RIP Richard Pipes, the Great Scholar of Private Property

Richard Pipes, the great Harvard historian, has died at 94. Best known for his clear-eyed work on Russia and its Bolshevik Revolution, a topic on which so many thinkers over the past century have fallen short, Pipes also wrote a terrific 1999 book on private property as a cornerstone of civilization, Property and Freedom: The Story of How through the Centuries Private Ownership Has Promoted Liberty and the Rule of Law.