A libertarian walks into a bear : the utopian plot to liberate an American town (and some bears)

Once upon a time, a group of libertarians got together and hatched the Free Town Project, a plan to take over an American town and completely eliminate its government.

In 2004, Grafton, NH, a barely populated settlement with one paved road, turned that plan into reality. Public funding for pretty much everything shrank: the fire department, the library, the schoolhouse.

State and federal laws didn't disappear, but they got quieter: meek suggestions barely heard in the town's thick wilderness.

The bears, on the other hand, were increasingly visible.

Grafton's freedom-loving citizens ignored hunting laws and regulations on food disposal.

They built a tent city, in an effort to get off the grid. And with a large and growing local bear population, conflict became inevitable. A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear is both a screwball comedy and the story of a radically American commitment to freedom.

Full of colorful characters, puns and jokes, and one large social experiment, it is a quintessentially American story, a bearing of our national soul.