The Wind of the Hundred Days: How Washington Mismanaged Globalization; Keys to Prosperity: Free Markets, Sound Money, and a Bit of Luck

These books collect some of the popular and policy-oriented essays written by two distinguished academic economists in the 1990s. Each contains over 45 works, including op-ed pieces, congressional testimony, and speeches; the Dornbusch volume also contains his regular pieces for Business Week. Both men are excellent expositors, able to convey sound economic reasoning to the nonspecialist. Bhagwati, a leading proponent of trade liberalization within a global framework, focuses mainly on trade policy -- usually with closely reasoned argument. Dornbusch focuses mainly on macroeconomic and exchange-rate management -- and is given to occasional hyperbole. Despite their selectiveness, the books inevitably reflect the weaknesses of their genre: some repetition of important themes and an occasional out-of-date touch. The excerpts need to be read in the context in which they were written, which is not always provided. Dornbusch enjoys being bold and provocative, which means he can also be egregiously wrong -- when, for example, he argued that Italy would not enter the European economic and monetary union in its first round. But both books provide highly stimulating commentary on contemporary issues of enduring interest.