Paul Rosenberg

Sunni: Yes, absolutely! And thank you for not taking my pathetic attempt at a joke seriously. I didn’t mean to sound so snotty.

Paul: Not at all. What I want is to get the book—and the other Vera Verba books—into the hands of Nock’s Remnant. And, hopefully, to help create more Remnant people. Our way is the better way, and some day our ideas will predominate. More and sooner is better.

Sunni: How are sales going so far?

Paul: Well, we’re just barely started. This interview is one of the very first promotional things we’ve done. We’ve really only told our friends thus far. That said, we’re selling books, and verifying all the day-to-day issues of boxes, postal rates, deliveries from printers, and so on. Everything has gone through the initial shake-down now, and we’re ready to start promoting.

Sunni: That’s great to hear, Paul. I’ve poked around some at Vera Verba, and really like what I’ve seen so far. There are a lot of terrific ideas in place there—the “Important, In English” category immediately caught my eye and sucked me in. Focusing on the Nicomachean Ethics did it; as a fairly new student of eudaimonia courtesy of one of the conspirators at my group blog, I would really like to understand more of what Aristotle actually thought, unfiltered by translators and philosophers.

Paul: Yeah. If you look back through history, you frequently find that Aristotle was introduced about a hundred years before a major step forward. The Renaissance is particularly striking in this way. It’s important stuff. Unfortunately, most texts like these are the province of academics and purists. That means that you need several semesters of vocabulary, just to be ready to approach it. That should not be the case, and we aim to fix it.

Sunni: I hope you do! When I was a kid I disdained philosophy, because it seemed almost exclusively the province of nit-picky analysis that had nothing to do with really living—and that’s what I thought philosophy was supposed to be. It took reading Rand to show me I was right after all [pauses] but that came when I was in my thirties and that’s really too late in life in a lot of ways.

Paul: Well, a lot better in your thirties than in your sixties, or never at all.

Sunni: Oh, sure. The Vera Verba business is a collaborative effort, right?

Paul: Right. It’s myself and Sean Hastings. By the way, Sean has a rather illustrious history himself; you might want to interview him one of these days.

Sunni: [laughing] Are there any libertarians without an illustrious history? But thanks for the tip; I will definitely check into it. How do you guys prioritize the projects—and the project categories? For me, trying to decide between “Important, In English” and “Unjustly Forgotten” as a higher priority would be excruciatingly difficult. There are so many good things out there that have fallen by the wayside ...

Paul: Yeah, difficult choices. Right now, we’re just going forward as we can, and doing one thing after another. I have a nonfiction book I’m working on now, plus a few more in planning. Sean may start another one soon too. I have a couple of “Unjustly Forgotten” titles in mind, one of which may take a bit of doing. We’re not sure what our first “Important, In English” title will be. We’ll have to decide that pretty soon, and get started on it. We’ll definitely have our second “Prophets of God” book out within the next two quarters.