Classical theorists have long equated economic freedom with peace, and scholars debate whether civil conflict arises from grievances or feasibility constraints. This book connects these deliberations in a novel way by arguing that armed civil conflict becomes feasible when a government ‘distorts’ the market with taxation and regulation. Such distortions open space for illegal activities, giving rise to criminal gangs that have the resources to survive state efforts to stamp them out. The argument is illustrated with the Tamil rebellion in Sri Lanka, whose most powerful rebel group began as a criminal enterprise. The argument is interesting, and the thesis is supported with an array of quantitative evidence across chapters linking less free markets with civil wars, repression, and interpersonal violence. The theory is not elegant, however, as the concept of free markets is routinely conflated with weak markets. But a free market is less-regulated and lower-taxed, while a weak market is poor and underdeveloped. The author concedes that state-evading groups are primarily found in countries with weak markets. He attributes this ad hoc to ‘neopatrimonialism and clientelist governance’, without explanation and without addressing the literature that has linked neopatrimonialism to weak markets and state-evading groups. The author acknowledges that the end of the war in Sri Lanka occurred after a period of economic growth, rather than from any shift toward free-market policies. Likewise, the main policy prescription is less about freeing the market than about promoting economic development. The novel argument about distorted markets in the classical tradition is thus muddled, as the main policy prescription of economic development does not follow from the book's novel insight or quantitative analyses.