Sharon Presley is the co-founder of the largest and most successful libertarian book-selling enterprise in the world -- Laissez Faire Books.

She launched the company in 1972 with John Muller to make hard-to-find books available to readers "who care about freedom, individual rights, [and] individualism."

"To build a new society requires changing ideas," she told DailyObjectivist.com in a discussion about the early days of Laissez Faire Books. "And to change ideas, you need ideas, and arguments, and information, and, most of all, a moral and philosophical framework. Laissez Faire Books played and is still playing a crucial role in disseminating these ideas."

Laissez Faire Books made available to freedom-lovers books that were previously "languishing in dusty libraries or on the shelves of obscure publishers," Presley said -- including works by Karl Hess, Albert Jay Nock, Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Lysander Spooner, Robert Nozick, Murray Rothbard, and David Friedman.

Over the past three decades, Laissez Faire Books clients have included everyone from Bob Dylan to Friedrich Hayek.

"I am convinced that no other libertarian organization has distributed as many libertarian ideas of such high quality to so many people as Laissez Faire Books has done over the years," Presley said.

Laissez Faire Books was praised by J.D. Tuccille on Free-Market.net as "an invaluable resource for anybody seeking books about free-market economics, civil liberties, and other aspects of personal freedom."

From 1972 to 1977, Presley was editor of the company's book review/catalog, Laissez Faire Review.

In addition, she has written extensively on the history of individualist feminism for libertarian publications such as Liberty, Free Inquiry, Reason, and Inquiry, and has lectured on American anarchist-feminism of the 19th century.

Presley is a founding member of the Association of Libertarian Feminists, and from 1975 to 1982 was its national coordinator. She also served as executive director of the nonprofit organization, Resources for Independent Thinking (RIT).

-- Bill Winter

Quotable

"I am convinced that no other libertarian organization has distributed as many libertarian ideas of such high quality to so many people as Laissez Faire Books has done over the years. To be a part of that is to be a part of something very important." -- Sharon Presley on DailyObjectivist.com

Books & Tapes

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