Reason’s Brian Doherty reports that one of the great resources for libertarian and classical liberal books is shutting it’s doors at the end of the month:
A great libertarian institution is on its way out this month (though they have not yet officially announced it on their web site): Laissez Faire Books, the libertarian book store turned libertarian book mail order operation.
Until the advent of places like Amazon, LFB was one of the only places around to find books by guys like Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo (to name just a few). And, especially back in the 80’s and early 90’s it’s print catalog was both a great source of reading material and information about what the intellectual side of the libertarian movement was up to.
For quite some time, I was a very loyal customer. Though they moved to Little Rock, Arkansas at some point, the store started out in New York City before making it’s way to San Francisco, where it was when I visited the city in 1991. There wasn’t much to the store itself, but it was still pretty cool to visit a bastion of libertarianism in the middle of the People’s Republic of San Francisco.
While I’m not sure why they’re closing up shop, I’m sure it has something to do with the same reason I haven’t purchased much from them in years — it was just easier and cheaper to get stuff on Amazon. Sad ? Maybe, but that’s the free market.
Nonetheless LFB will be missed.
October 16th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
You can still get some hard-to-find titles from the Mises.org website.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:34 pm
Hey, I do some business with LFB, and I have a list of 320 of their titles. It’s not exhaustive, but it’s definitely a good list regardless. The list links to where you can still buy the books with a price comparison.
Anyway, my blog is not exactly fresh but this particular article is worthwhile I think.
http://www.ththth.com/2007/10/laissez-faire-books-rip.html