In one of the first titles in the Atlantic Monthly Press's Books That Changed the World series, America's most provocative satirist, P. J. O'Rourke, reads Adam Smith's revolutionary Wealth of Nations so you don't have to.

New York Times bestselling author P.J. O'Rourke has toured the fighting in Bosnia, visited the West Bank disguised as P.J. of Arabia, lobbed one-liners on the battlefields of the Gulf War, and traded quips with Communist rebels in the...