You Should Read "After War"

Over the holiday weekend, I read co-blogger Chris's new book After War, which is just terrific (thanks for the copy Pete and Chris).  The book is very clearly written and very accessible to the non-specialist, not to mention that it offers an excellent political economy analysis of post-war reconstruction.  Chris uses tools from across economics and political science to argue why attempts at such reconstruction are normally likely to fail.  His last chapter provides an alternative vision of US foreign policy, where free trade in goods, services, and ideas (unilaterally if necessary) is the path to economic growth and democratization, rather than military intervention, occupation, and/or reconstruction. That last chapter cries out for further work by other scholars in the classical liberal tradition.

If you're in DC, be sure to check out Chris's book forum at Cato today .

Congrats Chris!

Comments

[Peter Boettke]

Steve,

I know that I am very close to the project, but I think I can still be objective. I consider Chris's book to actually be the most important book on the most important topic of our age. I hope it gets the attention it deserves and all the praise it is due. I actually think of Chris's work as this generations version of Mises's _Nation, State and Economy_. In his preface to that work Leland Yeager used a phrase that I have often repeated for what we strive in our work "analytical in diagnoses and humanitarian in recommendations". Chris Coyne's _After War_ contributes more than any other book to this tradition in tackling pressing issues of public policy. And as Murray Rothbard demonstrated in "Laissez-Faire Radical: The Quest for the Historical Mises," _Nation, State, and Economy is the work of a rational radical, and the same can be said of Coyne. His defense of a modern form of Manchesterism as the only way out of our current mess created by the war-state.

So I repeat, the most important book on the most important topic of our age. For the sake of humanity, lets hope _After War_ gets a wider reading than _Nation, State, and Economy_ did.

Pete