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. 🙂
READER COMMENTS
Eric Crampton
Dec 10 2007 at 3:55pm
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.
Unit
Dec 10 2007 at 5:33pm
Maybe you can refer the reviewer to your comic strip version…
Steve Miller
Dec 10 2007 at 8:26pm
I looked up a dictionary once. But it was boring, which made it hard to hold my concentration.
David Robinson
Dec 11 2007 at 3:27am
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).
shayne
Dec 11 2007 at 8:58am
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.
Barkley Rosser
Dec 11 2007 at 11:28am
Congratulations on the Fin Times kudo.
Douglass Holmes
Dec 11 2007 at 7:50pm
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.
Comments are closed.