Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith is often quoted and talked about today, but no normal 21st Century reader is going to read it. This book, "On the Wealth of Nations," makes it accessible to mere mortals. Of course O'Rourke tries to be funny whenever possible, and his quips did cause me to smile from time to time. However, I don't recommend this book for comic relief. I do recommend it for anyone who wants to be reasonably well informed about the history of the study of economics.

Read in July, 2007 ( )

P J O'Rourke - he of Republican Party Reptile - is a gifted, witty and acerbic writer but one whose views, even when on his mettle, one should take wth a pinch of salt: more useful as an antidote to loony-tunes leftie thinking than as a properly constructive conservative alternative. As with all politically committed writers, left or right, his core analysis tends to be glib: the brushstrokes with which he paints the world are vigorous but, like many paintings that look good at a distance, they don't always bear close examination.

Expounding on Adam Smith's classic The Wealth of Nations, then, O'Rourke both is and isn't on home turf. *Is* in that, superficially, Smith is the godfather of O'Rourke's libertarian, optimistic, Republican brand of economics in observing that the natural opposition of interests of buyers and sellers is a functional tension such that folks left to their own devices will, quite without meaning to, generally act is a way which is constructive and efficient in its allocation of resources. *Isn't* in that O'Rourke is a journalist and a polemicist not an economist, much less a moral philosopher (though to give him credit he makes no bones whatever about that) and Smith's 900 page tome is a far more nuanced volume than its hackneyed headline about the invisible hand - which is all most of us know about it: hence O'Rourke's book - suggests.

To his credit, also, O'Rourke has also spent time assimlating Smith's companion (and much less well known) volume A Theory of Moral Sentiments, and does some good work to contextualise Wealth of Nations by reference to it.

All the same, O'Rourke's simplistic economic viewpoint - and sardonic air - remain untroubled by Smith's nuance, and at times this entry drifts closer to representing O'Rourke's own theory of the Wealth of Nations rather than considering Smith's. Most readers will have far less interest in that, no matter how funny it might be, particularly as O'Rourke has had a go at that book already, a decade ago, in Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics, and more particularly because on this outing O'Rourke's wit isn't as sharp, nor his insight as valuable, as it can be.

In any case you can be sure that P J O'Rourke wouldn't need 900 pages to expound his theory. You could write it on a cocktail napkin (Eat The Rich notwithstanding), and for all his praise of Adam Smith's pragmatism in the face of ideologically driven idealism (anachronistic though it may be, at the time of publication the dread socialism being still a good century and more hence) O'Rourke's laissez-faire view of the world is as idealistic as any, supposing as it does perfectly rational actors, a complete absence of government, ubiquity of perfect information and an omnipresent infinity of buyers and sellers, and (as we can now say in November 2008 with 20:20 hindsight) just as flawed: there are, we know know, times where even perfectly rational actors simply won't act and in these times the invisible hand without so much as a by-your-leave vanishes altogether and the only credible mechanic left to deal with the black swans carousing about is good old nanny state. And Warren Buffett.

This is by no means a bad book, and for those interested in a *somewhat* deeper reading of The Wealth Of Nations, more pleasant than the one that can be had by actually reading it, step forward - but bring that salt cellar. For this P J O'Rourke book more than any, you'll be needing it. ( )

Sophomoric, tendentious, would have been easier to just read Adam Smith. I've put it up on BookMooch, that's how much I disliked it.

PJ O’Rourke is an American humourist who is no longer funny. He’s been tasked with writing a commentary on The Wealth of Nations. Let’s see how he does.

To start with, not badly. I actually laughed at some things, and found others, such as PJ’s explanation of how we came to have a trading class in the first place, insightful without being dull. All good. Plus we have some context setting in terms of the era in which Adam Smith was writing.

Then it all goes wrong...http://icantstopreading.blogspot.com/2008/02/on-wealth-of-nations-by-pj-orourke.html ( )

Part of a forthcoming series "on" books so you don't have to read them, it's good in that I probably (let's be honest) will never manage to read The Wealth of Nations, and O'Rourke does a pretty good job with it. He doesn't rely only on himself to explain Adam Smith to you; he brings in scholarly work on Hume and economics and includes an extensive bibliography. All the same, at times I felt this book was a bit all over the place. There's an awful lot of material on Hume's other writings, which isn't necessarily a bad thing but makes the title a bit misleading, and O'Rourke seems to digress a bit too much sometimes. Still, I would recommend this to any fan of O'Rourke as well as to most people interested in a pretty quick and humorous (and interesting) read about Adam Smith. ( )