So I know I started the book suggestion thread but that sort of went off topic into its own thing.
How important are Bohm Bawerk's three works on capital and interest-Capital and Interest, The Positive Theory of Capital,and Recent Literature on Interest?
Do they need to be read in that order? Should they be read before Mises (HA)? Before Rothbard(MES)?
What about his criticism of Marx, Karl Marx and the Close of His System?
Mises probably expected his readers to have been familiar with Bohm Bawerk the way Human Action is written. Most people would probably say read Rothbard because he's easiest to read for beginners and also corrects (along with Hayek) many of Bohm Bawerk's errors.
Having said that I would say reading the "Value and Price" part of Positive Theory of Capital and then tackling Human Action would also make a goood study plan. Just be weary of the fact Bohm Bawerk is a little bit of a cardinal utility theorist. Mises exposes the errors of such thinking in HA.
I haven't read his work on Marx, so I can't comment there. Also, I think reading all 3 volumes of Capital and Interest would be quite the task! I commend you if you can do it and are still new to this material.
"When the King is far the people are happy." Chinese proverb
For Alexander Zinoviev and the free market there is a shared delight:
"Where there are problems there is life."
One of the benefits of reading Böhm-Bawerk is that I'm not sure anybody since him has explained the minutiae of Austrian price theory.
Mises said any genuine economist should have read The Positive Theory of Capital. Now, he probably wrote that before Rothbard his treatise (and, of course, also before The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest was edited--which, of course, is not a perfect substitute).
Personnally, I really enjoyed reading The Positive Theory of Capital, even if the chapter about the "law of cost" is somewhat puzzling at the beginning. (I was also amazed to find that Böhm-Bawerk didn't strictly accept Menger's views on the aprioristic nature of economic reasoning.)
I'm less enthusiastic regarding Capital and Interest, because this book is a bit too long, but it's interesting all the the same.
I never read Karl Marx and the Close of His System because the Mises Institute PDF is not easy to read on a kindle and I'm not very confident about the integrity of the PDF published by marxist.org. But I really would like reading this book.
I suppose the best is to begin with Human Action, then to read it a second time, then a third one, and, after that, to read The Positive Theory.
Why am I in a yellow frame? It wasn't intended, but it's very nice.
Raoul:I never read Karl Marx and the Close of His System because the Mises Institute PDF is not easy to read on a kindle and I'm not very confident about the integrity of the PDF published by marxist.org. But I really would like reading this book.
Why not convert the EPUB version to MOBI/KF8 (depending on what Kindle you have)? I have taken the EPUB hosted on Mises, and converted it using KindleGen (Amazon's official Kindle program).
KF8 version (Kindle Fire and beyond, or Kindle 3 with newer firmware): http://www.mediafire.com/?78d77dqjr8f3v1h
MOBI version (older Kindles): http://www.mediafire.com/?yux2qacrpo09qu5
Also, I do not know if you are aware, but there is this program, Calibre, which many people use to organize their book collections, and also convert books from one format to the other.
http://calibre-ebook.com/download
As a side note, DO NOT use it to convert from PDF to whatever, the output document will be horrendous. If you want PDF to something else, let me know. I volunteer with converting lots of EPUBs for Mises. :)
Raoul:Why am I in a yellow frame? It wasn't intended, but it's very nice.
In the upper right of every post is a "Suggest an answer" button, it is usually used if you believe the post answered the questions very well. The forum software will then outline the post in yellow to make it stand out from the rest. And yes, you can "suggest" your own answers (I believe this might be a bug).
Thanks for your help, Tex2002ans.
I have an old kindle. Up to now, when I want to read a PDF, I sent an e-mail to my "kindle address" with the words "to convert" as the "subject" of my e-mail, and Amazon worked it out for me. The result was good enough (except that often the diagrams were deleted--annoying with MES...), but it didn't work for scanned PDF. But with “calibre”, the result is clearly better… It’s a pity I never heard of it before! Thanks!
Tex, would these work for the Kindle app on an iPhone/iPad?
z1235:Tex, would these work for the Kindle app on an iPhone/iPad?
The MOBI should definitely work fine, but I believe the "Kindle App" can't support KF8 yet. KF8 is sort of Amazon's version of EPUB, so it will be able to have a lot of the nicer formatting when compared to the MOBI format. The Kindle formats are pretty crappy though.
If you are reading it on a fancy device, why not just read the EPUB version?
I believe the iOS devices by default have iBooks to read EPUB, but I would recommend using a program which follows the EPUB standards more closely like Bluefire Reader.
https://mises.org/document/996/Karl-Marx-and-the-Close-of-His-System
Tex, thanks. That was very helpful.
ok, so here's my current reading list. right now i've got positive theory of capital before human action. is that good? should some books be moved up? moved down?
The Anti Capitalistic Mentality
What has Government Done to Our Money?
The Myth of the Robber Barons
The PIG to the Great Depression
Economics for Real People
America's Great Depression
The Panic of 1819
A History of Money and Banking in the US
Where Keynes Went Wrong
Requiem for Marx
Marxism Unmasked
Karl Marx and the Close of His System
The Tragedy of the Euro
Deep Freeze:Iceland's Economic Collapse
Antitrust:The Case for Repeal
The Conquest of Poverty
Man vs the Welfare State
New Deal in Old Rome
Transformation of the American Economy
The Bastiat Collection
Principles of Economics
The Theory of Money and Credit
Man,Economy and State w/Power and Market
The Ethics of Money Production
The Privatization of Roads and Highways
The Case for Discrimination
Making Economic Sense
The Mystery of Banking
Nation,State,and Economy
The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle
The Pure Time Preference Theory of Interest
The Positive Theory of Capital
Economic Science and the Austrian Method
The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science
Theory and History
Human Action
Capitalism and Freedom
Bureaucracy
The Failure of the New Economics
Socialism
A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism
The Socialist Tradition
Epistemological Problems of Economics
A Critique of Interventionism
Capital and Interest
Recent Literature on Interest
An Austrian Perspective
Money,Bank Credit,and Economic Cycles
Prices and Production
Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics
So you plan on reading everything in this order?
Yes.
Is that good? Or should some books be moved around?
Anyone?
I suggest you start with a couple of books and see where they take you from there. Everyone's journey is different.