World of the Free to Choose: Part One

One day I was soothing my pain through mindless television fare, when I saw an ad for a publishing company that promised to expand my horizons through reading “the one hundred greatest books ever written”—books such as Moby Dick, Don Quixote, The Brothers Karamazov, A Tale Of Two Cities, and so on. The books were advertised as handsome, leather-bound editions with gold inlay lettering, masterpieces guaranteed to make you look smart just by putting them on your shelf. For a mere thirty-seven dollars apiece you would receive one per month and could cancel anytime with no penalty. They certainly seemed weightier nourishment than the books I had been reading. Count me in.


I filled my bookshelves at home and spent the better part of five years reading through the incomparable Western literature classics, reading every word of every book. It was one of the best things I ever did. Along with great writing, eye-opening history, and captivating plots, it turns out that most of these classics had an underlying theme that previous generations in the West must have appreciated—there is a God, and therefore there is a point to life, a morality not made by man, but discoverable by him. And as I read through each of these books, over the walk of time their stories began to incline my heart a certain way.