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On The Wealth of Nations (Books That Changed the World) | 
| Manufacturer: Grove/Atlantic
Category: EBooks
List Price: $11.00
Buy New: $8.80
You Save: $2.20 (20%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 32024
Format: Kindle Book
Media: Kindle Edition
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Dewey Decimal Number: 330.153
ASIN: B000RH0CB8
Publication Date: December 4, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Product Description
America's most provocative satirist reads Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations so you don't have to.
Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776 and almost instantly it was recognized as the fundamental work of economics, as important to the development of this field as Darwin's The Origin of Species would be for natural history eighty years later.
The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as being really long; the original edition totaled over nine hundred pages in two volumes. And as P. J. O'Rourke points out, to understand The Wealth of Nations, you also need to read Smith's first doorstopper, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. But now you don't have to read either.
That's because P.J. has waded through all of Smith's dense work, including Wealth's sixty-seven-page "digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the four last centuries," which, says O'Rourke, "to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu." In this hilarious and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, which even intellectuals should have no trouble comprehending, P.J. puts his trademark wit to good use, and shows us why Smith is still relevant, why what seems obvious now was once revolutionary, and why the pursuit of self-interest is so important.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 Interesting and entertaining September 25, 2008
I found this book both useful and entertaining. The summary of Smith's ideas was interesting for me as a non-economist and I also enjoyed Rourke's way of presenting those ideas. Of course this book would be disappointing for people who want to find an in-depth analysis of Smith's theories.
 That's Entertainment! August 31, 2008
As Thurber said (I think/paraphrase?) "Only humor can safely approach the burning column of truth" so it is possible that the ~180 pages of O'Rourke can safely approach the 900 pages of the Wealth Of Nations.
You will either "get it" or you won't but I doubt *you* will ever pack so much info as O'Rourke manages into so few words and paragraphs so entertainingly - this trick is *only* possible with humour.
Thus any sort of critique cannot approach these columns safely so let the man speak for himself!
...For example, a passage from the aforementioned digression on silver:
Labour, it ust always be remembered, and not any particulare commodity or set of commodities, is the real measure of the value both of silver and of all other commodities.6
This can be powerfully condensed: 'Labour... is the real measure of...value.' In quoting Adam Smith,'...'is sometimes the most trenchant thing he said. And it may be that just such a trenchant ellipsis in The Wealth Of Nations was what sent Karl Marx off his rocker. Notice, reading Smith's original sentence, that no grand Marxist 'value theory of labor' was created. The more so because, three hundred pages later, Smith makes the same kind of argument about food grains: 'The real value of every other commodity is finally measured and determined by ...the average money price of corn.'7 Smith thus maintains that work (or something akin to it, such as our daily bread) provides a sensible index for determining how much other things are worth to us. Deciding whether to mow the lawn ourselves or pay the kid next door to do it - factoring in the likelihood that he'll eat us out of house and home at snack time and run the Toro over his foot, sue us, and we'll have to get a second job to pay the legal bills - is something everybody does all the time. Marxism, as various Marxist regimes have discovered, is something nobody ever does if he can help it. (Incidentally, if the labor theory of value were true, certain children would be less worthless than they are.)
 Supremely disappointing April 25, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
I probably will not finish reading this book. I thought, "What a great opportunity to learn a bit about Adam Smith's work without having to slog through some 900 pages of difficult English."
Alas, I feel O'Rourke seems more interested in showing off than helping out. It would appear he accepts Smith's words as Holy Writ, needing no explanation, and that any opportunity to take a cheap shot at anyone at all left of center is a major goal.
At one point he says, "'The Theory of Moral Sentiments' is daytime TV if daytime TV were produced by PBS, featuring a host who is like Bill Moyers, except intelligent."
Mr. O'Rourke seems not interested in explaining or helping us understand "The Wealth of Nations," but in demonstrating how clever he is at crafting attacks on those with whom he disagrees. I'm not interested.
I am still looking for a good "trot."
 Would be a better book April 17, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
O'Rourke's exposition of Adam Smith's ideas on economics is informative. The book, however, would be better without the sophomoric obiter dicta.
 Wealth is not a pizza April 14, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book is a basic gloss of some of Adam Smith's high points, which is useful. Less useful, however, are PJ's ironic asides, pop-culture references, and deeply confusing non-sequiters. It is often difficult to determine whether O'Rourke is making an actual argument or just being curmudgeonly. So instead of trying to parse Smith you end up trying to parse PJ, which is also difficult but has much less of a payoff.
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