Welcome to Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday January 10th. I am Anastasia Glova.

Today's guest is Cato's H.L. Menkin fellow PJ O'Rourke.

PJ is the author of 10 books including Parliament of Hors and Give War a chance, both of which

were number one New York Times bestsellers.

Yesterday PJ gave a book forum at the Cato Institute on his most recent work on the

wealth of nations, which is an impressive

and I would add successful attempt to cull the essential concepts from Adam Smith's

massive wealth of nations into a brisk, enjoyable, and informative 217 pages.

PJ, why is your book necessary?

My book is necessary because nobody is going to read The Wealth of Nations.

I mean, there are two or three people here at Cato that have read it, but that's it.

And it's 900 pages long.

And a lot of it is out of date.

A lot of it has to do with econometrics that are very old-fashioned.

A lot of it could be quickly represented with graphs,

but Adam Smith didn't have graphs, and yeah, it runs on. So what's really needed is a wise

condensation of it. Failing that, we're going to get my commentary.

Did you find such a tone a little bit

unapproachable and intimidating at first?

No, it was just a lot of work.

Actually, Adam Smith has a very nice prose style. Once you get with the rhythm of

18th century English, it really is not difficult reading at all. There's just a lot of it.

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