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Ludwig von Mises Institute

June 2007: Explorers Foundation invested $250 in The Ludwig von Mises Institute to assist in the publication of The Last Knight of Liberalism, a biography of Ludwig von Mises, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann.
 





A description of the book, and a table of contents

Video of a talk on Mises by Jörg Guido Hülsmann & text about the biography, including full table of contents. Especially interesting for anyone interested in the explosion of creativity in all fields manifested in early 20th century Vienna.
Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism, by Jörg Guido Hülsmann, October 2007.
The author: Jörg Guido Hülsmann
His website: http://www.guidohulsmann.com
The biography will be released at the 25th anniversary of the Mises Institute, October 12-13, 2007
From Virgil, Mises took as his lifetime motto: Tu Ne Cede Malis, "Do Not Give in to Evil."
A brief biography of Ludwig von Mises - by Lew Rockwell, President & Founder, Mises Institute
Human Action, by Ludwig von Mises, 1949
Human Action — the complete work online with table of contents and interactive index — webpage
In the "Foreword to the Fourth Edition", Bettina B. Greaves writes:

Mises' contribution was very simple, yet at the same time extremely profound. He pointed out that the whole economy is the result of what individuals do. Individuals act, choose, cooperate, compete, and trade with one another. In this way Mises explained how complex market phenomena develop. Mises did not simply describe economic phenomena -- prices, wages, interest rates, money, monopoly and even the trade cycle -- he explained them as the outcomes of countless conscious, purposive actions, choices, and preferences of individuals, each of whom was trying as best as he or she could under the circumstances to attain various wants and ends and to avoid undesired consequences. Hence the title Mises chose for his economic treatise, Human Action. Thus also, in Mises' view, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" was explainable on the basis of logic and utilitarian principles as the outcome of the countless actions of individuals.
 
From a Mises Institute introduction to Human Action, on publication of the Scholar's Edition:

Fifty years ago, Ludwig von Mises shocked the economics profession and elite opinion with a massive, revolutionary treatise on economics, the culmination of his life's work. It was (and remains) the most comprehensive, systematic, forthright, and powerful defense of the economics of liberty ever written.

It appeared at a time when Western intellectuals were looking to positivism as the savior of social science, and socialism as the ideal economic system. Thus, the attacks began immediately. John Kenneth Galbraith condemned it. The New York Times dismissed it. The American Economic Review denigrated it. The New Republic sneered at it. The Progressive denounced it.

But the pile-on didn't work.

In time, Human Action would become academic bestseller and sweep all before it. As a total reconstruction of market theory from the bottom up, it recruited a whole new generation of free-market economists, and changed history. Even today, the breadth and scope of this great work has yet to be matched. What does the book cover? In a word, everything.

After the dust settled, it was Murray N. Rothbard who had it right in 1949. He wrote of Human Action: "Every once in a while the human race pauses in the job of botching its affairs and redeems itself by producing a noble work of the intellect.... To state that Human Action is a ‘must' book is a greater understatement. This is the economic Bible of the civilized man."
Discovery of the "Lost Papers" of Ludwig von Mises, by Richard M. Ebeling, Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics, Hillsdale College
"What Would Mises Do?" bumper sticker from: FreeColorado : CafePress.com
To be continued ...
Mises Institute
Bibliography of Mises work
Review of Human Action, by Murray N. Rothbard
Quotations

.oOo.