Right Books

With his Voodoo Deficits (Dow Jones/Irwin, 184 pp., $22.95) Robert Ortner has added to the flurry of books surveying the economy during the Reagan Administration and hinting at a bright future.

Mr. Ortner, who served as chief economist and under secretary of commerce during the Reagan Administration, has warm feelings about the Reagan era; he knows the numbers and has reason to be pleased. But in dealing with the central question of his book—can America sustain such enormous deficits?—Mr. Ortner’s cheerful outlook gets the better of him.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Communism

With his Voodoo Deficits (Dow Jones/Irwin, 184 pp., $22.95) Robert Ortner has added to the flurry of books surveying the economy during the Reagan Administration and hinting at a bright future.

Mr. Ortner, who served as chief economist and under secretary of commerce during the Reagan Administration, has warm feelings about the Reagan era; he knows the numbers and has reason to be pleased. But in dealing with the central question of his book—can America sustain such enormous deficits?—Mr. Ortner’s cheerful outlook gets the better of him.