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The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else by Hernando de Soto, Basic Books, 276 pp.; $27.50

In the acknowledgments for his new book, The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else (Basic), Hernando de Soto thanks the Smith Richardson Foundation for its support, which included providing a bullet-proof vehicle when de Soto's Peru-based Institute for Liberty and Deomcracy "was being bombed and shot at during the early 1990's." The distinctive mix of practicality and wit in that thank you is characteristic of de Soto, whose book The Other Path was read by policymakers throughout Latin America and around the world. He tackles subjects that have produced mountains of unreadable prose and inconclusive statistics, and emerges with a fresh point of view that is at once utterly practical and conceptually dazzling. Michael Cromartie spoke with de Soto during a recent visit to Washington, D.C.