Pearce, Joseph, Small is Still Beautiful: Economics as if Families Mattered, (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2006), Retail: $18.00, Amazon.com: $12.24.

Review by Ryan Setliff

Economics As If Families Mattered

Small is Still Beautiful is a less a biography of a man, and more the biography of one man's idea — namely the humane scale vision of economist E.F. Schumacher. Schumacher was born in Bonn, Germany in 1911, and himself the son of an economist and professor. In his youth, E.F. Schumacher studied in Bonn and Berlin in his native Germany. Later in went to England to study as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, before going to Columbia University in New York City where he earned his Economics degree. According to The Times Literary Supplement, his book Small is Beautiful is among the one-hundred most influential books published in the post-WWII era. Beginning with the publication of this book in 1971, Schumacher issued a clarion call for the world to wake up, and start humanizing its economic structures, rather than continue lurking blindly in the wrong direction of centralization, environmental degradation, globalization and obsessive pursuit of material wealth.

THE AENEID by Virgil 19 BC BOOK I Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate, And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate, Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore. Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town; His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine, And settled sure succession in his line, From whence the race of Alban fathers come, And the long glories of majestic Rome. O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate; What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate; For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began

Arator by John Taylor of Caroline. Intro by M.E. Bradford. Softcover: 426 pages. (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1977) $10.00.

Arator is very much a distinctive "series of agricultural essays-political and practical" written by Virginia statesman and planter of the Old Republic which was first published in 1813. John Taylor, also known as the Sage of Hazelwood, dedicates a considerable portion of this book reflecting upon the socio-economic and political order of an agrarian republic which he sought to defend. In his book Arator, John Taylor speaks to a multitude of subjects and issues. He also offers practical and perhaps dated advice on farming (i.e. manuring, livestock, draining, etc.) as well which though extraneous may be a historical curiosity to some modern readers. To sketch a brief biography of the man, John Taylor of Caroline, in the words of M.E. Bradford,

"became the classic figure of `old republican' theory: the exemplar of an almost Roman virtus, the Virginia Cato, who soldiers, enforces the law, writes in its defense and of the life it secures, and serves the state well when called to office because he has something better to do-because there are lands and people of whose good is a faithful steward."

During his early tenure in the military, he rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel serving in both the Continental Army and Virginia militia. Thereafter, he adopted the profession of his stepfather, and became an accomplished attorney. Taylor turned his oratory abilities to the task of statesmanship and became a legislator in the Virginia House of Delegates and the United States Senate. He grew restless in the practice of law and politics and eventually retired to his plantation where he farmed. Though, he was not aloof from political concerns and discourse, as he wrote a number of books and political tracts.