Audiobook5 hours
On The Wealth of Nations
Written by P. J. O'Rourke
Narrated by Michael Prichard
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
()
About this audiobook
Recognized almost instantly upon its publication in 1776 as the fundamental work of economics, The Wealth of Nations was also recognized as really long: the original edition totaled over 900 pages in two volumes-including the blockbuster 67-page "digression concerning the variations in the value of silver during the course of the last four centuries," which, according to P. J. O'Rourke, "to those uninterested in the historiography of currency supply, is like reading Modern Maturity in Urdu." Although daunting, Smith's tome is still essential to understanding such current hot topics as outsourcing, trade imbalances, and Angelina Jolie. In this hilarious, approachable, and insightful examination of Smith and his groundbreaking work, O'Rourke 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.
Author
P. J. O'Rourke
P. J. O’Rourke is the author of twelve books, including Parliament of Whores and Give War a Chance, both of which were #1 New York Times best sellers. His most recent book is the best seller On the Wealth of Nations.
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
100 People Who Are Screwing Up America: And Al Franken is #37 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Number That Killed Us: A Story of Modern Banking, Flawed Mathematics, and a Big Financial Crisis Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Case Against Socialism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anarchy, State, and Utopia: Second Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Republicans Buy Sneakers Too: How the Left Is Ruining Sports with Politics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The War on the West Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/510 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn't Help Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The End of Work: Why Your Passion Can Become Your Job Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Cost: Trump, China, and American Revival Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Future Babble: Why Expert Predictions Fail - and Why We Believe Them Anyway Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the World's Most Notorious Atheist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Profiles in Folly: History's Worst Decisions and Why They Went Wrong Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/59 Presidents Who Screwed Up America: And Four Who Tried to Save Her Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Them: Why We Hate Each Other--and How to Heal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Bad Thinking Happens to Good People: How Philosophy Can Save Us from Ourselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Overstated: A Coast-to-Coast Roast of the 50 States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Great Degeneration: How Institutions Decay and Economies Die Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dictatorship of Woke Capital: How Political Correctness Captured Big Business Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Suppression, Deception, Snobbery, and Bias: Why the Press Gets So Much Wrong—And Just Doesn’t Care Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Economics For You
The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don't Trust Your Gut: Using Data to Get What You Really Want in Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Think Like a Freak: The Authors of Freakonomics Offer to Retrain Your Brain Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Chip War: The Quest to Dominate the World's Most Critical Technology Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Men Without Work: America's Invisible Crisis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed or Fail Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nudge: The Final Edition: Improving Decisions About Money, Health, And The Environment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A History of the United States in Five Crashes: Stock Market Meltdowns That Defined a Nation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Four Futures: Life After Capitalism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Why the Rich Are Getting Richer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The War Below: Lithium, Copper, and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5These are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs—and Wrecks—America Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America 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 stars4/5Freakonomics Rev Ed Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lexus and the Olive Tree: Understanding Globalization Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How the World Works Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Marvel Comics: The Untold Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for On The Wealth of Nations
Rating: 3.397321375 out of 5 stars
3.5/5
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.