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Freedom Book of the Month for May 2001:
Lever Action
by L. Neil Smith, Mountain Media 2001, paperback, 460 pp.
Like most libertarians, I arrived at my philosophical and political beliefs after travelling a long, winding road. If I could plot my journey on a map, the route would have lots of little twists and turns. It would note places where I stopped for a brief sojourn, and others where I slowed down, leaned out the window and took a careful look at the scenery before proceeding.
It would also have some big Xes on it, each marking an important intersection where someone -- live and in person, or through a book or other medium -- pointed me in the right direction. I could name many such intersections, and I think that there are some that a lot of libertarians have in common. "Atlas Shrugged" comes to mind.
The final intersection for me -- the one that said "Exit 500 Feet" in bright, flashing neon -- came in the form of a little essay and the correspondence I had with its author.
The essay was "Bill Clinton's Reichstag Fire." The author was L. Neil Smith. And while the initial correspondence revolved around my request to publish the essay in a newsletter I was doing for a startup political party, it brought me, inside of six months, into the libertarian movement (and the Libertarian Party).
Smith is best known as a science fiction author, and a damn good one (as readers of this column know -- his "Forge of the Elders" was Free-Market.Net's 2000 Freedom Book of the Year). He's also prolific, with more than twenty books to his name, every one of them a testament to the value of human freedom.
But he's also an essayist, editorialist, activist and speaker, and _Lever Action_ is the first ever print collection of his non-fiction offerings.
It's about time.
"Bill Clinton's Reichstag Fire" is in there, of course. So is "A New Approach to Social Darwinism." And "Suppose You Were Fond of Books..." And 80, give or take a few, others. I'm going to do you a favor and not tell all. You might be tempted to just drop by Smith's web site, read some of the essays online, and save yourself a few bucks.
That would be a mistake. If you worked at it, you could probably compose a reasonable facsimile of "Lever Action," but it just wouldn't be the same. You'd be depriving yourself of the pleasure of holding almost 500 pages of raw dynamite in your hands. You'd never know the joy of contemplating Scott Bieser's cover portrait of Lucy Kropotkin, rifle at port arms, recently dispatched elephant and jackass at her back.
"Lever Action" is proof that reading something on the web just ain't the same. The book is organized and seamless in a way that no web archive can be, presenting Smith's thought as a coherent whole rather than a box of disparate parts. The material takes on new life by its arrangement and new power by its appearance on paper.
There are a few books which are so compelling that placing them in the hands of a friend becomes an act of revolution. Thomas Paine's "Common Sense" and Vin Suprynowicz's "Send in the Waco Killers" have previously been the chronological bookends of that canon. "Lever Action" is the latest addition to it.
Click here for information on how to obtain "Lever Action" for $21.95 plus shipping and handling.
edited by Thomas L. Knapp
March 2001: The Contested Legacy of Ayn Rand by David Kelley
February 2001: Crypto by Steven Levy
January 2001: Total Freedom by Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Freedom Book of the Year 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
December 2000: The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto
November 2000: Escape from Leviathan by J.C. Lester
October 2000: The Art of Political War by David Horowitz
September 2000: An Enemy of the State by Justin Raimondo
August 2000: The Triumph of Liberty by Jim Powell
July 2000: A Generation Divided by Rebecca Klatch
June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman
May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith
April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben
March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand
February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler
January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood
Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz
November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell
October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy
September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins
August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe
July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman
June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant
May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz
April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille
March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary
February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra
In December 2004 this page was modified significantly from its original form for archiving purposes.
, founded in 1995, is now a part of ISIL.
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