conservative or liberal? What would libertarians do to solve America's most vexing problems? And does libertarianism work in the "real world"?

The book lays out the central premise of libertarianism -- "You own yourself" -- and reveals how that deceptively simple statement has a wide-ranging impact on the relationship between government and individuals.

This book presents the theoretical and practical arguments for liberalism. The term comes from the Latin word 'liber' (free). Mises defines liberalism as 'the liberal doctrine of the harmony of the rightly understood interests of all members of a free society, founded on the principle of private ownership of the means of production'.

The foundation of liberalism, Mises says, rests on an understanding and appreciation of the institution of private property, social cooperation, the freedom idea, ethics and morality, democracy and the legitimate role of government. Liberalism is not a political party. The liberal program offers no special privileges to anyone; it aims at securing equality under law for everyone, so as to allow equal opportunity to all human beings to make their own choices and decisions. The role of government should be limited to protecting the lives, property, and freedom of its citizens to pursue their own ends and goals.

(This book is available free online and can also be downloaded as a pdf.)

Most commonly accepted economic "facts" are wrong. Here's the unvarnished, politically incorrect truth. The liberal media and propagandists masquerading as educators have filled the world--and deformed public policy--with politically correct errors about capitalism and economics in general. In The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, myth-busting professor Robert P. Murphy, a scholar and frequent speaker at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, cuts through all their nonsense, shattering liberal myths and fashionable socialist cliches to set the record straight. Murphy starts with a basic explanation of what capitalism really is, and then dives fearlessly into hot topics like:

* How labor unions actually hurt workers more than they help them

* Why increasing the minimum wage is always a bad idea

* Why the free market is the best guard against racism

* How capitalism will save the environment--and why Communist countries were the most polluted on earth

* Raising taxes: why it is never "responsible"

* Why no genuine advocate for the downtrodden could endorse the dehumanizing Welfare State

* The single biggest myth underlying the public's support for government regulation of business

* Antitrust suits: usually filed by firms that lose in free competition

* How tariffs and other restrictions "protect" privileged workers but make other Americans poorer

* The IMF and World Bank: why they don't help poor countries

When the world financial system failed in 2008, world governments intervened decisively. Guided by economics teams with impeccable credentials, they intended not only to "stimulate" the economy, but to "jolt" it back to borrowing and spending as usual. All of these actions were taken from a playbook devised by British economist John Maynard Keynes, by far the most influential social thinker of the past century.

But . . . not all economists agree. Some critics of Keynesian orthodoxy ask: Isn't the root problem that Americans have borrowed too much? Will even more borrowing, this time by government, really help us out of the bind we are in? Should we be relying so completely on Keynes? What if he is wrong? What evidence is there that he is right?

These are important questions. If Keynes is wrong, then so are the economic policies of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and virtually all world governments today.

Where Keynes Went Wrong presents the economic arguments that will shape our future in a lively, stimulating, and transparently clear style.