READINGS in Social Science & Law

You can read more about these books and buy any of them at by just clicking on the titles

The Future and Its Enemies: The Growing Conflict Over Creativity, Enterprise and Progress, Virginia Postrel

• This book expresses my own political and social ideas and values in the context of current events and issues better than the work of any other writer I've encountered. Postrel has done a very good job in this book of expressing exactly why I find the terms "left" and "right" and "conservative" and "liberal" to be worthless, empty icons. Instead, she finds the labels "stasist" and "dynamist" better descriptions of the real divisions in culture and politics in the current era. If you read only one book about current events and politics this year, make it this one. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
• Two Signposts on the Road to a New Enlightenment: My extended review of Consilience by Edward O. Wilson and The Future and Its Enemies by Virginia Postrel
  • The same review in Extropy Online Magazine
• dynamist.com: Virginia Postrel's web site devoted to the ideas developed in this book

Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama

• Continuing his analysis of modern society in the aftermath of the Cold War, Fukuyama follows up his book The End of History and the Last Man with a detailed view of the role that trust plays in a number of societies. He identifies the concept of trust as one of the basic ingredients of civil society, labeling it the essential element of what he calls "social capital" -- a resource that can be cultivated and squandered, depending on the choices made by a society's leaders and institutions. Highly Recommended

The Libertarian Reader: Classic and Contemporary Writings from Lao-Tzu to Milton Friedman, Edited by David Boaz

• Highly recommended resource of the basic texts of liberty, both for the newcomer to freedom and the committed libertarian.

Law and Legal Theory in the UK and USA, Richard A. Posner

• Judge Posner collects here his three Clarendon Law Lectures at Oxford University. He contrasts the jurisprudential philosophy, substantive law and economic legal culture of the U.K. and the U.S. Among other things, he makes the surprising conlcusion that the current U.K. legal system is closer to the Continental system than it is to the U.S. and shows that simple reforms in which one system might seek to adopt isolated practices from the other would be unwise. Recommended to the serious student of comparative legal theory and practice.

The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn

• This volume won Bailyn the Pulitzer Prize for history. Bailyn here expands his exhaustive technical scholarship on the pamphlet literature of the American Revolution to a wider discussion of the currents of thought in which the Founders conceived the republic. Recommended to the serious student of Anglo-Amercian Enlightenment political theory and practice.

The Origins of Virtue, Matt Ridley

• Richard Dawkins blurbed this book like this: "If my The Selfish Gene were to have a Volume Two devoted to humans, The Origins of Virtue is pretty much what I think it ought to look like." This book melds Dawkins' basic thesis with the insights derived in the last two decades from thinking about the iterated prisoners' dilemma to sketch a "natural history" of human morals. Recommended.

A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini and Richard Lannon

• A very well-written survey of the "state of the art" in cognitive science on the subject of love. References to literature and the arts and an easy writing style make this a real treasure. Highly Reccomended.

The Passion of the Western Mind, Richard Tarnas.

• Described as "a liberal education in one volume", this is a very readable history of Western thought from the pre-Socratic Greeks through "post-modernism". The book concentrates mainly on the history of metaphysics and epistemology (as the ground for the great story of the Copernican revolution), and suffers from a less well-developed treatment of moral and political thought. Recommended.

The Machinery of Freedom, David Friedman

• A book oft-cited as a "basic text" of modern anarcho-capitalist legal thinking and worth its reputation. It is insightful and witty. If you're wondering, "what are all these anarchist crazies on the Web talking about?" you should read this short book. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Freedom and the Law, Bruno Leoni.

• As a series of lectures, this book doesn't read as well as it would have if it had been edited by the author as a book, but good discussion of libertarian legal ideas, especially the tendency of legislatures to "over-rule".

Private Truths, Public Lies : The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Timur Kuran

• A technical exploration of the role of "preference falsification", i.e. false expressions of real preferences about matters of public policy and social life. Kuran offers a valuable addition to the understanding of phenomena such as revolutions and apparent sudden shifts in public opinion. RECOMMENDED.

Reflections on a Ravaged Century, Robert Conquest

• Robert Conquest is a noted British "sovietologist" (and was a foreign policy advisor and speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher - and also is a noted science fiction writer!). In this book he looks back on the roots and development of totalitarian ideologies in the 20th century and discusses at length the contrasts between societies that fell prey to those ideological contagions and ones that proved largely immune to them. Especially engaging is Conquest's informed depiction of the thorough corruption of civic society under Soviet communism in Russia. Very well written: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Sleeping With Extra-Terrestrials : The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety, Wendy Kaminer

• Following up on themes found in her 1992 book I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, Kaminer examines the causes and effects of irrationalism in American public life and pop culture. Very entertaining and well-written, this book is a valuable guide to the loony and pious turn so much of our public discourse has taken recently. Recommended

The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State, Bruce L. Benson.

• Very good discussion of privately-produced law, including interesting discussion of pre-state common law practices.

The Transparent Society, David Brin

• A book about the values of openness and secrecy in a world that will be transformed by new information technologies such as the net and micro-surveillance technologies. Brin stakes out a position in distinction to the advocates of thoroughgoing privacy who have been perhaps the most vocal element of the cyberspace community. I found much with which to agree in Brin's identification of openness as a key secondary value in support of a free society and agree that his position is not as radical as it has been characterized to be by some who have criticized the book. I disagree with any position Brin might be taking (it's actually had to tell, in the end) in opposition to such cryptographic tools as pubic key encryption. The book is a necessary counterpoint in an on-going dialogue. Highly recommended.

The Postmodern Turn, Steven Best, Douglas Kellner

• A historical and analytical overview of postmodernism by two authors basically sympathetic to the fundamental concepts. A good introduction and, for those previously unfamiliar with postmodernism, a work that makes clear how modern Western academia has worked itself into a quagmire of self-doubt, contradiction and irrelevancy (although this is not the authors' intent). Recommended as a good single-volume overview of the subject (but a warning: contains dense postmodernist and Marxist jargon; if you're allergic to Marxist jargo, beware!)

No Turning Back,Wallace Kaufman -- HIGHLY RECOMMENDED --

• I highly recommend this book for anyone in environmental issues, the "environmentalist movement" and generally our relationship to nature. Kaufman is a self-confessed "recovering environmentalist", conservationist and science journalist. A listing of chapter titles reveals the scope and subject matter of the book:
  • Confessions of an Environmentalist
  • The Search for Authority
  • An Opposition Movement is Born
  • The Roots of Environmental Thinking in America
  • Searching for a New Sense of the Sacred
  • Winning the Public Away from Science
  • Nature as We Want It: Can the Environmental Movement Adapt to the New Ecology?
  • Who Owns Nature?
  • Technology to the Rescue
  • This is Not the End, But the Beginning
• Kaufman, who has been an "insider" in leading environmentalist groups, traces the anti-scientific development of the American environmental movement from its roots in late 18th century romanticism through it's modern anti-capitalist political activism. He makes a compelling case for privatist approaches to conservation and the employment of advanced, intelligent technology to natural resource management issues. Kaufman explores scientifically reasonable definitions of "nature" in light of the special place of humans and current insight into the chaotic nature of complex systems. His scientifically critical, but ultimately optimistic, approach to environmental questions such as global warming, deforestation, wetlands and wilderness preservation, species extinction, land and other resource use and human population growth are clear and encouraging expressions of extropian values.

Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life, David Friedman

• Friedman employs his informal and witty style to walk the reader through "Economics 101" using, as the title suggests, examples from everyday life. Not a "radical" book like The Machinery of Freedom, Hidden Order defends the free market using homespun wisdom, illustrated with the basic tools of technical economics.

The Spike, Damien Broderick

• Perhaps the first book-length treatment of the transhumanist idea of the Singularity. A good overview of the technological and social issues raised by the possible coming superacceleration of progress. Discusses the ideas of Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Frank Tipler, Max More and others who have been seminal in the formation of transhumanist thinking. Even though I don't agree with Broderick's political economics, I think the book does a good job of introducing the key ideas of transhumanism, especially to a public not yet familar with them.

Unrugged Individualism: The Selfish Basis of Benevolence, David Kelley

• In this small book, Kelley makes a compelling case that benevolence is a rational corollary of egoist morality. Kelley writes from the heart of "orthodox" Randian objectivism, but his work should be of interest to a broader audience than it will likely reach.

Improving Nature, Michael J. Reiss and Roger Straughan

• An overview of the moral and ethical dimensions of genetic engineering. Reiss is a biologist and Anglican priest and Straughan is an academic moral philosopher. The book presents a surprisingly (to me) positive view of human control of biological destiny via genetic engineering. Unfortunately, neither author is likely to receive a Pulitzer prize for their writing style...

On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace, Donald Kagan

• Kagan explores the causes of war by looking at specific examples: The Peloponnesian War, the Second Punic War, the First and Second World Wars and a war that didn't happen, the Cuban Missile Crisis. Includes a well-written critique of the diplomatic strategy of appeasement.

Why Gods Persist : A Scientific Approach to Religion, Robert A. Hinde

• A dense and poorly-written book that attempts to catalogue all the various reasons that religious belief and practice persist despite the Enlightenment. The subject deserves much better. Not recommended.

The New Renaissance: Computers and the Next Level of Civilization, Douglas S. Robertson

• Disappointing musings on the impact of computer technology on changes in society. The book begins well with discussion of the idea that each true revolutionary change in civilization has come with advances in information tehnology (i.e. spoken language, writing, printing . . .) But Robertson then takes a detour into a detailed discussion of the impact of computers on the development of mathematics, following up with brief, unimaginative essays on other areas of culture. No new ideas here: this book would have been interesting in, say, 1960, but Robertson really misses the boat on the true impact that computer technology will have.

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