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“It’s a seemingly impossible task to select the best of Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) whose teaching and writing career spanned six decades and whose literary output includes several mighty and timeless treatises on political economy. They were not written in isolation from the real and often horrifying events of the 20th century; they were heavily informed by the brilliance and tragedy of his life experiences – including as a refugee forced to flee his home in Vienna – in battling every form of totalitarianism.

I’ve been reading his work since the dawn of my intellectual consciousness but I’ve yet to discover the end of his capacity to illuminate the world around us. I never fail to profit from re-reading even the books I think I understand best. Learning from Mises is a lifelong project. Even so, these five essays carry amazing power, as you will soon discover.”

~ Jeffrey Tucker, Editorial Director, American Institute for Economic Research

Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (1881-1973) was an economist, historian, and philosopher. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on behalf of the market order and is best known for his 1949 book Human Action. Mises worked and taught in Vienna until he was driven out by the Nazi movement in 1934. He took sanctuary in Geneva until 1940, immigrated to the United States, and eventually taught at New York University. Mises’s colleague Friedrich Hayek viewed Mises as one of the major figures in the revival of liberalism in the post-war era. Mises’s Private Seminar in Vienna was a formative event for many social scientists of the period, and many of its alumni, including Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, emigrated from Austria to the United States and Great Britain.