Radicals for Capitalism by Brian Doherty

Two great new reviews of Rads, each with a special twist: Don Meinshausen, one of the book’s characters (send as a government spy to infiltrate SDS, fell under Karl Hess’s spell, and turned on his masters) links the libertarian story with my other book, on Burning Man, in a very interesting way.

And one of my favorite rock n’ roll writers, proud reactionary Chris Stigliano, says his piece–entertaining and enlightening–at his Black To Comm blog. He shouts out to my own rock n’ roll past, especially the Sawdust Caesars and my old Surrender zine–which he notes I failed to mention in my bio in RADS. And he’s right–I should not have failed to do so.

Two things I neglected in revamping the blogroll the other month are now there: the Politico review and the Cato Unbound spinoff essay (under the “excerpts and op-eds”) heading.

On May 26.

I proofed the new cover earlier this week, and its Amazon page is up. And yes, buying in through that link spins some pennies my way toward my book habit. Thank you all for your support.

If you are anywhere in Michigan, please think of coming to see me Wed. at 4 p.m., speaking at Hillsdale’s conference on “Free Markets and Politics Today.” See here for all the details, and here for maps and directions to campus.

In its new and interesting web journal First Principles, the Institute for Intercollegiate Studies (whose early history as the “Intercollegiate Society for Individualists” is related in Rads) has Gregory Schneider (who himself wrote a very good book about right-wingers in the ’60s, Cadres for Conservatism) review Rads, and nicely too I might add. The blurby quotes:

….massively pleasurable history, Radicals for Capitalism. Everything you ever wanted to know about libertarianism (literally)—and some things you didn’t want to know—is covered in this enthralling volume, ….. I would be remiss not to say that Doherty has done for libertarianism what George H. Nash did a long time ago for conservatism—he has provided a comprehensive narrative of the history of modern libertarianism. Like Nash’s work, Doherty’s volume is authoritative without being dull and dry.

………

……the freedom movement Doherty describes will continue to attract radicals and individualists ready to man the barricades against the power of the state. Considering the usual eccentricities of libertarians, they may even be dropping acid while doing so.

Journalist Alex Massie (who has written for The Scotsman, The Daily Telegraph, The New Republic, National Review Online, The Sunday Telegraph, Scotland on Sunday, The Sunday Business Post, among others) fingers RADS as “book of the year.”

Over at the nifty libertarian news and analysis site Last Free Voice, Alex Peak is liveblogging his reading of Rads. Check out his first entry.

Also, I’ve finally figured out how to reorganize and update the blogroll to the right properly, with loads of new permalinks to the op-eds and excerpts spun off the book (7 so far), print interviews with me about the book (6 so far), reviews (23 so far), and online clips of video interviews and speeches. Should have more of those to add, and some audio interview clips as well, but at least you now know what everything is.

From the always valuable David Gordon. He has some nits to pick, to be sure. My main defense from most of his thrusts: acknowledging and quoting people regarding controversies and differences of opinion in a very contentious movement in a work of journalistic history does not, to my mind, mean that I am myself taking sides or am required in my own authorial voice to give a deep personal assessment on the validity of the controversial position; it is merely being fair to the historical record of the controversies. As I think should be abundantly clear to any reader of the book, my respect for, say, Ron Paul and Murray Rothbard is huge; and especially in the latter case the book gives all the information needed for the reader to make draw conclusions as to the validity of those–and David knows they are many–in the movement who think less of Rothbard than I do, or than David does.

I’ll be appearing, along with longtime libertarian journalist and gadfly James Bovard (author of many great books, most recently Attention Deficit Democracy), at a Freedom Seminar tomorrow (Saturday Nov. 10) in the Portland, Oregon area. (One of my very first published bits of libertarian related writing was a review of his great book on farm policy, The Farm Fiasco.)

“Freedom’s Fate: Bearish or Bullish” is the name of the overall event. My two talks are “The Libertarian/Right-Wing Split” (at 9:30 a.m.) and “Why Studying the Libertarian Movement’s History Made Me Optimistic About Its Future” (at 1:30 p.m.)

James Bovard’s blog.

Full information, address and agenda for the event at the Crowne Plaza Hotel at 14811 Kruse Oaks Blvd (technically in Lake Oswego OR) here. The cost is $45 at the door including lunch. I hope to see many of you there. Especially you.