Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement by Brian Doherty

Libertarianism is a political movement that champions individual liberty, free markets, and the creativity of capitalism. Libertarians are an eclectic group, composed of Nobel Prize winning economists like Milton Friedman, bestselling authors like Ayn Rand, and cyberintellectuals like Grateful Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow, but what they all have in common is a conviction that the government that governs best governs the least.

For more than five decades the libertarian movement has been engaged in a quixotic campaign, trying to convince a majority of Americans that they'd be better of with less government programs and services rather than more. This might seem like an easy sell. After all, most polls show that a majority of Americans want a government that interferes in their daily lives as little as possible. Nevertheless, most Americans would be loath to give up entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, or public education.

This is where libertarians can seem pretty radical; they are certain public education is indoctrination, Social Security engenders a culture of dependency, and government interventions, no matter how well intentioned, are a step towards tyranny. Their conclusions can seem alarmist, but their arguments, as Brian Doherty shows in his engaging Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of The Modern American Libertarian Movement, are worth a serious look.

Doherty, a senior editor at Reason magazine, as assembled an exhaustive but illuminating look at the colorful - and at times downright eccentric - characters that have shaped the American libertarian movement. Included here are fantastical attempts to establish the first libertarian community on an artificial island, and a pioneering effort to build a privately owned spacecraft capable of leaving and returning to earth. The former project never got off the ground, so to speak, but the latter did (demonstrating that the future of space travel may rest in the hands of private entrepreneurs).