100 Best Liberalism Books of All Time

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Both Melinda and I read this one, and it has sparked lots of great conversations at our dinner table. Harari takes on a daunting challenge: to tell the entire history of the human race in just 400 pages. He also writes about our species today and how artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, and other technologies will change us in the future. Although I found things to disagree with—especially Harari’s claim that humans were better off before we started farming—I would recommend Sapiens to anyone who’s interested in the history and future of our species. [source]

Reid Hoffman

CEO/LinkedIn

A grand theory of humanity. [source]

A C Grayling

On Liberty is a very important document, and one which, because of the clarity with which one can read it and its brevity, is slightly passed over. [source]

Anne Heller

Imagine how John Stuart Mill would feel if he were made to wear a seatbelt because the federal government tells him so. [source]

Brink Lindsey

I think liberals, of both a libertarian, classical, liberal stripe and a more modern egalitarian stripe, see John Stuart Mill as a common ancestor. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Obama, unsurprisingly, appears to be more drawn to stories sympathetic to the working classes than is McCain. Obama cites John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle,” about a labor dispute; Robert Caro’s “Power Broker,” about Robert Moses; and Studs Terkel’s “Working.” But he also includes Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and “Theory of Moral Sentiments” on his list. [source]

Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

Adam Smith FTW obv. [source]

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Astrophysicist, Author & Science Communicator

Which books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? … The Wealth of Nations (Smith) to learn that capitalism is an economy of greed, a force of nature unto itself. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. [source]

A.J. Jacobs

All about trying to figure out the gap between the red and blue states – Republican and Democrat – and it’s really interesting. [source]

Akin Oyebode

@eggheader @OnemuVictor1 @JonHaidt Abeg order two. I read Righteous Mind which he also wrote, and that was a very fascinating book. [source]

Andrew M. Mwenda

The best work on this is a book by Jonathan Haidt “The Righteous Mind: Why good People are Divided by Religion and Politics.” He argues that human beings have deeply entrenched moral intuitions which guide their assessment of reality. Facts matter very little if at all. [source]

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder/Facebook

I read The New Jim Crow, a study of how the U.S. justice system disproportionately criminalizes and jails blacks and Latinos. Making our criminal justice system fairer and more effective is a huge challenge for our country. I’m going to keep learning about this topic, but some things are already clear: We can’t jail our way to a just society, and our current system isn’t working (adapted with permission from Facebook’s A Year of Books project). [source]

Peter Temin

The new Jim Crow that Michelle Alexander is talking about is mass incarceration. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

As 2018 draws to a close, I’m continuing a favorite tradition of mine and sharing my year-end lists. It gives me a moment to pause and reflect on the year through the books I found most thought-provoking, inspiring, or just plain loved. It also gives me a chance to highlight talented authors – some who are household names and others who you may not have heard of before. Here’s my best of 2018 list. [source]

Michael Mcfaul

Nothing more I’d rather have than a book endorsement from @SteveKerr ! And it is a great book. https://t.co/i9XCw5H9YX [source]

Petra Costa

@WeyandSabine our film "The Edge of Democracy" on Netflix was deeply inspired by this great book! [source]

Geoffrey Miller

@bdmarotta No, The Road to Serfdom by Hayek is the best book on modern evil [source]

Mitch Daniels

This book convincingly demonstrated what was already intuitive to me: namely, the utter futility, the illusion of government planning as a mechanism for uplifting those less fortunate. [source]

Yuval Levin

The Road to Serfdom is a very polemical book. It was published in 1944. It’s a warning not exactly about Communism, but about the coming of statism in the West, about the ways that some of the governing élites that Hayek saw, especially in Britain, thought about governing. The book is really mostly about Britain. He talks about the dangers of central planning, of the attempt to take over the economic life of a society and to try and control it from the centre. It’s a book that is properly understood as a libertarian book, but it’s not libertarian in the way that a lot of contemporary libertarians would define themselves. It is a very, very sceptical book, and a very modest book. In a way, Hayek argues for limited government because he has a very limited view of human nature and human knowledge. I think he would call himself a Whig. I think he actually did call himself a Whig, when he was asked whether he was a libertarian or a conservative. It’s a book that shows that at its best, the libertarian strain of conservatism is a form of scepticism rather than of utopianism. [source]

Elon Musk

Founder/SpaceX

A counterpoint to communism and useful as such, but should be tempered with kindness. [source]

Steve Jobs

Founder/Apple

is said by his Apple co-founder, Steve Wozniak, to have regarded Atlas Shrugged as one of his “guides in life”. [source]

Travis Kalanick

Travis Kalanick mentioned this book in a Washington Post interview. [source]

Ann Miura-Ko

Actually a dialogue and a real logical debate. [source]

Jonathan Wolff

Rawls wants you to think about how you would design society if you didn’t know what place you’d play in it. [source]

Lucas Morales

Depending on your interest and goals, if you are like me and always looking for the trends in the big picture then I highly recommend being an active contrarian reader. Read what no one else is reading. Your goal is to think outside the box. To look at the world and ask “why hasn’t this been solved?” And that gives you a roadmap as to what opportunities may exist for your entrepreneurial efforts. So to that, here’s a snapshot, in no particular order, of what might help you push your intellectual boundaries: Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future by Paul Mason Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty Who Gets What--And Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design by Alvin E. Roth The Political Economy of Participatory Economics by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin Why America Misunderstands the World by Paul R. Pillar A Theory of Justice by John Rawls Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

The president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr [source]

Jack Dorsey

Co-Founder/Twitter

Q: What are the books that had a major influence on you? Or simply the ones you like the most. : Tao te Ching, score takes care of itself, between the world and me, the four agreements, the old man and the sea...I love reading! [source]

Doug McMillon

CEO/Walmart

Here are some of my favorite reads from 2017. Lots of friends and colleagues send me book suggestions and it's impossible to squeeze them all in. I continue to be super curious about how digital and tech are enabling people to transform our lives but I try to read a good mix of books that apply to a variety of areas and stretch my thinking more broadly. [source]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The meaning of freedom, Hayek says, is negative. It’s not about what government or others should do, it is about freedom from coercion. [source]

Brink Lindsey

Hayek’s case for a free society is one that resonates very well with the conservative imagination and easily lapses into a conservative sensibility. [source]

Donna Dickenson

Naomi Klein’s argument is that capitalism actually requires deliberately engineered shocks to the economic systems. [source]

George Monbiot

The Shock Doctrine explains some of the mechanisms by which patrimonial capital acquires power and enhances its wealth. It’s a brilliant piece of work, and one of those rare books that changes the way you perceive the world. [source]

Mat Whitecross

It starts with the theory that moments of crisis have been utilised by the right wing in the US and other countries to manipulate people into following their agenda. [source]

Karl Rove

Tocqueville was seized by the sharp contrast between Paris and America, where people did not wait for the central government, but went ahead on their own, and I think that’s vital part of what it is to be both an American and a vital part of what is America. [source]

Robert Reich

Tocqueville was not only a brilliant sociologist but he also saw the connections between American society and the budding capitalism of the 1830s. [source]

Stephen Breyer

It’s a masterpiece of sociological and political analysis. Tocqueville’s work still helps us understand America, 170 years after he wrote it. [source]

Bill Gates

CEO/Microsoft

Capital sparked a fantastic global discussion this year about inequality. Piketty kindly spent an hour discussing his work with me before I finished my review. As I told him, although I have concerns about some of his secondary points and policy prescriptions, I agree with his most important conclusions: inequality is a growing problem and that governments should play a role in reducing it. I admire his work and hope it draws in more smart people to study the causes of, and cures for, inequality. [source]

David Heinemeier Hansson

This is the book that was catapulted by its conclusion: r > g. That the rate of return on capital is greater than the growth rate of the economy. Which means that capital, and the people who own it, will end up with a larger and larger share of all wealth and income in the economy as time goes on. It’s a dense dive into the historical data on wealth, income, and economic growth from the optic of inequality. It’s fascinating to realize just how little economic growth there was before the industrial revolution (<0.1% at times). Centuries would pass where societies got almost no more productive, and thus saw no per-capita growth. In the past few decades, we’ve moved closer to the historical norm. Real growth through productivity improvements is down a lot since that former golden period, most western societies aren’t growing their population as rapidly as they were, and thus hereditary wealth and privileges are coming back as prime determinants of inequality. Despite the dense approach, the book isn’t in anyway unapproachable. It’s well told and easily read. And it’s about as timely as it gets. Highly recommend it so far. [source]

George Monbiot

Piketty explains the economic crisis that we face in ways that also explain the political crisis. He does this by talking about the rise of what he calls ‘patrimonial capital’: wealth arising from inheritance, rent, and interest payments which greatly outweighs any wealth arising from hard work and enterprise. [source]

Ben Shapiro

If you read this book and "Basic Economics" you'll know more than all or your classmates combined about the basic workings of free markets and economics. [source]

Chris Nichols

@fishin_me @IslesFGC @AsSeenOnTv55 @IlhanMN The best economic book written. [source]

Travis Kalanick

It’s one of my favorite books. [source]

Noah Kagan

Founder/Sumo

A few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. [source]

Ashley Hathaway

Sometimes I want to nerd out and pick a heavy non-fiction book. I was reading The Fountainhead earlier this year which was pretty beefy. Got that checked off the list. [source]

Satya Nadella

CEO/Microsoft

"My father recommended this book long ago,” says Nadella of the 1944 classic by a Hungarian-American writer who chronicles the development of England’s market economy and argues that society should drive economic change. [source]

Dani Rodrik

It makes a rather important point, that the economy has always been embedded in society, and when we try to disembed it from society and treat it like an independent institution, then we’re really going to run into trouble. [source]

Mark Blyth

A story which stretches from 1815 to 1914. He says it was 100 years of peace, although that’s not actually true because if you were a colonial subject it was hardly peaceful. [source]

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Actor, Politician & Businessman

The other book that I have given hundreds of copies to is Free to Choose by Milton Friedman. It kind of lays out why the private sector is really the answer to a lot of problems that we have and not government. I think it’s a real great philosophic kind of a book about how to approach our problems, if it is education, if it is economic growth, all of those various kinds of different issues. He lays it out. It’s a very simple book to read, but it is very good and it makes an impact on your when you read it. [source]

Grover Norquist

With Free to Choose, the title summarises it. He deals with vouchers in education and the whole idea of what we’re promoting. This goes back to the argument on the science stuff. We’re not for freedom because it brings economic growth. We’re not for freedom because it brings technology and improvements in standards of living. We’re for freedom because we’re for people being free. It also happens to be the case that a free people are going to be more financially and economically successful than an un-free people. But the goal is freedom, not that you’re allowed to have a little freedom because it brings more prosperity. That’s the New Economic Policy of Lenin: ‘We’re starving, so we are going to allow a little freedom to have stores operate and people grow food.’ Freedom is a tool that you let people have a little bit in order to get what you want – which is food for the cities. For us, freedom is the goal. [source]

John Quiggin

Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose: that book very much takes the view that what matters is the individual choice. The problems of people’s interactions with others can all be solved reasonably straightforwardly without any real interference with individual choice and so the best thing governments can do is back out and leave people alone to make their own choices. [source]

Jonathan Sumption

The best reason for reading Hobbes is that no other philosopher has ever used the English language to such powerful effect. It is a really remarkable feat of dialectic. You find yourself agreeing with him at each stage of the reasoning as he builds up his case then, quite suddenly, you find that you’ve arrived at a conclusion which seems intolerable. [source]

Jonathan Wolff

Written more than three-and-a-half centuries ago in the shadow of the English Civil War, Leviathan remains a profound and relevant study. [source]

Michael Peel

The idea of ‘the war of all against all’, what a man wins through strength is what he gets, has parallels in modern Nigeria. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

According to the president’s Facebook page and a 2008 interview with the New York Times, these titles are among his most influential forever favorites: Moby Dick, Herman Melville Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson Song Of Solomon, Toni Morrison Parting The Waters, Taylor Branch Gilead, Marylinne Robinson Best and the Brightest, David Halberstam The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene The Quiet American, Graham Greene Cancer Ward, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Gandhi’s autobiography Working, Studs Terkel Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith Theory of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren [source]

Karl Rove

I think this is the greatest explanation, in one place, of the American constitution, of the essential underpinnings and structures that make American democracy possible. This is how to view the constitution in its proper perspective, as a document of limited government, and enormous personal freedom – as an attempt to understand human nature and draw on both its strengths and its weaknesses to achieve a community and nation. [source]

Daniel Baranowski

Don't you love this! This will be the book of 2020! Maybe even the decade! Impeachment is really all about the Bidens! And I don't give a Beaver's DAM how many push-ups Creepy Joe can do! Pack up & go home you old crook! https://t.co/9Mvf44XoX1 [source]

Mark R. Levin

Peter Schweizer’s great new book is out now - Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America's Progressive Elite https://t.co/7tvZ6PNVEh https://t.co/ByxizHmnph [source]

Donald J. Trump

USA President

Great Book! https://t.co/HYO77j6KRT [source]

Ivanka Trump

Excited for my amazing big brother @DonaldJTrumpJr as he releases his first book, Triggered. Order online now or pick it up on November 5! https://t.co/wqG3Tq5E2y [source]

Aasif Mandvi

.@DonaldJTrumpJr Congrats on the new book! Great read. https://t.co/6QfRgOxL7s [source]

Lisa Ling

I credit this book with propelling me to dig deeper, and to not always believe the narrative. [source]

Alex Honnold

Totally changed the way I look at politics. [source]

Barack Obama

Former USA President

Obama, unsurprisingly, appears to be more drawn to stories sympathetic to the working classes than is McCain. Obama cites John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle,” about a labor dispute; Robert Caro’s “Power Broker,” about Robert Moses; and Studs Terkel’s “Working.” But he also includes Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations” and “Theory of Moral Sentiments” on his list. [source]

Karl Rove

There [source]

Ryan Holiday

Author

I was heartily recommend this book by Dr. Drew and since the last book he recommended changed my life as a young man, I did not hesitate to get it. Now this is a tough book, a really tough book, but it is amazing. People think of Adam Smith as being this ruthless economist who studied self-interest but this forgotten book reveals that he was in fact, a great moral and practical philosopher. It is clear to me that Smith was profoundly influenced by the Stoics and by the great classic thinkers of history. Intimidated? Well, good news! It turns out Penguin published a new book this year called How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life by Russ Roberts and it happens to be an eminently accessible access point into Theory of Moral Sentiments. (In fact, I liked both so much, I am buying copies to send as a package to a handful of close friends) I hope you pick up either book and I hope its deep thoughts on the pursuit of fame, of money, and of course, his concept of the “indifferent spectator” to guide your actions, make you think as much as they did for me. [source]

Donald J. Trump

USA President

Word is out that book is GREAT! https://t.co/mTA1xcz9eQ [source]

Steve Pohlit

Great book https://t.co/Wqi3JvOuBU [source]

Thomas P Kennedy Iii

Happy Father’s Day to all you Fathers, Grandpas & Great-Grandpas! My wife bought this new shirt AND Mark R Levin’s new book, ‘Unfreedom of the Press’. https://t.co/AouqUxKv47 [source]

Andrew T. Walker

I've finished @DouglasKMurray's book "The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race, and Identity" and it is one of the most intellectually honest books I have ever read. Such insightful cultural criticism. [source]

Peter Boghossian

This is the best Gender Studies book ever written. Period. @DouglasKMurray https://t.co/DBs1NAaOhn [source]

David Marquand

This book is all about the way that Europe has managed – not always totally successfully, but managed nevertheless – to come to terms with its bloody and horrible past. [source]

Keith Lowe

What [source]

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

One of the biggest lessons for me from this book is that so many bad ideas that lead to authoritarian consequences begin with good intentions. [source]

Kurt Barling

This book helped me to think in a different way, gave me a strategy of looking for an alternative narrative in society. [source]

Donald J. Trump

USA President

Senator Rand Paul just wrote a great book, “The Case Against Socialism” which is now out. Highly recommended – as America was founded on LIBERTY & INDEPENDENCE – not government coercion, domination & control. We were born free, and will stay free, as long as I am your President! [source]

Arthur Schwartz

Senator @RandPaul has a great new book on the dangers of Socialism. If you don’t want the Bernie & AOC crowd to implement Stalin’s policies in America get a copy now. https://t.co/3ueycKCR1d [source]

Cliff Maloney

Spent time in NYC with the great @KelleyAshbyPaul and @RandPaul discussing their new book: “THE CASE AGAINST SOCIALISM” A great read for Americans interested in how incentives and markets actually work #MakeLibertyWin @YALiberty https://t.co/Kl4dGei4jQ [source]

Clara Jeffery

@jwpetersNYT Anywho, Arlie spent 5 years embedded in Tea Party culture. Her book was an NYT best-seller and a National Book Award finalist. And she was hardly the only one that did deep reporting on the Tea Party before and after the 2016 election. [source]

Kate Marvel

Hochschild argues that all social groups have a ‘deep story’: a narrative that makes the complicated world make sense. [source]

Tony Schwartz

Arlie Hochschild is a brilliant writer and a sociologist of great empathy and insight. Although the book was written before Trump was elected president, it goes a long way toward explaining him, and more specifically toward explaining why people embraced him. [source]

Mark Blyth

The notion in the whole book is that it is far better for man to lord it over his bank balance than it is over his fellow man. [source]

Robert J Shiller

When we reflect on some of the horrors of capitalism, we have to consider that things could have been much worse if we didn’t have this system. Our fights would have been on real battlefields, rather than economic battlefields. [source]

Will Davies

The core question in Hirschman’s book is actually in its subtitle: ‘Political Arguments for Capitalism before Its Triumph’. Like Weber, Hirschman realised that, first, there is nothing natural about capitalism. [source]