Books like The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millenium — picked by fans

Published in 2002, this is the book that pushed the pendulum back from the canard that we are entirely shaped by our environmental circumstances. Pinker confronts the reality that we are biological creatures, but far from painting a cold, deterministic view of human behavior, this book is ultimately a defense of social progress.

Pinker shows that understanding our innate tendencies does not justify discrimination or fatalism but rather empowers us to build better societies by working with, rather than against, human nature. Few books changed the way I see the world, but this is one of them. 

After reading it, I was inspired to go back to school and study biology—in order to merge it with social science—to get a complete picture of what makes us tick.

This book gave me a deeper appreciation of how moral intuitions shape political divisions—not as accidents of ideology but as features of human psychology. Haidt’s metaphor of the elephant and the rider helped me see why rational argument so often fails to persuade across political lines: because reason follows intuition, not the other way around.

His mapping of multiple “moral taste buds”—including authority, loyalty, and sanctity—also challenged the narrow moral frameworks that dominate secular discourse. While I don’t agree with everything—particularly his optimistic lean toward moral equilibrium or his underemphasis on structural power—I admire his effort to move us beyond outrage toward curiosity. It’s a valuable guide for understanding why we talk past one another—and how we might start listening instead.

Liberals and conservatives strongly disagree on the appropriate scope of government. No book has helped me understand why more than Thomas Sowell’s Conflict of Visions.

He describes how the ideological difference results from disagreements about the malleability of human nature. The unconstrained vision, typically associated with liberals, sees human nature as altruistic and perfectible. The government should be used expansively to promote social justice and equality to realize this vision. 

In contrast, the constrained vision, typically associated with conservatives, sees human nature as limited, selfish, and imperfectible. The government should play a limited role in society, as elites cannot hope to restructure society without unintended destructive consequences.

What would it look like if the federal government launched an ambitious campaign to mobilize community residents to reduce poverty? 

Daniel Patrick Moynihan offers an insider’s account of one such effort, launched in the 1960s as part of the War on Poverty. What he finds is a fundamental disconnect between the ambitions and high-minded theories of reformers in Washington DC, and the hard realities of practice on the ground.

Maximum Feasible Misunderstanding is a cautionary tale and a heartbreaking catalog of missed opportunities, unintended consequences, and wasted resources. I wish someone had handed me this book at the start of my career to help temper my youthful idealism.

My friend and co-author Aubrey Fox recommended this book to me not long after we met. 

I liked it so much that I think it is actually one of the reasons we became friends in the first place. Tilting at Mils is the story of an innovative effort by the Natural Resources Defense Council, a leading environmental nonprofit, to create a paper mill in the Bronx in the 1990s. 

The initiative attracted millions of dollars and high-level political support, both in New York City and Washington DC. But the project never happened.

Tilting at Mills is a gripping story of failure, not due to malfeasance or incompetence, but because achieving anything is difficult and lots of things can go wrong, including rotten luck and bad timing. 

Like many New Yorkers, I am fascinated by the history of the city.

The Cost of Good Intentions details the run-up to a crucial turning point for the city: the fiscal crisis of 1975.

Written by a high-ranking city official after the fact, the book is an insightful analysis of how local government, particularly under Mayor John Lindsay, attempted to respond to a range of significant challenges, including the civil right movement, rising crime, and changing economic conditions. 

Despite the best of intentions, the administration’s reach ended up exceeding its grasp, laying the groundwork not only for the fiscal crisis and for an era of declining public trust in government.  

Liberalism values reasonable arguments, incremental reforms, and resistance to cruelty. These values receive plenty of support, but they can also sound a bit tame and boring. Enter Adam Gopnik – to his credit, he acknowledges all this, yet he manages to give liberalism his passionate advocacy. He conveys the joyous side of communities based on reasonableness and toleration.

Gopnik paints liberalism with a human face–or multiple faces–by telling stories about great liberal thinkers from history, such as John Stuart Mill and his friend, lover, collaborator, and (eventually) wife, the remarkable Harriet Taylor.

I am often struck by how differently people from across the political spectrum frame any given issue.

Arnold Kling systematically describes this phenomenon and highlights how progressives, conservatives, and libertarians use different language to highlight their concerns. Conservatives focus on threats to traditional values. Progressives highlight threats to the underprivileged. Libertarians worry about threats to freedom.

This book will change the way you consume the news in our polarized media landscape.

Mary Roach is an absolute treasure as a science writer: not only hilarious, but often insightful. I’ll admit, when I wrote my first book, I always wondered "what would Mary Roach do?" when I came to a tricky bit. Grunt isn’t her best-known work, but it’s my favourite because it looks at something only she could do well: non-violent science in the military. The only gun, she writes, is the one that fires frozen chickens at windscreens to see if they can withstand the impact. This is a book about how to keep soldiers safe from the enemy, cool in the desert, and stop Navy SEALS from pooping their pants.

I recommend The Inversion Factor because it’s a deep dive into the Internet of Things from some of the people who made the IoT possible: the geniuses at MIT.

The book’s take on commerce alone is fascinating, the idea that in the future, demand will be driven not by companies deciding what to make and sell but by a flow of consumer data coming from connected devices telling companies, “Here’s what you need to make next.”

Plus, the descriptions of the IoT home and services, tempered though they are by realities like the fact that self-driving cars aren’t very good yet at not running people over, are gripping. Great book.