The Hoover Institution hosted the Board of Overseers’ Summer Meeting on July 12–14, 2011.

On Tuesday evening, Hoover fellows discussed topics relating to defense, global issues, entitlements, and the state of the economy. Victor Davis Hanson and Bruce Thornton’s speech was titled “America Abroad: Appeasement or Deterrence?” David Brady and John Cogan’s presentation was titled “Entitlements, Debt and Electoral Politics: How Did We Get Where We Are–and Where Do We Go from Here?” In their speech titled “The Road Ahead for the Fed: Two Years Later,” John Taylor and Kevin Warsh discussed the state of the economy today.

David R. Henderson on At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson.

Marxism was never about achieving an egalitarian society. It was about the pursuit of raw power.

Nobel laureate Friedrich von Hayek could not find a publisher in the U.S. because of its ...

If we could create the universe from scratch, we’d all make sure that no one ever suffered misfortunes or disadvantages. The problem is that we don’t get to create the universe from scratch. Hoover fellow Thomas Sowell argues that the quest for cosmic justice is ultimately at odds with the administration of true justice.

The political science departments at elite private universities such as Harvard and Yale, at leading small liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore and Williams, and at distinguished large public universities like the University of Maryland and the University of California, Berkeley, offer undergraduates a variety of courses on a range of topics...

A review of episodes in economic and intellectual history indicates the superiority of a limited government market economy over the alternative models of economic organization. The siren calls of pundits, politicians, and even some economists in favor of communist central planning during the Great Depression; market socialism after World War II; and, more recently, massive welfare states and/or extensive government micromanagement of markets each ran afoul of their own problems and comparisons to the limited government (based on sound criteria) capitalist model. The limited government capitalist model, once again under attack from those who would greatly expand the role of government, needs its defenders, as the alternative models have proven historically, intellectually, and practically bankrupt.

The world of Nineteen Eighty-Four may have ended in 1989, the year the Berlin Wall came down, but George Orwell’s writing remains as relevant today as ever. Hoover Fellow Timothy Garton Ash explains why.

George Orwell was one of the great journalists and political writers of the twentieth century. His writings on the great political struggles of that century—imperialism, fascism, Stalinism—in books such as Homage to Catalonia, Animal Farm, and 1984, are revered. But is Orwell relevant to the main political and cultural issues of our present day? Or should we read Orwell merely out of an appreciation for language and history?