Reading List
These works are read by professors and students alike in order to better understand the moral aspects of capitalism, classical liberalism, and free societies. All titles can be purchased or read online via the link in the title. Additional works will be added on a regular basis.
On Capitalism:
Basic Economics – Thomas Sowell
Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt
The Theory of Moral Sentiments – Adam Smith
The Wealth of Nations – Adam Smith
Economic Sophisms – Frederic Bastiat
Capitalism & Freedom – Milton Friedman
The Gospel of Wealth – Andrew Carnegie
The Forgotten Man – William Graham Sumner
Human Action: A Treatise on Economics – Ludwig Von Mises
On Liberalism & Free Society:
The Law – Frederic Bastiat
Political Liberalism – John Rawls
Liberalism – Ludwig Von Mises
The Road to Serfdom – Friedrich Hayek
The Social Contract – John-Jacques Rousseau
Reflections on the Revolution in France – Edmund Burke
The Second Treatise of Government – John Locke
The Gulag Archipelago – Aleksandr Solyzhenitsyn
On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom – David Boaz
On the United States:
Suicide of the West – Jonah Goldberg
The Closing of the American Mind – Allan Bloom
Democracy in America – Alexis De Tocqueville
The American Democrat & Other Political Writings – James Fenimore Cooper
On Philosophy:
The Quest For Cosmic Justice – Thomas Sowell
The Prince – Niccolo Machiavelli
Crime & Punishment – Fyodor Dosvtoevsky
Notes From The Underground – Fyodor Dosvtoevsky
A Treatise of Human Nature – David Hume
Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes
Self-Reliance – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Nichomachean Ethics – Aristotle
The Republic – Plato
Treatise on Law – St. Thomas Aquinas
On Obligations – Cicero
Anarchy, State, and Utopia – Robert Nozick
Fiction:
Atlas Shrugged – Ayn Rand
The Fountainhead – Ayn Rand
Animal Farm – George Orwell
1984 – George Orwell
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
Harrison Bergeron – Kurt Vonnegut
Fahrenheit 451 – Ray Bradbury
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
The Three Theban Plays: Antigone; Oedipus the King; Oedipus at Colonus – Sophocles
The Iliad & The Odyssey – Homer
The Oresteia Trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, The Furies – Aeschylus
On the Imperial Crisis & Revolutionary Era (Primary Source):
The Letters of Novanglus – John Adams
The Federalist Papers – Hamilton, Madison, Jay
Considerations on the Propriety of Imposing Taxes in the British Colonies – Daniel Dulany
A Dissertation on the Canon & Feudal Law – John Adams
Massachusetts Circular Letter – Sam Adams
Letters From a Farmer in Pennsylvania – John Dickinson
Notes on the State of Virginia – Thomas Jefferson
A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives – James Otis Jr.
The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved – James Otis Jr.
Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists – James Otis Jr.
Washington’s Farewell Address – George Washington
Common Sense – Thomas Paine
On the Revolutionary Era (Secondary Source):
Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation – Joseph J. Ellis
America’s Revolutionary Mind – C. Bradley Thompson
John Adams & the Spirit of Liberty – C. Bradley Thompson
The Birth of the Republic, 1763-1789 – Edmund S. Morgan
1776 – David McCullough
John Adams – David McCullough
The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution – Bernard Bailyn
The Radicalism of the American Revolution – Gordon S. Wood
The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 – Gordon S. Wood
Friends Divided: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson – Gordon S. Wood
On Property Rights:
The Guardian of Every Other Right – James Ely
Cornerstone of Liberty – Timothy Sandefeur
Supreme Neglect – Richard Epstein
Takings: Private Property & the Power of Eminent Domain – Richard Epstein
The Noblest Triumph – Tom Bethell
Property & Freedom – Richard Pipes
The ideas in these writings are not necessarily endorsed by Exploring Capitalism or the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism but rather, ideas which we believe are valuable when it comes to studying and understanding the moral aspects of capitalism and classical liberalism.