Written as a riposte to Henry Hazlitt's classic Economics in One Lesson, Soule's book confidently asserts that centralized planning, based on Keynesian "science", furnishes a clear, simple road to prosperity. He has no worries about the problem of economic calculation and sniffs at Bastiat's distinction between "the seen" and "the unseen". We enlightened moderns can see it all!

Six decades on, not even the most retrograde progressive will be comfortable with the author's simplistic optimism. The reader does, however, gain insight into the mindset of the post-war intelligentsia. ( )