In Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics, P.J. O'Rourke asks one of those pesky universal questions that plague not only economists but also theologians, ethicists, and my next-door neighbor whose stock portfolio lost half of its value in August: "Why do some places prosper and thrive and others just suck?"

After dismissing economic theories as "puerile and impenetrable," Mr. O'Rourke embarks on a worldwide quest for the answer. The conclusion Mr. O'Rourke reaches at the end of his junket? "The free market is ugly and stupid; the unfree market is just as ugly and stupid."

He may well be right, but Eat the Rich left me with disturbing questions, not all of which had much to do with economics. I wanted to know how a man could travel the world for two years and seemingly speak with no one except taxi drivers and hotel clerks. Most of all, I wanted to know: Does anyone, even Mr. O'Rourke's editors, think this book is funny?

Mr. O'Rourke has made his mark as a conservative humorist, admittedly something of an oxymoron, but he has pulled it off in past books. Here he is snide, not humorous. It's as if he had a perpetual hangover while writing the book—after all, the only overarching theme binding this loose collection of observations is jokes about drinking.

Isn't there anyone, anywhere in the world, who deserves more from Mr. O'Rourke than a tasteless jab? Here's a typical passage, describing an industrial accident in Sweden: "The crane fell across four traffic lanes, through the roof of a shuttered kiosk, over a breakwater, and into the harbor. And I, I'm an American. I can't help it. I laughed. The hotel manager was standing next to me in the lobby. She said, 'It isn't really funny.' Of course, if anybody had been hurt or a row of cars had been creamed or a bunch of tourists had been standing in line at the kiosk to buy sea-cruise tickets, then. . . then it would have been hilarious."

To his credit, Mr. O'Rourke admits knowing nothing about his subject. "I got to be an economic idiot by the simple and natural method of being human. . . I make no claim to understand economics," he writes. That's fine. A little journalistic humility is good. But it doesn't blend well with the posturing that colors almost every other sentence in the book. "Production requires actual skills and so can't be taught by economics professors, because they'd have to know how to do something," he tells us later. Two hundred and forty pages of this gets tired.

Assuming you're given a copy and feel compelled to read it, you'll enjoy the book more if you start reading at Chapter 7, about the time when Mr. O'Rourke himself has become bored with economic blowhardism, and treats us instead to entertaining travelogues of Russia, Tanzania, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. In places, the prose soars, making you wish he'd dropped the artifice of having anything meaningful to say about economics much sooner. Of Tanzania, Mr. O'Rourke writes:

"One dawn I rode a dizzy-pitched, rut-ulcerated switchback road into the crater. Maasai boys were leading a hundred cattle down to a salt lick. The young herdsmen were dressed in pairs of plaid blankets, with one worn as kilt and the other as toga. Beadwork swung at their necks and dangled from the piercings at the tops and bottoms of their ears. Each carried a long stick with the war-lance aplomb young boys give to long sticks. The air was clean and sharp. The clear sky was just beginning to light up. The cowbells plinked like a half-audible cheery tune. There are probably worse things to be than a Maasai boy taking cattle into the Ngorongo Crater at dawn."

In earlier chapters, though, finding the good parts takes committed wading. The sixth chapter, in which Mr. O'Rourke attempts to make economic theory funny, is unforgivable. Other chapters are predictable—a trait that is great for a romance novelist but that is fatal if you're trying to be funny. Like a stand-up comic who has used the same jokes one night too many, Mr. O'Rourke sounds tired of his own material. He can do better.


Ms. Tristram has traveled all over the world—searching for the perfect motorcycle ride rather than for economic enlightenment—and still kept her sense of humor. She lives in San Jose, Calif., and can be reached at claire@tristram.com.