100 Books Like Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Aristotle offers a classic statement and argument for politics as an extension of ethics. For people to live well and strive for good things, they need to live in a political community. How politics is done has a direct impact on the quality of people’s lives.

I am always inspired by Aristotle’s recognition of how peaceful discussions over the nature of justice constitute the central feature of political life and how good politics necessarily implies reciprocity and efforts to advance the well-being of all citizens.

I love reading Montaigne. Montaigne offers a wide window into the human experience.

He combines a grand knowledge of literary tradition with incredibly insightful commentary on human psychology. His focus on the outlier and the extraordinary in his observations and short essays (e.g., the cannibals in early modern Brazil) challenge our suppositions about the world.

He served as mayor of his local city of Bordeaux for several years, and while he expresses some skepticism toward the good that grand politics can do, he still encourages his readers to seek to better their world in the ways that are available to them.

This is an amazing book!

Ben Jelloun was a political prisoner in Morocco for several years and was imprisoned in a dark cell in the ground in unimaginably horrific conditions. This book demonstrates politics gone wrong and the extent of the brutality that can be ravaged on other human beings in a system lacking justice or any sense of human rights and dignity.

Despite the intensely inhumane conditions of imprisonment, Ben Jelloun carries us along his journey and offers his readers an inspiring account of endurance and courage.

This book needs to be read by people in an era of democratic backsliding because it helps to demonstrate some of the things that are at stake when electorates become tempted by authoritarian leaders.

Maria Ressa is an inspiring figure. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 for her work in trying to defend the freedom of the press in the Philippines, under threat due to the authoritarianism of Duterte. The narrative of her life and struggles offers insight into the ways in which democracy is fragile and can easily be upended.

I am particularly drawn to her discussion of the effects of contemporary social media on social psychology and how it can contribute to the weakening of democratic mores. The case of the Philippines might be considered to have the status of a ‘canary in the coal mine,’ alerting other contemporary liberal democratic countries to the dangers of unregulated social media, AI, and other new electronic technologies.

We need to be informed about the effects of these technologies and work to save our public and democratic institutions, which are being eroded by… show more.

Angus Deaton presents his own work and summarizes the work of others to describe the beginning of sustained economic growth, what is sometimes called the industrial revolution.

Not only does this sustained economic growth result in much greater health and wealth, but also in inequality.

Before, only a very small number of people enjoyed leisure and what were the luxuries of the time. After, increasing percentages of people escaped the so-called iron law of wages.

I love this book for two reasons. It condenses a massive amount of economic history into a small book, and it shows how our unequal societies are backtracking to older models of the economy.

Labor unions played a key role in lifting millions of Americans—mostly white male industrial workers—into the middle class in the mid-twentieth century. The passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s opened access to unionized manufacturing jobs and led to new waves of labor activism by women and people of color, but these were undermined by political and economic shifts that eliminated millions of jobs in the late twentieth century. Windham shows how anti-union policies and practices made it more difficult for workers to organize and force employers to the negotiating table, which explains the persistence of racial and economic inequality in the twenty-first century. Like Foner’s Nothing But Freedom (mentioned above), the book provides ample evidence that nothing about this was foreordained—once again, those who set the rules of a more globalized economy did so in ways that allowed some people to prosper while others starved.

I would have recommended John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, which is one of the great masterworks of the twentieth century, but reading Keynes himself can be difficult.

Hansen’s book is the best summary available despite being more than 70 years old. And understanding Keynes is essential if you want to understand how certain economic policies continue to lead us astray.

Hard to find, but not impossible. 

This is a positive book that shows how education can help Blacks and other minorities get an education that will help them stay out of mass incarceration. It is good to have a positive program as we attempt to deal with American racism.

In this already-classic work, Joseph Stiglitz–Nobel Prize winner and chief economist for the World Bank–describes the ways in which the market has been systematically rigged in favour of the rich and big business, leading to an explosion of inequality and the rise of the 1%.

I love how this book illustrates the ways in which inequality acts as a cancer on society, eating it apart from the inside. But Stiglitz also helped me to understand how such problems can be dealt with a realistic way.