My GMU Econ colleague Dan Klein sent me the following e-mail, which I share with you (with Dan’s kind permission):
I’ve finished reading Daniel Hannan’s Inventing Freedom: How the English-Speaking Peoples Made the Modern World. I think that it is a very valuable book, and in many ways; it really should be read and discussed.
Like Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism it is a book that I do not always agree with, but which teaches a lot and is quite persuasive in many of its central messages. As wide-frame as Goldberg’s book is, Hannan’s is much much wider. I learned a great deal more from Hannan’s book.
Here is the awesome 3-min 2009 video of Hannan to Gordon Brown.
Here is Hannan’s recent 30-min presentation of the book at Heritage (followed by some Q & A).
Here is an informative WSJ review of the book.
Here is a 10-min interview at the Institute of Economic Affairs (London).
Hannan is clearly a strong proponent of individual liberty and free markets. But some libertarians will object to Hannan. My sense is that Hannan is not really very militaristic (here is a blog post where he says Britain probably should have stayed out of the First World War); he is for at least moderate liberalization of drugs. In the Heritage talk he flatly tells the audience to favor immigration.
