December 10, 2007
Bryan Caplan
The Financial Times has named The Myth of the Rational Voter one of the best books of 2007. And I'm in some good company, though one could argue that the most convincing endorsements come from people who don't share my tastes.
P.S. From a review of my book from Amazon.uk:
[A] book written for the university educated and the class of society who never have to fear unemployment. The university style of writing makes it difficult to understand what he is going on about, since you have to keep looking up a dictionary.
I'm puzzled; how could you even
try to write a sub-university-level book about voter rationality? I guess I could have authored
Voter Irrationality for Dummies, but that seems like a truly narrow market. :-)
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CATEGORIES: Books: Reviews and Suggested Readings (194)
I can totally imagine a children's version. With illustrations of crazy voters doing crazy things. Rhyming.
I won't need a copy for about two years. Make sure it's ready by then.
I'm far from a professional economist, but I don't remember ever having to look in a dictionary when I read "Myth of the Rational Voter." I'll admit that most professional economic papers I'd need to read next to a good reference guide, but "Myth of the Rational Voter" seemed to me to be written for a pretty standard audience.
I certainly found it less dense than Hayek or Von Mises, or even Milton Friedman (who can certainly get "university-level" when he's writing a chapter on monetary policy, even in his most generally-aimed books).
Fear not, Bryan. As long as you are propagating knowledge and information, you are serving humanity. There are already enough folks out there propagating ignorance and misinformation - serving themselves only.
I didn't need a dictionary, but I did find the explanation of Public Choice difficult to follow. Still, it wasn't as difficult as the Cisco technical books I have to read, and I didn't need to take a test when I finished. Your book is an important contribution to the public discussion of democracy.
