On The Wealth of Nations
Written by P. J. O'Rourke
Narrated by Michael Prichard
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke is the bestselling author of ten books, including Eat the Rich, Give War a Chance, Holidays in Hell, Parliament of Whores, All the Trouble in the World, The CEO of the Sofa and Peace Kills. He has contributed to, among other publications, Playboy, Esquire, Harper's, New Republic, the New York Times Book Review and Vanity Fair. He is a regular correspondent for the Atlantic magazine. He divides his time between New Hampshire and Washington, D.C.
More audiobooks from P. J. O'rourke
Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, 'What's Funny About This' Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Funny Stuff: The Official P. J. O'Rourke Quotationary and Riffapedia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Vote - It Just Encourages the Bastards Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Holidays in Heck Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related to On The Wealth of Nations
Related audiobooks
How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life: An Unexpected Guide to Human Nature and Happiness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave Me Alone and I'll Make You Rich: How the Bourgeois Deal Enriched the World Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship That Shaped Modern Thought Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Recessional: The Death of Free Speech and the Cost of a Free Lunch Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fewer, Richer, Greener: Prospects for Humanity in an Age of Abundance Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington: Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5American Manifesto: Saving Democracy from Villains, Vandals, and Ourselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Cry from the Far Middle: Dispatches from a Divided Land Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The CEO of the Sofa Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Seven Deadly Virtues: 18 Conservative Writers on Why the Virtuous Life is Funny as Hell Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Smallest Minority: Independent Thinking in the Age of Mob Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Russell Kirk's Concise Guide to Conservatism Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Gone Fishin' Portfolio: Get Wise, Get Wealthy...and Get on With Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Michael Lewis Traces the ‘Gutting of the Civil Service' Under Trump Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ride of a Lifetime: Doing Business the Orange County Choppers Way Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Democracy in America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Economics For You
Chip War: The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Freakonomics Rev Ed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5How the World Works Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why the Rich Are Getting Richer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Meth Lunches: Food and Longing in an American City Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Genius of Israel: The Surprising Resilience of a Divided Nation in a Turbulent World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marvel Comics: The Untold Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nudge: The Final Edition: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, And The Environment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for On The Wealth of Nations
112 ratings7 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The chapter reviewing the rise of Western Civ is perhaps the most concise and accessible description of World History around.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5While I found O’Rourke’s “wit and humor” to be mostly at a third grade level, I do think (unlike other reviewers) that he manages to give a decent Sparknotes intro to Smith’s Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations. I read the former in University but like many others I never got around to the latter.I give the book four stars because O’Rourke did whet my appetite to read the original. Moreover, Smith is such a brilliant thinker and there are many quotes of his in the text, which are fun, enlightening and interesting to read.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bit of a hard stretch if you want to get into it fully but a brief overview of the main bits - OK - I liked the humour, especially in light of "New" USA.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The parts of Adam Smith are difficult to read but quite deep, and P.J. as always has great ways of making me laugh.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Wealth 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
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5P 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.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Part 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.