Some years ago, while pawing through a box of paperbacks at a garage sale, I set aside something called "The Incredible Bread Machine." I had just purchased one of those do-it-yourself bread makers, and congratulated myself on such a lucky find. The book went into a pile of more-or-less interesting material, and I think I ended up paying a quarter for it.

I was surprised, but not disappointed, to find that I had picked up a lost libertarian classic instead of a handy guide to whipping up a batch of sourdough or pumpernickel in my kitchen. I had stumbled onto the 1974 release of a perennial and evolving work on freedom. The poem on which it is based debuted in 1963, and the first of several prose iterations in 1966—and somehow I had never even heard of it.

I've since loaned my old copy of "The Incredible Bread Machine" to many friends who fail to understand how markets work and why government intervention doesn't. Author R.W. Grant's concise and easily understandable explosions of myth—notably the calumnies most take for granted about 19th-century "Robber Barons" and the Great Depression—work wonders. These explanatory articles sit atop the superstructure of Grant's poem, "Tom Smith and His Incredible Bread Machine," in itself a classic. Part one of the poem is included intact in the book.

The book has proven itself again and again to be a valuable tool in explaining the operations of the market to those whose assumptions seem closed to challenges. It identifies three principles of a free society, how such a society works, and what wrenches are thrown into the gears by meddling bureaucracies. It does so in a charming, entertaining and persuasive manner. Once you've picked "The Incredible Bread Machine" up, you can't put it down.

You can't keep a good book down, either. I've often wondered what became of a work that should have made prominent appearances on suggested reading lists everywhere. Apparently the editors at Fox & Wilkes, the "classics" imprint operated by Laissez Faire Books, share my feelings. Grant's newly revised edition of "The Incredible Bread Machine" includes pointed analyses of phenomena such as "insider trading" and the Microsoft antitrust prosecution—phenomena which tend to confirm the reasoning of the original and cry out for its application.

Additional Links:

• Review and purchasing information from Laissez Faire Books
• Excerpts and additional material from Quandary House

June 2000: Law's Order by David Friedman

May 2000: Forge of the Elders by L. Neil Smith

April 2000: Reciprocia by Richard G. Rieben

March 2000: The Art of Fiction: A Guide for Writers and Readers by Ayn Rand

February 2000: Addiction is a Choice by Jeffrey A. Schaler

January 2000: Revolutionary Language by David C. Calderwood

Special December 1999 Feature: The Freedom Book of the Year: Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998 by Vin Suprynowicz

November 1999: Conquests and Cultures by Thomas Sowell

October 1999: A Way To Be Free by Robert LeFevre, edited by Wendy McElroy

September 1999: Assassins (Left Behind) by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

August 1999: Don't Shoot the Bastards (Yet): 101 More Ways to Salvage Freedom by Claire Wolfe

July 1999: The Mitzvah by L. Neil Smith and Aaron Zelman

June 1999: The Incredible Bread Machine by R.W. Grant

May 1999: Send in the Waco Killers by Vin Suprynowicz

April 1999: It Still Begins with Ayn Rand by Jerome Tuccille

March 1999: The Dictionary of Free-Market Economics by Fred Foldvary

February 1999: Feminist Interpretations of Ayn Rand edited by Mimi Reisel Gladstein and Chris Matthew Sciabarra