The Independent Review: Fall 2025, Vol. 30 #2

In this issue...

Symposium on “The Samaritan’s Dilemma”

The Samaritan’s Dilemma Fifty Years Later: Historical Appraisal and Contemporary Relevance

Christopher J. Coyne, Alain Marciano

The Samaritan’s Dilemma

James M. Buchanan, Jr.

Post-contractual Anarchy and the Samaritan’s Dilemma

Alain Marciano, Stefano Dughera

The Fragility of the Free Society: Personal Responsibility, Compassion, and Opportunism in the Samaritan’s Dilemma

John Meadowcroft

The Samaritan’s Dilemma in the Caritapolis

Art Carden

The Samaritan with the Guillotine

Christopher J. Coyne, Abigail R. Hall

The Starbucks Safety Net: Solving the Samaritan’s Dilemma

Brigitta Jones

Articles

The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Wokeness

Andrei Znamenski

Freedom’s Outpost: Mound Bayou and the Fight for Free Expression in Jim Crow Mississippi, 1887–1941

David T. Beito

Reflections

Toward a Libertarian Theory of Human Shields

Walter E. Block

Book Reviews

Virginia First: The 1607 Project

By Brion McClanahan

Reviewed by

Peter A. Coclanis

New Paternalism Meets Older Wisdom: Looking to Smith and Hume on Rationality, Welfare and Behavioural Economics

By Erik W. Matson

Reviewed by

Jeffrey M. Carroll

Christianity and the Nation-State: A Study in Political Theology

By Gary Chartier

Reviewed by

Kevin D. Vallier

The Truth About Immigration: Why Successful Societies Welcome Newcomers

By Zeke Hernandez

Reviewed by

Joshua K. Bedi

Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism

By Philip J. Stern

Reviewed by

Richard N. Langlois

Pax Economica: Left-Wing Visions of a Free Trade World

By Marc-William Palen

Reviewed by

Douglas A. Irwin

John Stuart Mill, Socialist

By Helen McCabe

Reviewed by

Nicholas Capaldi

Shock Values: Prices and Inflation in American Democracy

By Carola Binder

Reviewed by

Robert Hetzel

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation

By Victor Davis Hanson

Reviewed by

Thomas K. Duncan

The Political Theory of Liberal Socialism

By Matthew McManus

Reviewed by

Matt Zwolinski

The Meese Revolution: The Making of a Constitutional Moment

By Steven Gow Calabresi and Gary Lawson

Reviewed by

Marcus M. Witcher

How Government Built America

By Sidney Shapiro and Joseph Tomain

Reviewed by

Randy Simmons

Nowhere to Live: The Hidden Story of America’s Housing Crisis

By James S. Burling

Reviewed by

Christopher J. Calton

The Socialist Calculation Debate

By Peter Boettke, Rosolino A. Candela, and Tegan L. Truitt

Reviewed by

Anthony Carilli

Man-Devil: The Mind and Times of Bernard Mandeville, the Wickedest Man in Europe

By John Callanan

Reviewed by

Daniel J. D’Amico

The Psychology of Totalitarianism

By Mattias Desmet

Reviewed by

Lenore T. Ealy

The Lost Decade: Returning to the Fight for Better Schools in America

By Steven F. Wilson

Reviewed by

Williamson M. Evers

Mere Economics

By Art Carden and Caleb S. Fuller

Reviewed by

Peter J. Hill

The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West

By Alexander C. Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska

Reviewed by

Jonathan Hofer

The Privateers: How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers

By Josh Cowen

Reviewed by

Neal McCluskey

Libertarian Literary and Media Criticism: Essays in Memory of Paul A. Cantor

By Jo Ann Cavallo

Reviewed by

Michael C. Munger

The Preventive State: The Challenge of Preventing Serious Harms While Preserving Essential Liberties

By Alan Dershowitz

Reviewed by

Michael C. Munger

Universal Basic Income

By Karl Widerquist

Reviewed by

Michael C. Munger

False Dawn: The New Deal and the Promise of Economic Recovery, 1933–1947

By George Selgin

Reviewed by

Caleb Petitt

Capital, Interest, and Waiting: Controversies, Puzzles, and New Additions to Capital Theory

By Leland Yeager and Steve Hanke

Reviewed by

John S. Schuler

The First Amendment: Essays on the Imperative of Intellectual Freedom

By Tara Smith (with contributions by Onkar Ghate, Gregory Salieri, and Elan Journo)

Reviewed by

Luke C. Sheahan

Moonshots and the New Industrial Policy: Questioning the Mission Economy

Edited by Magnus Henrekson, Christian Sandström, and Mikael Stenkula

Reviewed by

Gordon E. Shockley

Growth: A History and a Reckoning

By Daniel Susskind

Reviewed by

Diana W. Thomas

Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human

By Bart J. Wilson

Reviewed by

Michael D. Thomas

Digital Currency or Digital Control?: Decoding CBDC and the Future of Money

By Nicholas Anthony

Reviewed by

Craig Warmke

Abundance

By Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

Reviewed by

Robert M. Whaples

The Shortest History of Economics

By Andrew Leigh

Reviewed by

Robert M. Whaples

After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People

By Dean Spears and Michael Geruso

Reviewed by

Robert M. Whaples

Corruption Under a New Lens: A Political Economy and Public Choice Analysis

By Carroll Ríos de Rodríguez, David Casasola Lemus, and José Gálvez. Foreword by Alejandro A. Chafuen

Reviewed by

Michael C. Munger

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