Included are a wide range of works covering everything from the free market to individual rights; from environmental issues to foreign policy; and from American history to basic economic principles. These books will give any American a solid base of knowledge to better understand – and defend – the philosophy of liberty.

Books in bold are introductory works; if you're only interested in reading one or two books from each area, choose one of these.

Also included are a number of novels, plays, and children's books. They are not only entertaining, but feature a solid core of Libertarian philosophy, or illustrate libertarian principles at work. Enjoy!

1. Introductory Politics
   • Harry Browne – The Great Libertarian Offer
   • Harry Browne – Why Government Doesn't Work
   • David Boaz – Libertarianism: A Primer
   • Charles Murray – What it Means to Be A Libertarian
   • Frederic Bastiat – The Law
   • David Bergland – Libertarianism in One Lesson
   • F.A. Hayek – The Road to Serfdom
   • Rose Wilder Lane – The Discovery of Freedom
   • Ayn Rand – Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal
   • Leonard Read – Anything That's Peaceful
   • Robert Ringer – Restoring the American Dream
   • Murray Rothbard – For a New Liberty
   • Morris and Linda Tannehill – The Market For Liberty
   • James Bovard – Freedom In Chains

2. Classics of Political Thought before the 20th Century
   • Lord Acton – Essays on Freedom & Power
   • Benjamin Constant – The Liberty of the Ancients Compared with that of the Moderns
   • Auberon Herbert – The Right & Wrong of Compulsion by the State
   • Wilhelm von Humboldt – The Limits of State Action
   • Thomas Jefferson – Declaration of Independence
   • John Locke – Two Treatises of Government
   • John Stuart Mill – On Liberty
   • John Milton – Areopagitica
   • Tom Paine – The Rights of Man
   • Herbert Spencer – Social Statics; Man vs. the State
   • Lysander Spooner – No Treason
   • Henry David Thoreau – Civil Disobedience

3. The Internet
   • Kevin Kelly – New Rules for a New Economy

4. Taxes & Tax Policy
   • Charles Adams – Those Dirty Rotten Taxes
   • Sheldon Richman – Your Money Or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax
   • Amity Shlaes – The Greedy Hand

5. 20th-Century Classics of Political Thought
   • Isaiah Berlin – Four Essays on Liberty
   • James M. Buchanan & Gordon Tullock – Calculus of Consent
   • F. A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty
   • Ludwig von Mises – Liberalism
   • Albert Jay Nock – Our Enemy the State
   • Michael Novak – The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism
   • Robert Nozick – Anarchy, State, & Utopia
   • Karl R. Popper – The Open Society & Its Enemies
   • Murray N. Rothbard – The Ethics of Liberty

6. Economics – Economic History & Economic Policy
   • P.J. O'Rourke – Eat the Rich
   • D. T. Armentano – Antitrust Policy: The Case Repeal
   • Frederic Bastiat – Economic Sophisms
   • P. T. Bauer – Dissent on Development
   • James Bovard – The Farm Fiasco
   • Milton Friedman – Free to Choose; Capitalism and Freedom
   • F. A. Hayek, Ed. – Capitalism & the Historians
   • Henry Hazlitt – Economics in One Lesson
   • Ludwig von Mises – Human Action; Planning for Freedom
   • Llewellyn Rockwell, Ed. – The Free Mark Reader; Economics of Liberty
   • Murray Rothbard – Man, Economy & State; Power & Market; What Has Government Done to Our Money?
   • Adam Smith – The Wealth of Nations
   • Michael A. Walker, Ed. – Rent Control: A Pop Paradox

7. Privatization
   • Randall Fitzgerald – When Government Goes Private
   • Robert W. Poole Jr. – Cutting Back City Hall

8. History of Economic Thought
   • Alejandro A. Chafuen – Christians for Freedom: Late-Scholastic Economics
   • Israel Kirzner – The Economic Point of View
   • Tod G. Buchholz – New ideas from Dead Economists

9. Why Marxism & Socialism Don't Work
   • M. M. Bober – Karl Marx's interpretation of History
   • David Conway – A Farewell to Marx
   • Lesek Kolakowski – Main Currents of Marxism
   • Tibor R. Machan, Ed. – The Main Debate
   • Ludwig von Mises – Theory and History
   • Karl R. Popper – The Poverty of Historicism
   • J. L. Talmon – The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy; Political Messianism
   • Robert C. Tucker – The Marxian Revolutionary Idea; Philosophy & Myth in Karl Marx
   • Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk – Karl Marx and the Close of His System
   • Henry Hazlitt – Time Will Run Back
   • Trygve Hoff – Economic Calculation in the Socialist Society
   • Ludwig von Mises – Socialism

10. Foreign Trade
    • Jagdish Bhagwati – Protectionism
    • James Bovard – The Fair Trade Fraud
    • Henry George – Protection or Free Trade
    • Joan Kennedy Taylor, Ed. – Free Trade: The Necessary Foundation for World Peace

11. Foreign Policy & National Defense
    • Steven E. Ambrose – Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938
    • James Bamford – The Puzzle Palace
    • Ted Galen Carpenter, Ed. – America Entangled: The Persian Gulf Crisis & Its Consequences
    • Theodore Draper – A Very Thin Line: The Iran-Contra Affairs
    • Fred Kaplan – The Wizards of Armageddon
    • Jonathan Kwitny – Endless Enemies
    • Seymour Melman – The Permanent War Economy
    • John Prados – Presidents' Secret Wars

12. America and American History
    • Bernard Bailyn – The ideological origins of the American Revolution
    • Robert A. Caro – The Power Broker: Robert Moses the Fall of New York; The Years of Lyndon Johnson
    • Arthur A. Ekrich Jr. – The Decline of American Liberalism
    • Paul Fussell – Wartime
    • Robert Higgs – Crisis & Leviathan
    • Murray N. Rothbard – Conceived in Liberty
    • Thomas Sowell – Ethnic America
    • Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America

13. Perspectives on the World and People
    • Paul Johnson – Modem Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
    • Francis Kendall & Leon Louw – After Apartheid The Solution for South Africa
    • Thomas Gale Moore – Privatization Now or Else: The Impending Failure of Democracy and Freedom in Central Europe
    • Walter Williams – South Africa's War Against Capitalism

14. Social Policy
    • Walter Block – Defending the Undefendable
    • Peter McWilliams – Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do
    • Clint Bolick – Unfinished Business: A Civil Rights Strategy for America's Third Century; Changing Course: Civil Rights at the Crossroads
    • Henry Hazlitt – The Conquest of Poverty
    • Michael Levin – Feminism & Freedom
    • Wendy McElroy, Ed. – Freedom, Feminism & the State
    • Charles Murray – Losing Ground: American Social Policy – 1950-1980; In Pursuit of Happiness & Good Government
    • Ellen Frankel Paul – Equity & Gender: The Comparable Worth Debate
    • Joseph Peden & Fred Glahe, Eds. – The American Family & the State
    • Helmut Schoeck – Envy
    • Julian L. Simon – The Ultimate Resource; The Economic Consequences of Immigration
    • Thomas Sowell – Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality? The Economics of Race
    • William Tucker – The Excluded Americans: Homelessness & Housing Policies
    • Gordon Tullock – Welfare for the Well-To-Do
    • Walter Williams – The State Against Blacks
    • S. David Young – The Rule of Experts: Occupational Licensing in America

15. Drug Policy
    • Mike Gray – Drug Crazy
    • David Boaz, Ed. – The Crisis in Drug Prohibition
    • Ronald Hamowy, Ed. – Dealing with Drugs
    • Melvin B. Krauss & Edward P. Lazear, Eds. – Searching for Alternatives: Drug-Control Policy in the United States
    • Thomas S. Szasz – Ceremonial Chemistry
    • Steven Wisotsky – Beyond the War on Drugs

16. Education
    • John E. Chubb & Terry M. Moe – Politics, Markets & American Schools
    • Myron Lieberman – Beyond Public Education

17. Health Care
    • John C. Goodman – Twenty Myths About National Health Insurance
    • Ronald Hamowy – Canadian Medicine
    • Sam Pelzman – Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation

18. The Environment & Land Use
    • Terry Anderson & Donald R. Leal – Free Market Environmentalism
    • Walter Block, Ed. – Economics & the Environment: A Reconciliation
    • Bernard Siegan – Land Use Without Zoning
    • Richard L. Stroup & John Baden – Natural Resources

19. Law and Legal History
    • Clint Bolick – Grass-Roots Tyranny
    • David Burnham – A Law Unto itself: Power, Politics & the IRS
    • Jonathan Emord – Freedom, Technology, & the First Amendment
    • Richard A. Epstein – Takings: Private Property & the Power of Eminent Domain; A Theory of Strict Liability; Forbidden Grounds: The Case against Employment Discrimination Laws
    • Henry Mark Holzer – Sweet Land of Liberty
    • Harry Kalven – Jr., A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America
    • Stephen Macedo – The New Right Versus the Constitution
    • Felix Morley – Freedom & Federalism
    • Roger Pilon, Ed. – Flag-Burning, Discrimination & the Right to Do Wrong: Two Debates
    • Lysander Spooner – An Essay on the Trial by jury
    • Ralph K. Winter – Jr. & John R. Bolton, Campaign Finance & Political Freedom

20. Religion
    • Walter Block – The U.S. Bishops & their Critics
    • Walter Block, Irving Hexham, Eds. – Religion, Economics, & Social Thought
    • Walter Block, Geoffrey Brennan, & Kenneth Elzinga, Eds. – Morality of the Market: Religious & Economic Perspectives
    • Walter Block, Donald E. Shaw, Eds. –Theology, Third World Development & Economic justice
    • Leonard W. Levy – The Establishment Clause: Religion and the First Amendment
    • Ronald Nash – Poverty and Wealth: The Christian Debate over Capitalism
    • Ed Nelson & James Singleton – Lessons from Louisville: Observations on Christianity & Confrontation
    • Michael Novak – Free Persons & the Common Good

21. Right to Bear Arms
    • Stephen P. Halbrook – That Every Man Be Armed; A Right to Bear Arms
    • Don B. Kates Jr., Ed. – Restricting Handguns; Firearms & Violence
    • Gary Kleck – Point Blank: Guns & Violence in America

22. Regulation
    • James Bovard – Lost Rights

23. Social Change
    • Richard Ashcraft – Revolutionary Politics & Locke's Two Treatises of Government
    • Eric Foner – Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War
    • Norman Gash – Politics in the Age of Peel
    • Joseph Hamburger – James Mill & the Art. of Revolution
    • Aileen S. Kraditor – Means & Ends in American Abolitionism: Garrison & His Critics on Strategy and Tactics – 1834-1850
    • Pauline Maier – From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals & the Development of American Opposition to Britain – 1765-1776
    • John Morley – On Compromise
    • Robert V. Remini – Martin van Buren & the Making of the Democratic Party

24. Classic Fiction & Drama
    • Charlotte Bronte – Shirley
    • Elizabeth Gaskell – North & South
    • Alessandro Manzoni – The Betrothed
    • Stendhal – The Red & the Black

25. Contemporary Fiction
    • Cameron Hawley – Cash McCall; Executive Suite
    • Jonathan Lynn & Anthony Jay, Eds. – The Complete Yes, Minister; The Complete Yes – Prime Minister
    • Ayn Rand – The Fountainhead; Atlas Shrugged
    • Nevil Shute – On the Beach; Round the Bend; A Town Like Alice

26. Science Fiction
    • Robert Heinlein – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
    • John Varley – The Golden Globe
    • James Hogan – Mirror Maze; Voyage from Yesteryear
    • Ira Levin – This Perfect Day
    • C.S. Lewis – That Hideous Strength
    • George Orwell – 1984
    • Ayn Rand – Anthem
    • H. F. Saint – Memoirs of an Invisible Man
    • L. Neil Smith – The Probability Broach
    • Melinda M. Snodgrass – Circuit; Circuit Breaker; Final Circuit
    • Vernor Vinge – The Peace War; True Names

27. Children's Literature
    • Natalie S. Carlson – The Family under the Bridge
    • Rebecca Caudill – Tree of Freedom
    • Paul Galdone, illus. – The Little Red Hen
    • Donald Hall – Ox-Cart Man
    • Robert Heinlein – Between Planets; Red Planet; The Rolling Stones; Starman Jones
    • Madeleine L'Engle – A Wrinkle in Time
    • Jean Merrill – The Pushcart War
    • O. T. Nelson – The Girl Who Owned a City
    • Kate Seredy – The Singing Tree
    • Dr. Seuss – Yertic the Turtle; The Butter Battle Book; Thidwick the Big-Hearted Moose
    • Isaac Bashevis Singer – The Fools of Cheim & Their History
    • Laura Ingalls Wilder – The Little House Stories