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

OLL’s October Birthday: Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 – July 31, 1784)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

October’s OLL Birthday Essay is in honor of the French polymath Denis Diderot.  Most famous as the editor and inspiration of the Encyclopédie, Diderot also published works on philosophy and art, as well as novels, and plays, and was crucially important in establishing the intellectual framework for the French Revolution and the subsequent development of Liberalism.  

Ilia Chavchavadze on Adam Smith, Free Trade, and the Future of the United States

By: Irakli Javakhishvili

In a previous article, we have already talked about the views of the founder of Georgian liberal thought, Prince Ilia Chavchavadze, on private property. It should be noted that his reviews were not limited to only internal issues;…

Anne Dowriche: War, Treason and Shakespeare.

By: Joanne Paul

Thirty years into the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, a small book appeared in the London market. The frontispiece identified it as ‘The French Historie’ and noted that it was ‘published by A. D.’. Only when the reader perused the…

The Three Theological Virtues Revealed: The Wife of Bath’s Tale

By: Nathaniel Birzer

The Wife of Bath’s Tale is likely the single-most selected work from Chaucer’s corpus to be used in the classroom. Yet this tendency to single it out also works to obscure the Tale’s role in the larger story, the connections which…

Future of Liberty Podcast Notes: Katherine Mangu-Ward on politics

By: Amy Willis

In the second episode of Liberty Fund’s new Future of Liberty podcast, hosted by Mitch Daniels, Daniels welcomes Reason magazine’s Editor-in-Chief Katherine Mangu-Ward to discuss the ever changing role of journalism in a free…

Introducing The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776

By: Christy Lynn Horpedahl

Reading Room readers, meet your revolutionary new friend: The Pamphlet Debate on the American Question in Great Britain, 1764-1776 Collection.

A Goodbye to a Good Man

By: Michael Zigismund

The movement for human freedom just lost one of its great champions. The Cato Institute’s “North Star,” David Boaz, passed away on June 7, 2024, at the age of 70. I commend you to read the many heartfelt remembrances already…

Joseph Priestley: “Enlightenment Man”

By: Walter Donway

If anyone does, Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) warrants the description “Renaissance man.” But, to avoid confusion, since Priestley lived a couple of centuries after the Renaissance, let me argue here that this “Enlightenment man,” as…

The Market for Liberty in Ancient China

By: Roderick T. Long

In his 1956 book The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, free-market economist Ludwig von Mises wrote:
“The idea of liberty is and has always been peculiar to the West. What separates East and West is first of all the fact that the peoples…

Crouchbackus Contritus: Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor Trilogy as a Chivalric Romance

By: Nathaniel Birzer

Several far-better known and experienced reviewers than I have written on Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honor Trilogy, noting the resemblance of its major romantic sub-plot to the prophet Hosea while at the same time generally consigning…

John Milton—Secret Fan of The Crown?

By: Daniel Ross Goodman

For those of you who, like me, became hooked on Netflix’s award-winning drama about Queen Elizabeth II and the modern British monarchy during the Covid lockdown (or, in my case, shortly thereafter), the end of The Crown was somewhat…

OLL’s May Birthday: Friedrich von Gentz (May 2, 1764 – June 9, 1832)

By: Peter Carl Mentzel

This May’s Birthday Essay is in honor of the political journalist and statesman Friedrich Gentz. Though born a commoner, he called himself von Gentz after he was knighted by the Swedish crown in 1804. Gentz made an intellectual…

Shaftesbury’s Theory of a “Moral Sense” Sets the Direction of the British Enlightenment (Part 2)

By: Walter Donway

“T’was Mr. Locke that struck all fundamentals, threw all order and virtue out of the world...” Lord Shaftesbury
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