History

Creating Christ provides a trove of unprecedented insights about the genesis of the modern world’s most popular religion. All interested in Christianity’s provenance would do well to read this boldly original book.

Louis Menand is a writer of great gifts, whose 2000 book The Metaphysical Club is a masterpiece of intellectual history. Unfortunately, The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War fails to recapture the magic. That’s partly because despite its bulk—880 pages—it’s curiously incomplete.

Celebrate the 85th anniversary of Ayn Rand's We the Living by picking up a copy—and smile “to so much that [is] possible” when people are free to pursue their values.

Award-winning writer Virginia Postrel discusses the stasist/dynamist divide, how it impacts people’s views on such things as style and glamour, and the incredible (though oft-overlooked) achievements that made possible the modern textile industry.

Oedipus the King has been considered a masterpiece for two and a half millennia. No less a luminary than Aristotle called it the ideal tragedy. But today’s readers are often disturbed by its apparent injustice. How is it fair that the gods consign Oedipus—a genuine hero who strives to avoid committing the sins for which he is damned—to such an awful fate?

Thomas Reid is not only an excellent foil against which to compare and better understand Ayn Rand’s views, his fierce wit, clear exposition of philosophic problems, and insightful solutions make him a thinker worth reading in his own right.

Root’s book provides a thoroughly researched and readable introduction to the arguments that formed the basis of what has rightly been called the “refounding” of the United States a century and a half ago—and that remain relevant today.

"Karl Marx taught that if you are a capitalist, you’re controlled by your so-called 'class interest,' but, of course, there is no such thing. People make decisions based on the ideas they accept as true." —George Reisman

Far from a history of liberty, de Dijn’s book is a conscious effort to undermine that concept and to substitute in its place what she calls a “democratic conception of freedom,” which, in principle, amounts to collective control over every aspect of individual behavior.

Chernobyl explores the reasons for a monumental catastrophe and illustrates how it was magnified by the evasion and denial of those in charge.