a book by Larken Rose This book is a culmination of Larken Rose's work so far.  While The Iron Web, How To Be a Successful Tyrant, etc. are great books in their own right and well worth reading, The Most Dangerous Superstition is likely the best dismantling of the "government" and "leadership" - paradigms that nearly all humans blindly believe - that I've ever read. In fact, just reading the first chapter of this book should enlighten those who are on the cusp of understanding what life without government may be like (i.e. most libertarians).  Sadly, most are not anywhere near there and have a firm belief that we "need" someone to be "in charge". So long as humans continue to believe that government is the only answer and is even a requirement for ordered existence, then violence, oppression, injustice, genocide and so forth will continue to exist and be wrongly blamed on everything but this superstition. Larken has written something that is beyond any other book on the subject of governance (or non-governing) that I've ever read. If you want to enlighten yourself and others as to the core problem to nearly every human malady that happens on a large scale, then you need ...

by Larken Rose A few months ago, I reviewed Larken's first novel, The Iron Web.  I was extremely impressed with that book and so was prompted to purchase another of his books.  This time, I read How to be a Successful Tyrant.  Obviously, from the title, it's a tongue-in-cheek look at tyranny.  That's the surface of the book, anyway. Deeper into it, you begin to see the subtle ways that tyrants set up bureaucracies, use rhetoric and lies, and otherwise manipulate the populace by creating a system that both appears free and oppresses all at once.  Because of the myriad of things in place to continue the deception, most of the people being oppressed don't see it happening. The one fundamental lynch pin to their entire success, however, is probably not what you think.  It's not propaganda, it's not coercion or force, and it's not multi-national money laundering and extortion.  Those are just facets of the whole. Nope, the one lynch pin that holds all of the tyrant's power together is the inability of nearly every person he's tyrannizing to realize that "government" itself is a sham.  It's a con game in which otherwise free people give up their freedom in order to feel ...

The Iron Web by Larken Rose I have a couple of things to confess before I get into this book: I am a fan of Larken Rose's political writing and this book pisses me off. For the first part, I believe Rose to be one of the foremost writers of anarchistic political thought today. He has a way of concisely, deliberately, and succinctly explaining facets of free range thought. He does it without flowery language nor does he do it by resorting to collegiate-level writing that few enjoy or understand. For the second bit, the fact that he can do that and write a really great novel pisses me off. Why? Because I've tried to write fiction. Many times. It's a lot harder than you'd think. Larken makes it look easy. Bastard. That should tell you where I'm going with this review. The Iron Web is likely the best modern book I've read since John Ross' Unintended Consequences. The two books have a somewhat similar trail, being about the police state and emerging freedom, but they have two very different ways of expressing the idea. The story that The Iron Web revolves around is relatively ...