Mark Kleiman

Adam Winkler’s Gunfight is a book of contradictions: a dispassionate book about a passionately debated topic, a sane book about competing insanities, a page-turner about legal doctrine and obscure bits of history, a piece of serious scholarship combined with journalistic flair.

Nudge, by Richard Thaler (today’s guest) and Cass Sunstein, is an exposition of the set of ideas its authors call “Libertarian Paternalism.” At first blush this might seem as oxymoronic a combination as “dry water,” and it is a major part of the project of the book to show why it is not.