libertarian stance, and that this portion of the book was "by far the most stimulating." Oxford political scientist David Leopold noted Gordon's thumbnail test regarding whether a writer could be classified as an analytical Marxist as part of a common "misleading and unfortunate" understanding of the school, Gordon writing that a favorable stance on dialectics meant that the writer must be "crossed off the list." Gordon's book The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics (1992), which explores the philosophical origins of Carl Menger’s economic theories, was highly praised by Murray Rothbard. Writing in The Review of Austrian Economics, Barry Smith criticized the book for its over-simplistic division of philosophers into two camps—German (Hegelian, organicist and anti-science) and Austrian (Aristotelian, individualist and pro-science)—despite the philosophers having more complex interrelations. For instance Franz Brentano is exemplary of Austrian thought though he was born in Germany and was strongly influenced by German philosopher Friedrich Adolf Trendelenburg. Gordon later wrote an essay, "Second Thoughts on The Philosophical Origins of Austrian Economics," to provide some additions and corrections to his book. Gordon edited the collection, Secession, State & Liberty (2002), eleven essays that suggest that secession should be given serious consideration. The essays examine United States history, look at theoretical issues, and apply theory to the modern world. In 2011 Gordon conducted a study with Swedish consultant Per Nilsson on books published by Harvard University Press. They published the results of their analysis as "The Ideological Profile of Harvard University Press: Categorizing 494 Books Published 2000–2010" in Econ Journal Watch. They presented a spreadsheet analysis that classified the books by unknown criteria, concluding the issue was not that Harvard press "is ideological, but that its ideology is predominately leftist." The authors acknowledged they had not read all the books they classified. A reviewer noted that one author did not consider his book "leftist," and that the reason other books were so characterized was not clear.Nina Ayoub, "Harvard Press Leans Left, Economists Say", Chronicle of Higher Education, January 25, 2011. Assessments Murray Rothbard described Gordon as a friend and "Mr. Erudition." In Hans-Hermann Hoppe's The Myth of National Defense, Luigi Marco Bassani and Carlo Lottieri described Gordon as the "semiofficial reviewer of the libertarian community." Journalist Brian Doherty, in his foreword to Rothbard's Strictly Confidential (2010), writes that Gordon is "the only man around who knows as much as Rothbard did when it comes to the historical,