Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek saw the liberty principle as focal and accorded it strong presumption, but their wisdom invokes how little we can know. In Knowledge and Coordination, Daniel Klein re-examines the elements of economic liberalism. He interprets Hayek's notion of spontaneous order from the aestheticized perspective of a Smithian spectator, real or imagined. Klein addresses issues economists have had surrounding the notion of coordination by distinguishing the concatenate coordi...

The Half-Life of Policy Rationales argues that the appropriateness of policy depends on the state of technology, and that the justifications for many public policies are dissolving as technology advances. As new detection and metering technologies are being developed for highways, parking, and auto emissions, and information becomes more accessible and user-friendly, this volume argues that quality and safety are better handled by the private sector. As for public utilitie...

Transit services in the United States are in trouble. Ridership has dwindled, productivity has declined, and operating deficits have widened. The traditional approaches to running transit systems-government planning or operation of bus and rail services, government subsidization of private operations, heavy regulation of all transit modes-have failed, and there is little hope of their ever succeeding under current practices. But public transportation cannot simply be abandoned. Can it, the...

A humorous and philosophical trip through life, from the New York Times–bestselling coauthor of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .Daniel Klein’s fans have fallen in love with the warm, humorous, and thoughtful way he shows how philosophy resonates in everyday life. Readers of his popular books Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . . and Travels with Epicurus come for enlightenment and stay for the entertainment.As a young college student studying...

Advice on achieving a fulfilling old age from one of the bestselling authors of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar . . .After being advised by his dentist to get tooth implants, Daniel Klein decides to stick with his dentures and instead use the money to make a trip to the Greek island Hydra and discover the secrets of aging happily. Drawing on the inspiring lives of his Greek friends and philosophers ranging from Epicurus to Sartre, Klein uncov...

"It doesn't seem likely that a man would murder his wife and then just crawl back into bed and go to sleep, does it?"Elvis Presley is in Las Vegas for a little R&R before starting his next picture, Roustabout. But the King's work is never done. Before long, Elvis finds himself up to his neck in the hunt for a killer.A tourist turns up ritualistically murdered at one of Las Vegas's preeminent wedding chapels, and Elvis can't help f...

Stoned out of his skull—this is how we find washed-up New York magazine writer Digby Maxwell when he is offered a last chance to redeem himself by becoming editor of a small philosophy magazine headquartered in a rural Vermont college town. Digby's assignment is to make the magazine relevant to contemporary culture. For starters, that requires several more tokes, very deep tokes.A wildly witty novel in the tradition of J. P. Donleavy and Nick Hornby, Nothing Serious

Billy had said the word "murder". Worse, he'd said "serial murder". This was definitely not a game anymore.Back from his tour of duty in Germany-and desperately missing his Momma-Elvis Aron Presley just isn't turned on by the music the way he used to be. Between his Machiavellian manager, the hangers-on and childhood pals crowding his Graceland mansion, and his own propensity for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the King tries desperately to get his heart back in...

Murdering a man is a whole lot cheaper than paying him twenty grand.It's Memphis, 1965. Elvis passes his evenings at the movie-house, endlessly watching Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. His friends and hangers-on are starting to worry-and so is his famously hucksterish manager, Colonel Tom Parker.Things only get worse when the King finds out that someone has been disguising himself as Elvis in order to seduce his young female fans, and that Colonel Tom's...

A humorous and philosophical trip through life, from the New York Times-bestselling coauthor of Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar ... Daniel Klein's fans have fallen in love with the warm, humorous, and thoughtful way he shows how philosophy resonates in everyday life. Readers of his popular books Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar ... and Travels with Epicurus come for enlightenment and stay for the entertainment. As a young college student studying philosophy, Klein filled a noteboo...

Small, almost imperceptible changes are rippling through the New England village of Grandville, altering it in ways its inhabitants cannot yet imagine. The sixty-five-year-old projectionist at the local movie theater encounters an unexpected love affair. The town’s drama leader wrestles with self-doubt over a politically-correct play a New Yorker is pushing her to produce, while her teenaged daughter discovers long-lost black relatives living nearby. Laced through these episodes are storie...

The McDougal homicide and the trial that followed never made it into a single newspaper east of the Rockies. Holly McDougal was, after all, just a bit player murdered by a nobody.Elvis Presley has just completed filming Kissin' Cousins, his romance with Ann-Margret has become public knowledge, and Priscilla is on the warpath. Against this backdrop, one "Squirm" Littlejon, an old army friend, contacts Elvis. Littlejon is serving life in a Califor...