Libertarian Walks into a Bear

The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town

288 pages

English language

Published Jan. 20, 2020 by PublicAffairs.

ISBN:
978-1-5417-8851-0
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OCLC Number:
1198924886

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4 stars (14 reviews)

A tiny American town’s plans for radical self-government overlooked one hairy detail: no one told the bears. Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government. In 2004, they set their sights on Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road. When they descended on Grafton, public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse. State and federal laws became meek suggestions, scarcely heard in the town’s thick wilderness. The anything-goes atmosphere soon caught the attention of Grafton’s neighbors: the bears. Freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal. They built a tent city in an effort to get off the grid. The bears smelled food and opportunity. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is the sometimes funny, sometimes terrifying tale …

4 editions

Disappointing, more a sum of anecdotes on the city than a book on the Free Town project

3 stars

I have been wanting to read this book for a long time after I read the excellent article by its author in an online media. Maybe I had unrealistic expectations, but I was quite disappointed by this book. The author is a local journalist from New Hampshire and you see that tone quickly in the book: rather than documenting the project itself, it is a sum of local anecdotes, some on the Fee Town project, some on bears and some on the regions. Overall, there are some interesting parts, especially reading about concrete examples of this disastrous project, but there is very little said about the creation of the project itself or on libertarian ideal. Too bad for such an interesting story

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