(embarrassingly, I missed being tagged, five MONTHS ago, by my man E. Frank. Hope it still counts, long after the tag has gone cold).

One Book Meme

1. One book that changed my life: David Hume's ESSAYS: Moral, Political, and Literary. Except for being confused about causation (and who isn't?), Hume is our finest philosopher. And the Essays are all tasty morsels.

2. One Book I've Read More Than Once: Gene Wolf's THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. (Yes, I know it's four volumes, but check the title: THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. That's one book, so there)

3. One Book I Would Want on a Desert Island: Winston Churchill's HISTORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR. (Okay, that's SIX volumes, and there is no overarching title. But, c'mon....a desert island?)

4. One Book that Made Me Laugh: P.J. O'Rourke's ALL THE TROUBLE IN THE WORLD. The chapters on environmentalists, and environmentalism, make me laugh until I touch myself.

5. One Book that Made Me Cry: Robert Hughes's THE FATAL SHORE. People with power suck, especially when dealing with other people, which is most of the time.

6. One Book that I Wish Had Written: P. J. O'Rourke's (you may be sensing a pattern, here) book on Adam Smith, ON THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. I could never hope to write THE WEALTH OF NATIONS. But if I had tried to write a book like ON THE WoN, it would have been a lot like P.J.'s, just not as good. (And, I should note, P.J. has come a long, long way since his days at National Lampoon, where in 1979 he wrote, "How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink." A fine article, to be sure, but after you read the title that was pretty much it. Sound advice, useful, let's move on. That article was reprinted in REPUBLICAN PARTY REPTILE, btw.)

7. One Book I Wish Had Not Been Written: I can't think of even one. I love reading Marx, who I consider to be the first public choice theorist, and in many ways presaging Stigler and the Chicago school. And zealots will always find someone to follow, blindly and without question. So, maybe that's it: suppose Hitler had been "killed trying to escape," and hadn't finished Mein Kampf. There. WWII might have been fought anyway, given the political and economic forces at work. But Germany might not have attacked Russia, and in any case the Holocaust would have been shortened, and maybe even reduced to a displacement, rather than mass execution. On the other hand, maybe not.

8. One Book I'm Currently Reading: Thomas Cobb, AN INQUIRY INTO THE LAW OF NEGRO SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES. Published in 1858, it was designed to lay to rest questions of slavery's origins, legitimacy, and management. A remarkable effort by a smart man to justify an unjustifiable institution.

9. One Book I've Been Meaning to Read: Edward Castronova's SYNTHETIC WORLDS: THE BUSINESS AND CULTURE OF ONLINE GAMES. Just keep getting ready to start it, and then doing something else. I'm staring at it, right now, on my desk, a two-month-old reproach.

And if the "tag" dies here, so be it. My fault for taking so long to notice.