Best books ... chosen by P.J. O’Rourke

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek (Univ. of Chicago, $17). Hayek demolishes central planning in one sentence, which I’ll paraphrase because he wrote the book in a foreign language—in his case, English: The worst possible world would be created by taking the most prominent experts in every field and giving each one absolute power over his area of expertise.

The Warden by Anthony Trollope (Dover, $2). A smug, reforming newspaper reporter speaks truth to power and destroys—as a matter of principle, of course—an ancient, honorable, and worthy little almshouse. “He took such high ground that there was no getting on it.”

Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman (Houghton Mifflin, $15). You can spend your money on yourself and get what you want. You can spend your money on someone else and get what you think they should have. You can spend someone else’s money on yourself and be farting through silk. Or you can spend someone else’s money on someone else and the hell with what happens. All government spending falls into the last two categories.

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Property and Freedom by Richard Pipes (Vintage, $15). Using the history of Russia, Pipes frames the issue clearly: Just freedom and you get the anarchists’ bombs. Just property and you get the czar. Neither and you get Stalin.

Advise and Consent by Allen Drury (out of print). A “political independent” is someone who is proud of the fact that he has no idea what to think. The novel Advise and Consent is the story of a 1950s foreign-policy flap involving the Senate confirmation of some jerk, and Drury manages it without telling us which political parties the president or his congressional opponents belong to. Judging by some recent foreign-policy flaps, today’s president and his congressional opponents still aren’t sure.

Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes (Oxford, $10). The way to understand how a decent and intelligent man can convince himself with irrefutable logic that a despotic government is a necessity. And it’s a reminder to all students of political science that the most convincing arguments are the wrong ones.