I had thought I’d have to purchase Walter Block’s Defending the Undefendable, but found that it’s freely available online. I wonder if Block would defend IP piracy? I read it in pretty much one sitting and liked it (it even has funny one-panel comic strips). My objections are to the sections on the non-government counterfeiter and the litterer on public property. Sure, we can object to the government intervention that forms the background for their acts. However, given that background their acts harm others and so they are not heroes. Some months ago I got Herodutus’ Histories but left it at home while I was at school. It’s pretty good and I just finished book seven. Given the frequent references to Thucydides in the notes and its current spotlight at Voxiversity, I am considering reading up on the Pelloponnesian war after the Persian ones. Meanwhile I’ve been at part four of Der Staat for some time now and after I finish that I’ve sworn to read Public Opinion. I think part of the problem is that as long as I’m on the computer reading these I’m too tempted to read other stuff online. Any further suggestions are welcome.
UPDATE: I’ve been inspired by my own lament to finish the rest of Oppenheimer. As it progressed it began to resemble Jouvenel, but viewed from a different angle. The conclusion was disappointingly optimistic, or “Whig” as MM is putting it now. It predicted that from the constitutional/capitalist state the forces of the economic means would eventually win their long struggle with the political means and so society would evolve to statelessness. He explicitly rejects the Marxist or “proletarian”/”anarchistic” theory of revolution, which would violently destroy much of society including the beneficial stuff like division of labor. In that respect he seems to resemble Herbert Spencer, who was inspired by biological evolution (though Lamarckian rather than Darwinian), though he cites the “pre-Manchester liberals” Adam Smith and Quesnay on that point instead. Spencer only gets a nod for scoffing at racial theories. I recommend reading it together with the contrastingly pessimistic On Power.

Here are some books I don’t have yet but am thinking of acquiring:
as mentioned repeatedly, a copy of On Power to transcribe
American Gunfight by Stephen Hunter
Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan
Future Wars: The World’s Most Dangerous Flashpoints by Trevor Dupuy (read it once, would like to own it)
The Art of War in the Western World by Archer Jones (ditto)
The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom by James Burnham
The Nurture Assumption by Judith Harris
Coup Detat: A Practical Handbook by Edward Luttwak
Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers by Tom Wolfe
Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory by Randall Collins
Demonic Males by Richard Wrangham and Dale Petersen
A Farewell to Alms by Greg Clark
The Cult of the Presidency by Gene Healy
The Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko
The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs
The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas Szasz
Bureaucracy by James Q Wilson
Crisis and Leviathan by Robert Higgs
Order Without Law by Robert Ellickson and another copy of Enterprise of Law by Bruce Benson
Journey to the End of the Night or one of Michel Houllebecq’s novels for the cynical French novel quota
Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker
The Bell Curve by Murray and Herrnstein
anything Michael Scheuer has written
Plague Time by Paul Ewald
From Plato to Nato by David Gress
The Culture of Defeat by Wolfgang Schivelbusch
After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy by Chris Coyne
Either Treacherous Alliance, The Israel Lobby or Ethical Realism for a realist foreign policy fix
Better to Have Never Been by David Benatar
Der Fragebogen aka The Questionnairre by Ernst von Salomon