Ralph Raico (/ˈreɪkoʊ/; October 23, 1936 – December 13, 2016) was an Americanlibertarian historian ofEuropean liberalism,^[1] and a professor of history atBuffalo State College.^[2]

Raico was from New York City,^[3] where he attended theBronx High School of Science. Through theFoundation for Economic Education, Raico and his classmateGeorge Reisman arranged to meet with economistLudwig von Mises, who subsequently invited them to attend his graduate seminar onAustrian economics atNew York University.^[4] There, he met fellow seminar attendeeMurray Rothbard, who befriended him.^[5][6] Rothbard and his friends including Raico, Reisman,Ronald Hamowy andRobert Hessen formed a "self-conscious intellectual and activist salon" that they named the CircleBastiat.^[7][8]

In the mid-1950s, the Circle Bastiat also brought Raico into contact with novelistAyn Rand and her followers, informally known at the time asThe Collective.^[8][9] Raico attended the first lectures about Rand's philosophy ofObjectivism.^[10] Eventually, relations between the two groups soured, leading to an incident in which the Circle parodied the Collective, performing a skit in which Raico played the part of Rand's protegeNathaniel Branden.^[11] By the summer of 1958, Rand and Rothbard had broken off all ties, and the groups stopped associating.^[10][11] Raico received his B.A. from theCity College of New York,^[3] and his Ph.D. from theUniversity of Chicago, where his adviser wasFriedrich Hayek.^[12]

While at the University of Chicago, Raico foundedThe New Individualist Review, a libertarian publication which first published in April 1961 and produced 17 issues until it ceased publication in 1968.^[13] Raico and other graduate students comprised the editorial board. Its advisory board comprisedFriedrich Hayek,Milton Friedman, and laterGeorge Stigler. In 1981, Friedman wrote that he believed the publication had "set an intellectual standard which has not yet, I believe, been matched by any of the more recent publications in the same philosophical tradition".^[13][14]

Raico later became senior editor ofInquiry magazine. He was an associate editor ofThe Independent Review, a journal published byThe Independent Institute,^[2] and a senior fellow of theMises Institute, which published his work on the history of liberty and the connection between war and the state.^[15] Raico translated Mises' bookLiberalismus and various essays by Hayek into English.^[2]

Raico died on December 13, 2016, at the age of 80.

• Gay Rights: A Libertarian Approach.Libertarian Party (1975).OCLC 8887435,863234248.
• Classical Liberalism in the Twentieth Century.Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University (1990).OCLC 21573481,732647331.
• Die Partei der Freiheit: Studien zur Geschichte des deutschen Liberalismus. Introduction by Christian Watrin. Translated by Gabriele Bartel, Pia Weiss, andJörg Guido Hülsmann. Lucius & Lucius (1999).ISBN 9783828200425.OCLC 52523633.
• Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal. Introduction byRobert Higgs. Auburn, Alabama:Mises Institute (2010)ISBN 1610164377.OCLC 779146130.
• The Place of Religion in the Liberal Philosophy of Constant, Tocqueville, and Lord Acton. (2010).ISBN 1610163680.OCLC 4812933.

Book version of Raico'sUniversity of Chicagodissertation.

• Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School. Auburn, Alabama:Mises Institute (2012).ISBN 978-1610160032.OCLC 792741380.

• "Classical Liberalism and the Austrian School." inThe Elgar Companion to Austrian Economics, edited byPeter J. Boettke. Edward Elgar Publishing (1988).ISBN 978-1858787763.OCLC 485335367.
• Introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition ofJohn T. Flynn'sThe Roosevelt Myth. Fox & Wilkes (1998).ISBN 0930073274.OCLC 41234390.
• "World War I: The Turning Point" and "Rethinking Churchill." inThe Costs of War: America's Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John V. Denson. Transaction Publishers (1999).ISBN 0765804875.

• List of Austrian-school economists

• Casey, Gerard (2010). Meadowcroft, John (ed.).Murray Rothbard. Major Conservative and Libertarian Thinkers. Vol. 15. London: Continuum.ISBN 978-1-4411-4209-2.OCLC 495475331.
• Doherty, Brian (2007).Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement. New York: Public Affairs.ISBN 978-1-58648-350-0.OCLC 76141517.
• Hamowy, Ronald (1999). "New Individualist Review, 1961–1968". In Lora, Ronald; Henry, William Longton (eds.).The Conservative Press in Twentieth-Century America. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. pp. 339–347.ISBN 0-313-21390-9.OCLC 40481045.
• Heller, Anne C. (2009).Ayn Rand and the World She Made. New York: Doubleday.ISBN 978-0-385-51399-9.OCLC 229027437.
• Reisman, George (1996).Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics(PDF). Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books.ISBN 0-915463-73-3.OCLC 36200484.

• Raico's article archives at Mises.org
• Raico book and paper archives at Mises.org
• Raico's archives at LewRockwell.com
• Bio at Future of Freedom Foundation
• Ralph Raico: Champion of Authentic Liberalism

• 1936 births
• 2016 deaths
• 20th-century American historians
• 20th-century American male writers
• 20th-century American non-fiction writers
• 21st-century American historians
• 21st-century American male writers
• 21st-century American non-fiction writers
• American libertarians
• American male non-fiction writers
• American political writers
• Buffalo State University faculty
• City College of New York alumni
• Historians from New York (state)
• Libertarian historians
• Libertarian theorists
• Mises Institute people
• Academics from New York City
• University of Chicago alumni
• Writers from New York City
• Intellectual historians

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards