Read This One Rich

The book I couldn't recall was The Calculus of Consent:Logical Foundations of Constitutional Democracy, by Gordon Tullock and James Buchanan. It enumerates the cases pretty convincingly, and points out that in determining the optimal decision-making procedure one has to consider the increase in coordination costs vs the imposition of external costs.

Ultimately, I was not happy with their assumptions, though--I can't recall which, exactly, though, unsettled me.

Another book I couldn't recall was by Michael Pollan, and called The Botany of Desire:A Plant's-Eye View of the World. It talked about the coevolution of humans and plants.