The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List

Author: Brendan McCord · Source: brendanmccord.com/readinglist · Shared: March 9, 2026, saved to Kyle’s “Books To Read” Apple Note

A structured curriculum rather than a list of favourites — four parts, sixteen sub-sections, each introduced by an essay on why that body of thought matters to someone building things. 214 entries; 70 carry a ☑️ on the source page. The page gives no legend for that mark, so it is recorded here as it appears.

Not every entry is a book: the list mixes primary texts with encyclopedia entries, journal articles, a podcast episode, course handouts and single chapters.

• The Republic — Plato/Bloom ☑️
• Meno — Plato ☑️
• Theaetetus — Plato ☑️
• Gorgias — Plato
• The Unity of Plato’s Gorgias — Plato
• Nicomachean Ethics — Aristotle ☑️
• Politics — Aristotle ☑️
• The Education of Cyrus — Xenophon
• Memorabilia of Socrates — Xenophon
• Hiero — Xenophon
• Athens & Sparta: Democracy vs. Dictatorship — Brand ☑️
• History of the Peloponnesian War — Thucydides ☑️
• The Ancient City — de Coulanges
• Creation — Vidal ☑️
• The House of Wisdom — Lyons ☑️

Renaissance and Enlightenment Political Thought

• The Prince — Machiavelli ☑️
• On the Citizen — Hobbes ☑️
• Second Treatise of Government — Locke ☑️
• A Letter Concerning Toleration — Locke ☑️
• The Discourses — Machiavelli
• The New Atlantis — Bacon
• Spirit of the Laws Book 20 — Montesquieu ☑️
• The Machiavellians — Burnham ☑️
• A New World Begins — Popkin
• Reflections on the Revolution in France — Burke
• The First and Second Discourses — Rousseau ☑️

History of Political Philosophy and the Natural Right Tradition

• The Lessons of History — Durant ☑️
• The Collapse of Complex Societies — Tainter ☑️
• Natural Right and History — Strauss ☑️
• Norms of Liberty — Rasmussen/Uyl
• The History of Civilization in Europe — Guizot
• On The Use and Abuse of History for Life — Nietzsche
• History of Political Philosophy — Strauss/Cropsey
• What is Political Philosophy? — Strauss ☑️
• Strauss Summary — Stanford ☑️
• How and Why the West Has Lost Confidence in Its Foundational Political Principles — Pangle. Chapter in broader text

The American Experiment

• Democracy in America — de Tocqueville ☑️
• Tocqueville — Mansfield. Helpful to read prior to the full text ☑️
• The Federalist Papers — Hamilton/Madison/Jay. #1, 10, 23, 27, 47-51, 63, 70-72, 84
• The Machiavellian Moment — Pocock
• What the Anti-Federalists Were For — Storing
• Toward a More Perfect Union — Storing/Bessette
• As Far As Republican Principles Will Admit — Diamond
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin — Franklin ☑️
• The People Shall Judge — Chicago or The Founders Constitution, Chicago. Deep dive on key American documents, used for years in the undergraduate curriculum at University of Chicago
• Abraham Lincoln: A Complete Biography — Charnwood ☑️
• Crisis of the House Divided — Jaffa
• Land of Hope — McClay
• The Spirit of Modern Republicanism — Pangle
• The English Radical Whig Origins of American Constitutionalism — Mayer ☑️
• Novus Ordo Seclorum — McDonald
• The Education of Henry Adams — Adams ☑️
• History Has Begun: The Birth of a New America — Macaes

Liberalism, Democracy, and Pluralism

• On Liberty — J.S. Mill ☑️
• The Autobiography of John Stuart Mill — J.S. Mill ☑️
• In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government — Murray
• The Good Society — Lippmann
• Liberty or Equality — Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn
• Radicals for Capitalism — Dougherty
• Rawls Summary — and Nozick Summary, Stanford
• Overdoing Democracy — Talisse
• Sustaining Democracy — Talisse
• Liberalism in Dark Times — Cherniss
• The Righteous Mind — Haidt ☑️
• Confident Pluralism — Inazu

Modern Conservatism

• The Vision of the Anointed — Sowell ☑️
• Politics of Prudence — Kirk ☑️
• A Conflict of Visions — Sowell
• Intellectuals and Society — Sowell
• The Meaning of Conservatism — Scruton
• Neoconservatism — Kristol
• The Conservative — Emerson

Marxism and Collective Psychology

• The Opium of the Intellectuals — Aron
• The Intellectuals and Socialism — Hayek ☑️
• Wild Swans — Chang ☑️
• Mao: The Unknown Story — Chang ☑️
• Homage to Catalonia — Orwell ☑️
• Karl Marx — Berlin
• The Communist Manifesto — Marx/Engels
• Marx-Engels Reader — Tucker. The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 and On The Jewish Question
• The True Believer — Hoffer
• The Captive Mind — Milosz
• Rivalry and Central Planning — Lavoie
• The Political Economy of Soviet Socialism — Boettke
• The Gulag Archipelago — Solzhenitsyn ☑️
• The Power of the Powerless — Havel
• Witness — Chambers
• Darkness at Noon — Koestler ☑️
• A People’s Tragedy — Figes
• Pictures of the Socialistic Future — Richter
• Insurgent America: Revolt of the Middle-Classes — Bingham
• The File: A Personal History — Ash

Anarcho-Capitalism

• The Machinery of Freedom — Friedman
• The Enterprise of Law — Benson
• For a New Liberty — Rothbard

Political Economy

Foundations of Modern Economics

• Essay on the Nature of Trade in General — Cantillon. Gene Epstein, former economics editor at Barron’s and a staunch Austrian, always insists that modern economics starts with this book rather than Adam Smith. A key strength of Cantillon’s is that he provides the first analysis of entrepreneurship
• Theory of Moral Sentiments — Smith ☑️
• Wealth of Nations — Smith. Smith seemingly advocates for a labor theory of value, which was later used by Marx against a market economy ☑️
• Basic Economics — Sowell

Austrian School Economics

• Constitution of Liberty — Hayek. The second chapter, “The Creative Powers of a Free Civilization,” which was originally intended to be expanded into a book on its own, is especially sacred ☑️
• The Road to Serfdom — Hayek ☑️
• The Use of Knowledge in Society — Hayek ☑️
• Principles of Economics — Menger
• Socialism — Mises
• Human Action — Mises
• The Last Knight of Liberalism — Hulsmann ☑️
• Hayek’s Challenge — Caldwell ☑️
• Hayek, A Life — Caldwell
• F.A. Hayek: Economics, Political Economy, and Social Philosophy — Boettke
• Mont Pèlerin 1947 Transcripts — Caldwell
• Man, Economy, and State — Rothbard
• Competition & Entrepreneurship — Kirzner ☑️

Chicago School Economics

• Free to Choose — Friedman ☑️
• Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit — Knight
• Capitalism and Freedom — Friedman
• The Economic Approach to Human Behavior — Becker

Public Choice Theory

• Public Choice: Politics without Romance — Buchanan ☑️
• Government Failure: A Primer on Public Choice — Tullock/Seldon/Brady
• Robust Political Economy — Pennington
• The Calculus of Consent — Buchanan/Tullock
• Why I, Too, Am Not a Conservative — Buchanan
• Crisis and Leviathan — Higgs
• Logic of Collective Action — Olson
• Government’s End — Rauch
• Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers — Leighton/Lopez
• Democracy and Political Ignorance — Somin
• The Myth of the Rational Voter — Caplan

Institutions, Property Rights, and the Law

• Simple Rules for a Complex World — Epstein. Relates to Hayek’s writing on the conflict between our atavistic tribal instincts, which are similar in impulse to the communist dream, on the one hand, and the “extended order” of abstract, impersonal laws which are necessary for large scale cooperation
• The Problem of Social Cost — Coase
• Remembering Ronald Coase — Downes
• The World According to Coase — Friedman
• Uncertainty, Evolution, and Economic Theory — Alchian
• The Property Rights Paradigm — Alchian/Demsetz
• Lessons from the Kibbutz on the Equality-Incentives Trade-off — Abramitsky
• Solomon’s Knot: How Law Can End the Poverty of Nations — Cooter
• The Nature of the Firm — Coase
• Ronald Coase on Externalities, the Firm, and the State of Economics — Coase
• Yoram Barzel and the Economics of Institutions — Lueck
• The Mystery of Capital — De Soto
• Capitalism, the Commons, and Divine Right — Barnes

Evolution of Institutions and Public Administration

• Beyond Markets and States: Elinor Ostrom’s Nobel Prize Speech — Ostrom
• Understanding Institutional Diversity — Ostrom
• The Intellectual Crisis in American Public Administration — Ostrom
• Elinor Ostrom Summary — Wikipedia
• The Evolution of Everything — Ridley
• Living with Water Scarcity — Zetland
• Douglass North Summary — Wikipedia
• Oliver Williamson Summary — Cambridge
• Richard Posner Summary — Wikipedia
• Seeing Like A State — Scott
• Intelligence and Democratic Action — Knight
• Charter Schools and Their Enemies — Sowell ☑️
• Community Revival in the Wake of Disaster — Storr/Haefele/Grube

Law and Legal Theory

• A Matter of Interpretation — Scalia ☑️
• The Concept of Law — Hart
• Law, Legislation, and Liberty — Hayek ☑️
• The Law — Bastiat

Ethics, Morality, and Personal Growth

Pursuing the Good Life: Ethics and Personal Growth

• The Closing of the American Mind — Bloom ☑️
• After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory — MacIntyre
• Personal Destinies — Norton
• Emile — Rousseau/Bloom
• On the Good Life — Cicero
• On Duties — Cicero
• Meditations — Aurelius
• The Intellectual Life — Sertillanges
• Man’s Search for Meaning — Frankl ☑️
• Reasons and Persons — Parfit
• The Abolition of Man — Lewis

Capitalism, Morality, and Culture

• The Secret of Our Success — Henrich
• Mind, Modernity, and Madness — Greenfeld
• Economics and Sociology — Swedberg
• The Struggle for a Better World — Boettke
• Be the Solution — (chapters by Mackey, de Soto, Strong), Strong ☑️
• Defending the Free Market: The Moral Case for a Free Economy — Sirico
• The Moral Economists — Rogan
• Race and Culture — Sowell
• Theory of the Leisure Class — Veblen
• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism — Weber
• Equality and Efficiency — Okun
• Do Markets Corrupt Our Morals — Storr/Choi

Knowledge, Culture, and Society

Science, Technology, and Epistemology

• Objective Knowledge: An Evolutionary Approach — Popper
• Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge — Wilson ☑️
• The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves — Arthur
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions — Kuhn ☑️
• Evolutionary Epistemology — Campbell
• Without Miracles — Cziko
• The Invention of Science — Wootton
• The Sensory Order — Hayek
• Hayek in Today’s Cognitive Neuroscience — Fuster
• Some Implications of Hayek’s Cognitive Theory — Strong ☑️
• The Republic of Science — Polanyi
• Personal Knowledge — Polanyi
• Crisis of the European Sciences — Husserl

Literature and Societal Critique

• The Genealogy of Morals — Nietzsche
• Beyond Good and Evil — Nietzsche
• Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Nietzsche
• On Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Strauss
• Gulliver’s Travels — Swift ☑️
• Frankenstein — Shelley ☑️
• Invisible Man — Ellison ☑️
• Bonfire of the Vanities — Wolfe ☑️
• Last and First Man — Stapledon ☑️
• I, Robot — Asimov ☑️
• The Painted Word — Wolfe ☑️
• From Bauhaus to Our House — Wolfe ☑️
• Anna Karenina — Tolstoy ☑️
• I See Satan Fall Like Lightning — Girard ☑️
• White Noise — DeLillo ☑️
• The Elementary Particles — Houellebecq ☑️
• Fathers and Sons — Turgenev ☑️
• Politics and the English Language — Orwell

Political Philosophy and the History of Ideas

Classical Greek Political Philosophy

• Apology of Socrates — Plato/Aristophanes

The American Experiment

• The Founders Constitution — Chicago.

Liberalism, Democracy, and Pluralism

• Nozick Summary — Stanford

Every book on this list

7 books; ✓ marks the ones Kyle has read.

Austrian School Economics

• Hayek’s Challenge — Bruce Caldwell

Classical Greek Political Philosophy, where it is listed as “The Republic, Plato/Bloom” (Allan Bloom’s translation) and carries the list’s ☑️ mark — the page gives no legend for what the mark means

• Plato’s Republic — Plato

Foundations of Modern Economics

• The Wealth of Nations — Adam Smith

Literature and Societal Critique

• On Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra — Leo Strauss
• The Bonfire of the Vanities — Tom Wolfe

Pursuing the Good Life: Ethics and Personal Growth, where it is listed as “Emile, Rousseau/Bloom” — Allan Bloom being the translator of the standard English edition, not a co-author

• Emile, or On Education — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The American Experiment

• The People Shall Judge — The College of the University of Chicago (Social Sciences 1 staff)

Connections

• Brendan McCord — the curator.