The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority - Softcover

Lane, Rose Wilder

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1503117553 ISBN 13: 9781503117556

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014

Synopsis

Rose Wilder Lane an American journalist, travel writer, novelist, and political theorist, lived from 1886 until 1968. She was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and widely considered a silent collaborator on the Little House series. She is noted – with Ayn Rand and Isabel Paterson – as one of the founding mothers of the American libertarian movement. This is her non-fiction book (1943), one that had a huge impact on American libertarian thought in the 20th century. Here we have an eloquent hymn to human energy and its creative power. Her prose is stark and strong, the product of decades of experience in attempting to get readers to listen, and succeeding.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

A half-century ago, when the world was engulfed in war and hundreds of millions were enslaved, Rose Wilder Lane wrote this passionate book which reasserted the supreme importance of individual liberty. In the Discovery of Freedom, she talks not about rulers marching through history, but the epic struggle of ordinary people who defy rulers to raise families, produce food, develop industries, pursue commerce and in myriad ways improve human life. It is the 6,000-year-old struggle of individuals to discover that they can be free.

Review:

The impact of Discovery creeps up on you. It begins with sentiments that seem simple and even self-evident. But as you proceed, you find yourself simply understanding so much about the world we live in that you should have known, but didn't. That is the power of the novelist at work: Lane makes you see the truth, and comprehend it, too.--Roy A. Childs, Jr. in Laissez Faire Review -- Roy A. Childs, Jr. in Laissez Faire Review

[This is] a work that is so powerful it may well have launched the modern freedom movement. Originally published in 1943, Discovery had the impact of a lightening bolt, setting intellectual fires that burn brighter than ever among the modern intellectuals who are leading the growing assault on government control of our lives.

This is a book of timeless importance. It must be read by anyone who is seriously interested in the heritage of liberty--not just in America, but the world over. And reading it is a joy. Lane, who is said to have written the book 'at white heat,' was at once a brilliant thinker and a gifted storyteller.

This book is a withering attack on statism, nationalism, and what Nobel Laureate F. A. Hayek calls the 'fatal conceit' of national economic planning. It is an intellectual tour de force that stood up to the collectivist paradigm of its time and pointed the way to rediscovering the principles of the American Revolution--a true revolution unlike those of the Old World that 'are revolutions only in the sense that a wheel's turning is a revolution.' Her exciting description of the revolutionary period (you can tell she wishes she'd been there to lend a hand to Paine, Mason, Jefferson and the gang) is the best of a brilliant book.

Rose Wilder Lane was a truly remarkable woman. Like Jefferson, she attacked life, living it to the fullest, as adventurer, journalist, world traveller, iconoclast, and just prior to her death, war corespondent in Vietnam. Not surprisingly, the clear-eyed determination and supercharged energy she brings to attacking the enemies of liberty in Discovery is unique among prominent proliberty writers. -- Ed Crane, president, Cato Institute

About this edition

• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1503117553
• ISBN 13: 9781503117556
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 278