CATEGORY: STUDY (10 min)
 

10 Books You Need to Read Before You Graduate College

There’s one foolproof way to get a first-rate college education, no matter what your major or alma mater.

Reading. And not just for your classes—but for your soul and intellect.

Every year, Professor Elizabeth Hooten Wilson recommends and teaches ten books that, as C.S. Lewis put it, enable you to “see with myriad eyes.”

How Many of These Have You Read?

We’ll get you started with three of her recommendations:

1. Dante’s Divine Comedy. Dante’s timeless poem provides hope and a map to anyone feeling lost and afraid.
    
2. Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. We all suffer. Douglass is the powerful example of someone who suffered greatly, and became great because of it.
    
3. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. Solzhenitsyn’s towering work reminds us that evil doesn’t reside primarily in ideologies or groups, but runs through every human heart.

Hit the link for the complete list.

CATEGORY: ECONOMICS (8 min)
 

Why Ideas Dictate What We Think Is in Our Self-Interest

You’ve heard that conservative adage: “Ideas have consequences.”

The economist Ludwig von Mises made a similar argument in 1957. In his book Theory & History, he wrote:

“What a man considers his interest is the result of his ideas.”

What Mises meant was that people have an idea of what they want first, and then they pursue it.

In other words, you have an idea of what a Bible is, and why you’d like one, before you decide to buy a copy.

Meanwhile, Karl Marx believed that only he, the messiah of the class struggle, knew what people wanted. And it wasn’t Bibles.

Why Marx Assumed His Policy Was the Best and Only Policy

The Mises Wire recently published an excerpt of Theory & History, and it’s a deeply informative—and critical—analysis of Marx’s theories.

It’s also a great sample of the cutting thought of Ludwig von Mises, who is easily one of the most underrated economists in history.

CATEGORY: HISTORY (2 min)
 

The Roots of American Order [Infographic]

Russell Kirk, the godfather of modern American conservatism, argued that America owes its founding principles to five cities.

This gorgeous infographic breaks down those cities and their contributions.