From Steve Forbes, the iconic editor in chief of Forbes Media, and Elizabeth Ames coauthors of How Capitalism Will Save Us—comes a new way of thinking about the role of government and the morality of free markets. Americans today are at a turning point. Are we a coun­try founded on the values of freedom and limited gov­ernment, as envisioned by the founding fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution? Or do we want to become a European-style socialist democ­racy? What best serves the public good—freedom or Big Government? In Freedom Manifesto, Forbes and Ames offer a new twist on this historic debate. Today’s bloated and bureau­cratic government, they argue, is anything but a force for compassion. Instead of assuring fairness, it promotes favoritism. Instead of furthering opportunity, it stifles economic growth. Instead of unleashing innovation and material abundance, its regulations and price controls create rigidity and scarcity. Not only are Big Govern­ment’s inefficient and ever-expanding bureaucracies ill-equipped to deliver on their promises—they are often guilty of the very greed, excess, and corruption routinely ascribed to the private sector. The only way to a truly fair and moral society, the authors say, is through economic freedom—free people and free markets. Throughout history, open markets have helped the poor and everyone else by unleashing unprecedented creativity, generating wealth, and raising living standards. Promoting trust, generosity, and de­mocracy, economic freedom has been a more powerful force for individual rights, self-determination—and hu­manity—than any government bureaucracy. Freedom Manifesto captures the spirit of a new movement that is questioning old ideas about the mo­rality of government and markets for the first time since the Great Depression. Going beyond the familiar explanations and sound bites, the authors provide a fully developed framework of “first principles” for a true understanding of the real moral and ethical distinctions between more and less government. This timely and provocative book shows why free markets and liberty are the only way to a better future and a fair and humane society.

The author of How to Be Idle, Tom Hodgkinson, now shares his delightfully irreverent musings on what true independence means and what it takes to be free. The Freedom Manifesto draws on French existentialists, British punks, beat poets, hippies and yippies, medieval thinkers, and anarchists to provide a new, simple, joyful blueprint for modern living. From growing your own vegetables to canceling your credit cards to reading Jean-Paul Sartre, here are excellent suggestions for nourishing mind, body, and spirit—witty, provocative, sometimes outrageous, yet eminently sage advice for breaking with convention and living an uncluttered, unfettered, and therefore happier, life.

The Motivation Manifesto is a poetic and powerful call to reclaim your life and find your own personal freedom from Brendon Burchard – the world’s #1 high performance coach and #1 New York Times bestselling author of High Performance Habits. “It’s a triumphant work that transcends the title, lifting the reader from mere motivation into a soaringly purposeful and meaningful life. I love this book." —Paulo Coelho The Motivation Manifesto is a call to claim our personal power. World-renowned high performance trainer Brendon Burchard reveals that the main motive of humankind is the pursuit of greater Personal Freedom. We desire the grand liberties of choice—time freedom, emotional freedom, social freedom, financial freedom, spiritual freedom. Only two enemies stand in our way: an external enemy, defined as the social oppression of who we are by the mediocre masses, and an internal enemy, a sort of self-oppression caused by our own doubt and fear. The march to Personal Freedom, Brendon says, can be won only by declaring our intent and independence, stepping into our personal power, and battling through self-doubt and the distractions of the day until full victory is won. Recalling the revolutionist voices of the past that chose freedom over tyranny, Brendon motivates us to free ourselves from fear and take back our lives once and for all. In this life-changing personal growth book, Brendon presents his nine declarations for personal power and motivation, drawing on insights from his own personal journey and from the lives of some of history's greatest leaders and thinkers. Each chapter focuses on one of the nine declarations, offering practical strategies and exercises to help you apply these principles to your life. Whether you're seeking to overcome self-doubt, boost your confidence, or achieve your goals, The Motivation Manifesto is an invaluable guide to unlocking your full potential. With its inspiring message and actionable advice, this bestselling book is a must-read for anyone who wants to unleash their inner greatness with the power of determination, resilience, and an empowering mindset.

Drawing on the French existentialists, British punks, the US beats, hippies and yippies, medieval thinkers, anarchists and 1970s back-to-the-landers such as Ivan Illich, Idlereditor Tom Hodgkinson provides a new, simple, joyful blueprint for modern living. He shows that consumer society has led not to a widening of freedoms but to the opposite, and that the key to a free life is to stop consuming and start producing. We are not consumers, we are creators! Following up his cult bestseller How To Be IdIe,Tom Hodgkinson takes us on an inspirational journey towards true freedom and happiness. Read How To Be Freeand learn how to throw off the shackles of anxiety, bureaucracy, debt, governments; housework, moaning, pain, poverty, ugliness, war and waste, and much else besides.

When scientific socialism, which for many years was implemented by Abdullah Öcalan and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), became too narrow for his purposes, Öcalan deftly answered the call for a radical redefinition of the social sciences. Writing from his solitary cell in İmralı Prison, Öcalan offered a new and astute analysis of what is happening to the Kurdish people, the Kurdish freedom movement, and future prospects for humanity. The Sociology of Freedom is the fascinating third volume of a five-volume work titled The Manifesto of the Democratic Civilization. The general aim of the two earlier volumes was to clarify what power and capitalist modernity entailed. Here, Öcalan presents his stunningly original thesis of the democratic civilization, based on his criticism of capitalist modernity. Ambitious in scope and encyclopedic in execution, The Sociology of Freedom is a one-of-a-kind exploration that reveals the remarkable range of one of the Left’s most original thinkers with topics such as existence and freedom, nature and philosophy, anarchism and ecology. Öcalan goes back to the origins of human culture to present a penetrating reinterpretation of the basic problems facing the twenty-first century and an examination of their solutions. Öcalan convincingly argues that industrialism, capitalism, and the nation-state cannot be conquered within the narrow confines of a socialist context. Recognizing the need for more than just a critique, Öcalan has advanced what is the most radical, far-reaching definition of democracy today and argues that a democratic civilization, as an alternative system, already exists but systemic power and knowledge structures, along with a perverse sectarianism, do not allow it to be seen. The Sociology of Freedom is a truly monumental work that gives profuse evidence of Öcalan’s position as one of the most influential thinkers of our day. It deserves the careful attention of anyone seriously interested in constructive thought or the future of the Left.

It is time, ripe time for a Zen manifesto. The Western intelligentsia have become acquainted with Zen, have also fallen in love with Zen, but they are still trying to approach Zen from the mind. They have not yet come to the understanding that Zen has nothing to do with mind. Its tremendous job is to get you out of the prison of mind. It is not an intellectual philosophy; it is not a philosophy at all. Nor is it a religion, because it has no fictions and no lies, no consolations. It is a lion’s roar. And the greatest thing that Zen has brought into the world is freedom from oneself. All the religions have been talking about dropping your ego – but it is a very weird phenomenon: they want you to drop your ego, and the ego is just a shadow of God. God is the ego of the universe, and the ego is your personality. Just as God is the very center of existence according to religions, your ego is the center of your mind, of your personality. They have all been talking about dropping the ego, but it cannot be dropped unless God is dropped. You cannot drop a shadow or a reflection unless the source of its manifestation is destroyed.

Yearning for a life of leisure? In 24 chapters representing each hour of a typical working day, this book will coax out the loafer in even the most diligent and schedule-obsessed worker. From the founding editor of the celebrated magazine about the freedom and fine art of doing nothing, The Idler, comes not simply a book, but an antidote to our work-obsessed culture. In How to Be Idle, Hodgkinson presents his learned yet whimsical argument for a new, universal standard of living: being happy doing nothing. He covers a whole spectrum of issues affecting the modern idler—sleep, work, pleasure, relationships—bemoaning the cultural skepticism of idleness while reflecting on the writing of such famous apologists for it as Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Johnson, and Nietzsche—all of whom have admitted to doing their very best work in bed. It’s a well-known fact that Europeans spend fewer hours at work a week than Americans. So it’s only befitting that one of them—the very clever, extremely engaging, and quite hilarious Tom Hodgkinson—should have the wittiest and most useful insights into the fun and nature of being idle. Following on the quirky, call-to-arms heels of the bestselling Eat, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss, How to Be Idle rallies us to an equally just and no less worthy cause: reclaiming our right to be idle.

A revised, updated, and retitled edition of David Boaz’s classic book Libertarianism: A Primer, which was praised as uniting “history, philosophy, economics and law—spiced with just the right anecdotes—to bring alive a vital tradition of American political thought that deserves to be honored today” (Richard A. Epstein, University of Chicago). Libertarianism—the philosophy of personal and economic freedom—has deep roots in Western civilization and in American history, and it’s growing stronger. Two long wars, chronic deficits, the financial crisis, the costly drug war, the campaigns of Ron Paul and Rand Paul, the growth of executive power under Presidents Bush and Obama, and the revelations about NSA abuses have pushed millions more Americans in a libertarian direction. Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz, the longtime executive vice president of the Cato Institute, continues to be the best available guide to the history, ideas, and growth of this increasingly important political movement—and now it has been updated throughout and with a new title: The Libertarian Mind. Boaz has updated the book with new information on the threat of government surveillance; the policies that led up to and stemmed from the 2008 financial crisis; corruption in Washington; and the unsustainable welfare state. The Libertarian Mind is the ultimate resource for the current, burgeoning libertarian movement.

The alternative-media revolution of the last twenty years has smashed the liberal monopoly over news outlets and created a true marketplace of ideas. Rather than fight back with their own beliefs, today's liberals work relentlessly to smother this new universe of political discourse under a tangle of campaign-finance reform and media regulations. Bestselling author Brian Anderson and Adam Thierer examine the crucial place of free political speech in our nation's history, from the feisty polemics of Revolutionary-era pamphlets to the explosion of new media in the twenty-first century. Today, shockingly, freedom of political speech in America is facing sustained attacks unlike anything since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Anderson and Thierer debunk the principal arguments made in support of this counter-revolutionary effort, exposing the McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 and recent FEC and FCC regulations of the blogosphere and airwaves as devastating muzzles on free speech. A Manifesto for Media Freedom is both a wake-up call for all Americans who care about their most fundamental rights and a strategy to guarantee an unfettered marketplace of ideas.