Dark Horses

Basic Books expected to sell several thousand copies of George Gilder’s wealth and Poverty (his previous book, Visible Man, had by then sold seven hundred). But as of several weeks ago Wealth and Poverty had reached 135,000 in sales and Gilder had become one of the most talked-about men in Washington. His puckish but moving arguments on behalf of capitalism traveled, it seemed, everywhere, and he gave supply-side economics a currency almost equal to that of the Scarsdale Diet. Gilder, of course, was not the first man to popularize the tenets of the coming economic wisdom, but certainly he is the most successful. Very probably he has created a promising new growth market into which, over the next year or two, authors and publishers may be expected to scramble.

“Reaganomics”: Supply-Side Economics in Action (Arlington House, $14.95), by Bruce Bartlett, is the latest contribution to the literature. Bartlett, who went to work in 1977 for New York GOP Congressman Jack Kemp, was part of the early team of supply-siders; although he has contributed to a wide variety of journalistic publications, his book reads a lot like a report by somebody’s staff economist, which Bartlett was. Nothing wrong with that, of course: there is a great deal of information in “Reaganomics,” a plethora of charts and statistics, and a clear and lucid text.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Basic Books expected to sell several thousand copies of George Gilder’s wealth and Poverty (his previous book, Visible Man, had by then sold seven hundred). But as of several weeks ago Wealth and Poverty had reached 135,000 in sales and Gilder had become one of the most talked-about men in Washington. His puckish but moving arguments on behalf of capitalism traveled, it seemed, everywhere, and he gave supply-side economics a currency almost equal to that of the Scarsdale Diet. Gilder, of course, was not the first man to popularize the tenets of the coming economic wisdom, but certainly he is the most successful. Very probably he has created a promising new growth market into which, over the next year or two, authors and publishers may be expected to scramble.

“Reaganomics”: Supply-Side Economics in Action (Arlington House, $14.95), by Bruce Bartlett, is the latest contribution to the literature. Bartlett, who went to work in 1977 for New York GOP Congressman Jack Kemp, was part of the early team of supply-siders; although he has contributed to a wide variety of journalistic publications, his book reads a lot like a report by somebody’s staff economist, which Bartlett was. Nothing wrong with that, of course: there is a great deal of information in “Reaganomics,” a plethora of charts and statistics, and a clear and lucid text.