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Format: Paperback
ISBN-10: 0871137607
ISBN-13: 9780871137609
Sep 1999
Publisher: Random House
246 pages
Language: English |
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* ML=ships from multiple locations, AE/AP/AA=ships from U.S. Military location.
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* ML=ships from multiple locations, AE/AP/AA=ships from U.S. Military location.
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Synopsis
Written by an American humorist, this global economics primer examines the effectiveness of the economic models employed by the United States, Albania, Sweden, Cuba, Russia, Tanzania, and Hong Kong. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.
| Size | | Length: | 246 pages | | Height: | 9.3 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 1.0 in | | Weight: | 13.6 oz |
Publisher's Notes
First Line: "I had one fundamental question about economics: Why do some places prosper and thrive while others just suck?"
Industry Reviews
"...O'Rourke may not be Tocqueville, he is witty, smart and - though he hides behind it under a tough coat of cynicism - a fine reporter."
New York Times Book Review - Peter Passell (09/13/1998)
"O'Rourke goes around the world in eighty wisecracks, some of them wiser than others."
Lahr
"...P.J. O'Rourke [is] now soundly in middle age but still in possession of the old spirit, the old edge, and the timeless ability to root out a commie and give him a swift kick in the teeth. These talents are on brilliant display in [his] latest book....This is heart-quickening prose...all the more remarkable because this book is subtitled 'A Treatise on Economics' and really is about the dismal science, sort of....His eye for the telling detail, his elan, and his talent for the inspired wise-crack will make most readers forget that they probably have better things to do than sit around reading an economic treatise."
Shiflett
"...[This book is] a refreshing look at economics by someone who grasps this point and runs with it....Open EAT THE RICH and the one-liners jump out....The charming conceit of this text is that its author has no formal economic training, that he is an idiot on the subject....O'Rourke knows more than he lets on, even if he did blow off Econ 101."
Weber
"[D]on't let the title fool you; he's no tax and spend satirist. And while he may not eat, he does bite almost everybody and everything. His hilarious tromp through a subject most of us avoid is funny because it holds so much truth. Don't read this book alone; you'll need an audience."
Denver Post - Diane B. Hartman (09/20/1998)
Having chewed up and spat out the politically correct (All the Troubles in the World) and the U.S. government (Parliament of Whores), O'Rourke takes a more global tack. Here, he combines something of Michael Palin's Pole to Pole, a soup on of Swift's A Modest Proposal and Keynsian garnish in an effort to find out why some places are "prosperous and thriving while others just suck." Stymied by the "puerile and impenetrable" prose of condescending college texts, O'Rourke set forth on a two-year worldwide tour of economic practice (or mal-). He begins amid the "moil and tumult" of Wall Street ("Good Capitalism") before turning to dirt-poor Albania, where, in an example of "Bad Capitalism," free market is the freedom to gamble stupidly. "Good Socialism" (Sweden) and "Bad Socialism" (Cuba) are followed by O'Rourke's always perverse but often perversely accurate take on Econ 101 ("microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of"). Four subsequent chapters reportedly offer case studies of economic principles, except that Russia, Tanzania, Hong Kong and Shanghai all seem to prove that economic theory is just that. There's lots of trademark O'Rourke humor ("you can puke on the train," he says of a trip through Russia, "you can cook tripe on alcohol stoves and make reeking picnics of smoked fish and goat cheese, but you can't smoke"). There's also the feeling that despite (or maybe because of) his lack of credentials, he's often right. O'Rourke proves that money can be funny without being counterfeit. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo; 26-city author tour. (Sept.) FYI: Also available as a Random House audio, $18 ISBN 0-375-40482-1
Publishers Weekly (07/20/1998)
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