The Reading Room

The OLL blog explores the fascinating, vital, and often surprising texts and people that fill our library. Come talk in our library!

Unlocking the Mystery of the Beauty that Launched a Thousand Ships

By: Anna Leman

Homer’s Iliad relates gruesome details of the horrific war between the Achaians and the Trojans over the beautiful Helen of Sparta. The question in every reader’s mind: How could the beauty of one woman inspire such devastation? How could Helen’s face launch a thousand ships? 
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Purge Your Enthusiasm: The Life-Changing Legacy of America’s Greatest Post-Seinfeld Comedy Series

By: Daniel Ross Goodman

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David’s hilarious and highly admired follow-up to Seinfeld, has wrapped up its twelfth and final season. Throughout this last season of what has perhaps been the greatest American comedy series since…
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Herbert Spencer, Slavery & Income Tax

By: Charles Amos

In Anarchy, State and Utopia, Robert Nozick recounted ‘The Tale of The Slave’ the theme of which is that income taxation is slavery. For a long time, I thought this was Nozick’s own idea; but upon visiting the footnotes it turns out…
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James Baldwin Shows We Have More to Learn About Liberty for All

By: Sabine El-Chidiac

James Baldwin was one of the greatest American writers, a civil rights activist, and someone who stood up for Black liberty. He was not a libertarian, but those interested in liberty should take heed of his words and the way he…
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Charles Murray on Dignity and the American Dream

By: Anna Leman

Mitch Daniels sings nothing but high praise of Charles Murray, for the social scientist says what no one else will. In this Future of Liberty episode, Daniels and Murray discuss some of Murray’s boldest claims about social welfare,…
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Self-Help with Smiles

By: Caroline Breashears

While self-help books have been around for millennia, the popularity of the genre owes a great deal to Samuel Smiles's Self-Help: With Illustrations of Character and Conduct. 
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Reading is, and should always be, a pleasure

By: Carlos Alejandro Noyola Contreras

I buy books. Lots of them. Lots of books. For years, if I remember correctly, I haven't spent a week without adding - at least - a new book to my library.
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Marlowe, Goethe, and the Faust Legend

By: Gary McGath

The Faust legend has held the imagination of Western culture for many years. Variants of the story have appeared as stage works, poems, novels, and even instrumental music. The man who makes a deal with the Devil sometimes achieves…
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Why You Should Read Adam Smith

By: Amy Willis

Our friends at the University of Louisville's McConnell Center launched an interesting program this year in which they are asking authors and experts to tell us why WE should read the books that helped shape them or those that have…
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The Libertarian With the Guillotine

By: Janet Bufton

Isabel Paterson's argument against government charity hasn't held up, but it still offers important lessons about liberal, and libertarian, politics.
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George Washington’s Rules of Civility

By: Steve Ealy

John Adams, in a letter dated April 22, 1812, confided to Benjamin Rush his belief  that George Washington was “too illiterate, unlearned, unread for his station and reputation.” This was not the first time that the…
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The Satyr Play: The Friar’s Tale and the Summoner’s Tale

By: Nathaniel Birzer

Geoffrey Chaucer’s attack on the clergy in his prologue to The Canterbury Tales takes on new life in the form of the rivalry between the Friar and the Summoner, who each take their turn following the Wife of Bath. In their…
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Cato and George Washington

By: Walter Donway

I suspect many admirers of the American Revolution fail to appreciate the influence that the history of ancient Rome, its philosophers and statesmen, and its fate exerted on our founders—almost all Age of Enlightenment thinkers in…
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The Reading Room Archives

Reading Room Contributors

Anna Leman

Anna Leman

Daniel Ross Goodman

Daniel Ross Goodman

Charles Amos

Charles Amos

Sabine El-Chidiac

Sabine El-Chidiac