You can file this under "You couldn't make it up".
Yesterday I spotted P.J. O'Rourke's book "Eat The Rich" in one of the three W H Smith's newsagents in Waterloo
railway station. The cover features a typicaly-smug Mr. O'Rourke and the slogan "A Treatise in Economics".
And yet Smith's, in their wisdom, had seen fit to put in in their "Health & Diet" section. They
really think it's about eating rich folks.
The book itself is pretty good; although I find his flippant mocking of some nationalities a little dispiriting. The chapters cover
the "Good Capitalism" of Wall Street and the "Bad Capitalism" of Albania; then the "Good Socialism" of Sweden and
the "Bad Socialism" of Cuba. The book rounds off with sections on the economic reform of Russia, and "How to Make
Nothing if You Have Everything" (Tanzania), "How to Make Everything From Nothing" (Hong Kong) and "How to Have the
Worst of Both Worlds" (Shanghai). He visits each country and gives his forthright and entertaining opinions on what
he finds there. It is an excellent piece of travel writing as well as a basic overview of several economic systems in practice.
| 
