Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Excellent
Review: I read this book shortly after its publication, a few years ago. I think it may be the best general book on economics published in the 90's.
Rating:
Summary: Wondrous Work Needs Muscular Arms
Review: I should say that a couple of weeks ago I read with enthusiasm and thanks Professor Reisman's book "The Government Against the Economy" (a work incorporated into the present volume consisting of several chapters), and am in the process of reading the author's "Capitalism." One thing I wish is that the present work could be subdivided and published as a series of more convenient-to-hold volumes, perhaps in quality paperback. Professor Reisman is, without question, the most interesting, most readable economist I have ever read, even including the great Ludwig von Mises himself. I remember reading Mises' "Socialism" to great effect some thirty years ago, but was never able to make it all the considerable way through "Human Action." It functioned more as an abstruse reference work, not as a workaday compendium of useful arguments, close analyses, and well-chosen illustrative examples that one might use in ordinary conversation, in writing letters to the editor or Congressman, or explaining to one's children, or giving to one's college students who are likely as not to be assigned texts in college designed to obscure or make unintelligible a subject Reisman's work illuminates brightly and clearly. Professor Reisman is an excellent writer, and I am simply awestruck at the simple hard work--the indefatigable labor--"Capitalism" represents, and it deserves the wider audience a more portable edition would make possible. I have written to Professor Reisman about this concern. Perhaps if others find his work as compulsively readable --you read that correctly--as compulsively readable as I do, you might want to contact him or the publishers. Normally, I take a book to read with me for those occasions when I have to wait for others, or grab a quiet meal when I am out and about. I really miss not having a portable version of "Capitalism" to take with me. The book is that good! I have considered photocopying a few chapters to take with me on those times, but since the publisher and the author would be cheated, I am thinking alternately of taking this massive and heavy tome and tearing it up into convenient-to-hold sections. Let us hope a publisher hears of this problem. I would love to make gifts of separate volumes, each with its own title, in hopes I could spread the enlightenment Professor Reisman's great gift to humanity has made possible.
Rating:
Summary: A book bound together by glue and string? Brilliant!
Review: I'm only writing this review because I'm a hopeless mindless doctrinaire dodobird nerd who reads too much specialized literature because he has no life, too much money, not enough money, or.... OK guys I'm just kidding! This is really an epic, a tour de force, a watermark in the history of ideas, etc. Unfortunately, like Mises' Human Action, this holy grail of magnanimous and logical reasoning may remain in the dustbins of many libraries, professorial shelves, and Amazon warehouse stock rooms. It's just too long, too deep, and too un-Keynesian (I know that's the point, I'm just saying) AT THIS POINT for it to have the impact it would in another, perchance a more libertarian, epoch. OK, a couple of comments on the gentleman's review focusing on Professor Reisman's attacks on the mathematics of our science. Firstly, you should have saved your breath and said, "I'm a big 'ol positivist and would prefer you bow to our wonderful method". Would have been more honest. Reisman is not a positivist, nor a cliometrician, nor an econometrician. So he didn't write the book YOU would? So what? You're COMPLAINING about a method that Prof. Reisman implicitly, explicitly, and overtly ATTACKS, an argument that undergirds virtually every sentence, chapter and verse, of this gargantuan tome. I don't agree with positivism, and think it's outmoded, lazy, and thin, but that's not my point here. I don't hate math; I'm thoroughly trained in it. Engage the book. However, I equally find dismay for Reisman's Randian Objectivism. Does he really help its cause by hewing towards it's every pillar apparently with blinders on? What I mean to say is that 95% of the sentences in the review in question do a fine job if Reisman were a staunch positivist who didn't understand the essence of his own chosen method (positivism). Engage the text. Most readers simply won't. This one didn't. Secondly, I don't think the reviewer actually read the book. That's just my opinion. At bare, not in a way he would surely demand of an opponent. I also agree with the earlier reviewer who was curious about Prof. Reisman's attacks on Rothbard. They seem a little, er, personal, don't they? Or should I say political? I'm actually not sure. I get the notion throughout this book that Reisman is somehow resentful of Rothbard's ginormous influence in the libertarian community. I know this because there is no possible way we could assume that he didn't know about Rothbard's stature in the libertarian milieu, yet he conspicuously plays it down and childishly ignores it. That, and his primary attack on Rothbard centers on a claim the doctor made in his book "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" about the U.S. being the aggressor against Communist Russia. In a somewhat trivial, anti-nonaggression sense, he's right. But Dr. Reisman takes it out of context and runs with it, brown journalism style. I think that the both of them are heavyweights in this the world of ideas and persuasion. I know that Reisman creeps people out a little with his incestuous (connation) with Rand, and Rothbard in his out of fashion a priori proclivities, but the beauty, passion, elegance, and profundity of their writings deserve much attention. Anyway, on to Reisman. I wish I'd studied under him @ Pepperdine, but I didn't, I went to UCSD. And frankly, I wish he'd come out with a summary of this book but I guess one's already out, it's called "Economics for Everyday People" by Gene Callahan. Read this book, positivists, collectivists, and dodobird doctrinnaires alike. It is a beacon, and a sigil, for brilliant minds and protean intellects who want to understand the logic of action behind business cycles, the theory of interest (time preference), statist interventionism, the architectonics of the structure of production, the capitalist process, entrepreneurism, and the deeply complex economy in which we live. Dr. Reisman's crowning achievement, however, is his reconciliation of the "classical" economists, primarily Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and J. B. Say with modern Austrian economics as being basically part and parcel to the same intellectual mise en scene. His commandeering of these thinkers from the grips of Marx, Engels, and the rest is a beautiful coup, and I think you'll agree as to the verdict when you finish this great and very important opus.
Rating:
Summary: A book bound together by glue and string? Brilliant!
Review: I'm only writing this review because I'm a hopeless mindless doctrinaire dodobird nerd who reads too much specialized literature because he has no life, too much money, not enough money, or.... OK guys I'm just kidding! This is really an epic, a tour de force, a watermark in the history of ideas, etc. Unfortunately, like Mises' Human Action, this holy grail of magnanimous and logical reasoning may remain in the dustbins of many libraries, professorial shelves, and Amazon warehouse stock rooms. It's just too long, too deep, and too un-Keynesian (I know that's the point, I'm just saying) AT THIS POINT for it to have the impact it would in another, perchance a more libertarian, epoch. OK, a couple of comments on the gentleman's review focusing on Professor Reisman's attacks on the mathematics of our science. Firstly, you should have saved your breath and said, "I'm a big 'ol positivist and would prefer you bow to our wonderful method". Would have been more honest. Reisman is not a positivist, nor a cliometrician, nor an econometrician. So he didn't write the book YOU would? So what? You're COMPLAINING about a method that Prof. Reisman implicitly, explicitly, and overtly ATTACKS, an argument that undergirds virtually every sentence, chapter and verse, of this gargantuan tome. I don't agree with positivism, and think it's outmoded, lazy, and thin, but that's not my point here. I don't hate math; I'm thoroughly trained in it. Engage the book. However, I equally find dismay for Reisman's Randian Objectivism. Does he really help its cause by hewing towards it's every pillar apparently with blinders on? What I mean to say is that 95% of the sentences in the review in question do a fine job if Reisman were a staunch positivist who didn't understand the essence of his own chosen method (positivism). Engage the text. Most readers simply won't. This one didn't. Secondly, I don't think the reviewer actually read the book. That's just my opinion. At bare, not in a way he would surely demand of an opponent. I also agree with the earlier reviewer who was curious about Prof. Reisman's attacks on Rothbard. They seem a little, er, personal, don't they? Or should I say political? I'm actually not sure. I get the notion throughout this book that Reisman is somehow resentful of Rothbard's ginormous influence in the libertarian community. I know this because there is no possible way we could assume that he didn't know about Rothbard's stature in the libertarian milieu, yet he conspicuously plays it down and childishly ignores it. That, and his primary attack on Rothbard centers on a claim the doctor made in his book "For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto" about the U.S. being the aggressor against Communist Russia. In a somewhat trivial, anti-nonaggression sense, he's right. But Dr. Reisman takes it out of context and runs with it, brown journalism style. I think that the both of them are heavyweights in this the world of ideas and persuasion. I know that Reisman creeps people out a little with his incestuous (connation) with Rand, and Rothbard in his out of fashion a priori proclivities, but the beauty, passion, elegance, and profundity of their writings deserve much attention. Anyway, on to Reisman. I wish I'd studied under him @ Pepperdine, but I didn't, I went to UCSD. And frankly, I wish he'd come out with a summary of this book but I guess one's already out, it's called "Economics for Everyday People" by Gene Callahan. Read this book, positivists, collectivists, and dodobird doctrinnaires alike. It is a beacon, and a sigil, for brilliant minds and protean intellects who want to understand the logic of action behind business cycles, the theory of interest (time preference), statist interventionism, the architectonics of the structure of production, the capitalist process, entrepreneurism, and the deeply complex economy in which we live. Dr. Reisman's crowning achievement, however, is his reconciliation of the "classical" economists, primarily Adam Smith, David Ricardo, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, and J. B. Say with modern Austrian economics as being basically part and parcel to the same intellectual mise en scene. His commandeering of these thinkers from the grips of Marx, Engels, and the rest is a beautiful coup, and I think you'll agree as to the verdict when you finish this great and very important opus.
Rating:
Summary: A book bound together by glue and string? Brilliant!
Review: I'm only writing this review because I'm a hopeless mindless doctrinaire dodobird who reads too much specialized literature because he has no life, too much money, not enough money, or.... OK guys I'm just kidding! This is really an epic, a tour de force, a watermark in the history of ideas, etc. Unfortunately, like Mises' Human Action, this gold nugget of magnanimous and logical reasoning may remain in the dustbins of many libraries, professorial shelves, and warehouse stock rooms. It's just too long, too deep, and too un-Keynesian AT THIS POINT for it to have the impact it would in another, perchance a more libertarian, milieu. OK, a couple of comments on the gentleman's review focusing on Professor Reisman's attacks on the mathematics of our science. Firstly, you should have saved your breath and said, "I'm a big 'ol positivist and would prefer you bow to our wonderful method". Would have been more honest. Reisman is not a positivist, nor a cliometrician, nor an econometrician. So he didn't write the book YOU would? So what? You're COMPLAINING about a method that Prof. Reisman implicitly, explicitly, and overtly ATTACKS, an argument that undergirds virtually every sentence, chapter and verse, of this HUGE book. I don't agree with positivism, and think it's outmoded, lazy, and thin, but that's not my point here. I don't hate math. I equally find dismay for Reisman's Randian Objectivism. What I mean to say is that 95% of the sentences in the review in question do a fine job if Reisman were a staunch positivist who didn't understand the essence of his own chosen method (positivism). But it just ain't so, son. Secondly, I don't think the reviewer actually read the book. That's just my opinion. At bare, not in a way he would surely demand of an opponent. I also agree with the earlier reviewer who was curious about Prof. Reisman's attacks on Rothbard. They seem a little, er, personal, don't they? Or should I say political? I get the notion throughout this book that Reisman is somehow resentful of Rothbard's ginormous influence in the libertarian community. Say it ain't so, Georgie? I think that the both of them are heavyweights in this the world of ideas. I know that Reisman creeps people out a little with his incestuous seeming connation with Rand, and Rothbard in his a priori proclivities, but the beauty, passion, elegance, and profundity of their writings deserve much attention. Anyway, on to Reisman. Great leader of the dodobirds he is. Frankly, I wish he'd come out with a summary of this book but one's already out, it's called "Economics for Everyday People" by Gene Callahan. So yeah, I love the Austrians. That much is confessed. But read this book, positivists, collectivists, and dodobird doctrinnaires alike. It is a beacon, and a sigil, for brilliant minds and intellects who want to understand the logic of action behind business cycles, the theory of interest (time preference), state intervention, the architectonics of the structure of production, the capitalist process, entrepreneurism, and the deeply complex economy in which we live.
Rating:
Summary: Superb
Review: It is hard to think how one cannot come away from reading this book in some way deeply moved by its thesis, much less thoroughly persuaded by it. Having spent 1,000 full-size double-column pages elaborating on every aspect of every economic issue imaginable, covering all the basics in a format suitable for laymen as well as technical students, and having covered every objection ever raised to the capitalistic (i.e., laissez faire, free market, private property) system, every point that could be raised in its defense, and every point that could be made against any alternative system, the burden of proof now rests clearly on the side of Dr. Reisman's opponents. The only problem with this book, which would drive away many potential readers, is the size and the cost! Otherwise, it would be worth buying up as many copies as one could in order to give to as many people as possible. In the literature of the classical liberal, free market tradition, or of economics as such, this one has got to rank among the top 3 of all time.
Rating:
Summary: If you only read one book on Economics - This is it!
Review: Objective, based on reason, and complete. This book covers everything anyone could ever want to learn about economics. For those of you frustrated with Economics at school, this book has the answers you're looking for. The publisher is at "Capitalism.net", and they DO have copies available. Go there.
Rating:
Summary: The Best Introductory College Economics Textbook on Market.
Review: Professor Reisman has done what no other modern economics textbook writers has done. He has written a great introductory college economics textbook that is clear, comprehensive, precise, and epistemologically sound. What makes this textbook standout from the others is because his book clearly explaines the history of the conflicting economic theories underlying the present while simulatinously giving detailed explaination of each conflicting theory and their connections to each other. "Capitalism" is a refreshing departure from the current cabal of mediocre economic textbook writings and it would be an excellent tome to supplement or even replace the current introductory economics textbooks in colleges.
Rating:
Summary: A through defense of Capitalism: The Moral and the Practical
Review: Reisman defends Capitalism on the only grounds that it should properly be defended on: Reason. His approach is not pragmatic - merely that it is the system that has happened to work, rather he develops theory and then shows the practical results. This book is a MUST for any serious defender of Capitalism. Among other topics, Reisman destroys the prevailing ideas of Environmentalism and Monopolies.
Rating:
Summary: A through defense of Capitalism: The Moral and the Practical
Review: Reisman defends Capitalism on the only grounds that it should properly be defended on: Reason. His approach is not pragmatic - merely that it is the system that has happened to work, rather he develops theory and then shows the practical results. This book is a MUST for any serious defender of Capitalism. Among other topics, Reisman destroys the prevailing ideas of Environmentalism and Monopolies.
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