Original 2004 edition of Against Leviathan.

What is fundamentally wrong with government today? In Against Leviathan, economist and historian Robert Higgs, offers an unflinching critical analysis of government power.

Against Leviathan combines an economist’s analytical scrutiny, an historian’s respect for the facts, and a refusal to accept the standard excuses and cruelties of government officialdom. Topics include Social Security, the paternalism of the FDA, the “War on Drugs,” the nature of political leadership, civil liberties, the conduct of the national surveillance state, and governmental responses to a continuing stream of “crises,” including domestic economic busts and foreign wars both hot and cold.

Against Leviathan is a thorough and penetrating critique, and a significant contribution in this current time of crisis and unchecked expansion of government power

Robert Higgs is Retired Senior Fellow in Political Economy at the Independent Institute, and Founding Editor and former Editor at Large of Independent’s quarterly journal The Independent Review. He received his Ph.D. in economics from Johns Hopkins University, and has taught at the University of Washington, Lafayette College, Seattle University, the University of Economics, Prague, and George Mason University. He has been a visiting scholar at Oxford University and Stanford University, and a fellow for the Hoover Institution and the National Science Foundation.