Ezra Klein's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2021)

Want to know what books Ezra Klein recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Ezra Klein's favorite book recommendations of all time.

Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America

George C. Edwards III, Neal R. Peirce | 4.11

Americans currently choose their president through the electoral college, an extraordinarily complex mechanism that may elect a candidate who does not receive the most votes. In this provocative book, George Edwards III argues that—contrary to what supporters of the electoral college claim—there is no real justification for a system that might violate majority rule.

Drawing on systematic data, Edwards finds that the electoral college does not protect the interests of small states or racial minorities, does not provide presidents with effective coalitions for governing, and does... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of books on presidential rhetoric. Those are books that are not the friendliest tours through American politics but they are the most information rich. (Source)

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The Polarized Presidency of George W. Bush

George C Edwards III and Desmond King | 3.75

This collection examines the foreign and domestic policies of President George W Bush's administration. The analysis begins with an account of how highly polarized--in terms of public opinion and electoral patterns--this presidency has proved to be. This is followed by chapters on the use of unilateral executive powers and pre-rogative powers. Because the policy choices of the Bush presidency have had such fundamental effects both in domestic policy and in US foreign policy, three contributors then address the processes of decision making especially in respect to the war against Iraq. How the... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of books on presidential rhetoric. Those are books that are not the friendliest tours through American politics but they are the most information rich. (Source)

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The Gamble

Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election - Updated Edition

John Sides, Lynn Vavreck | 3.91

A unique moneyball look at the 2012 U.S. presidential contest between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney

Game changer. We heard it so many times during the 2012 U.S. presidential election. But what actually made a difference in the contest--and what was just hype? In this groundbreaking book, John Sides and Lynn Vavreck tell the dramatic story of the election--with a big difference. Using an unusual moneyball approach and drawing on extensive quantitative data, they look beyond the anecdote, folklore, and conventional wisdom that often pass for election analysis to separate what... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of political scientists on the 2012 election I think is really helpful. (Source)

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Predicting the Presidency

The Potential of Persuasive Leadership

George C. Edwards III | 4.00

Millions of Americans--including many experienced politicians--viewed Barack Obama through a prism of high expectations, based on a belief in the power of presidential persuasion. Yet many who were inspired by candidate Obama were disappointed in what he was able to accomplish once in the White House. They could not understand why he often was unable to leverage his position and political skills to move the public and Congress to support his initiatives. Predicting the Presidency explains why Obama had such difficulty bringing about the change he promised, and challenges the... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of books on presidential rhetoric. Those are books that are not the friendliest tours through American politics but they are the most information rich. (Source)

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Overreach

Leadership in the Obama Presidency

George C. Edwards III | 3.90

When Barack Obama became president, many Americans embraced him as a transformational leader who would fundamentally change the politics and policy of the country. Yet, two years into his administration, the public resisted his calls for support and Congress was deadlocked over many of his major policy proposals. How could this capable new president have difficulty attaining his goals? Did he lack tactical skills?

In Overreach, respected presidential scholar George Edwards argues that the problem was strategic, not tactical. He finds that in President Obama's first... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of books on presidential rhetoric. Those are books that are not the friendliest tours through American politics but they are the most information rich. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

On Deaf Ears

The Limits of the Bully Pulpit

George C. Edwards III | 4.01

In this book, George Edwards analyzes the results of hundreds of public opinion polls from recent presidencies to assess the success of these efforts. Surprisingly, he finds that presidents typically are not able to change public opinion, even great, communicators usually fail to obtain the public's support for their high-priority initiatives. According to Edwards, the bully pulpit has proven infective not only for achieving majority support but also for increasing support from a smaller base. Focusing on presidents' personae, their messages, and the American public, he explains why... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinA series of books on presidential rhetoric. Those are books that are not the friendliest tours through American politics but they are the most information rich. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Beyond Ideology

Politics, Principles, and Partisanship in the U. S. Senate

Frances E. Lee | 4.56

The congressional agenda, Frances Lee contends, includes many issues about which liberals and conservatives generally agree. Even over these matters, though, Democratic and Republican senators tend to fight with each other. What explains this discord? Beyond Ideology argues that many partisan battles are rooted in competition for power rather than disagreement over the rightful role of government.

The first book to systematically distinguish Senate disputes centering on ideological questions from the large proportion of them that do not,...

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinThe book that is probably the most influential for me in thinking about how American politics really works. (Source)

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What It Takes

The Way to the White House

Richard Ben Cramer | 4.34

Recommended by Ezra Klein, Steven Sinofsky, Michael Berry, and 5 others.

Ezra KleinEverybody should read it. (Source)

Steven Sinofsky@pkedrosky I *love* this book especially as one of those kids shipped from university in Mass to New Hampshire for the primary. Dixville Notch, 1988. I was there! (Source)

Michael Berry"Fightin Joey Biden" as Esquire's late, great Richard Ben-Cramer called him in his FANTASTIC book about the 88 race, What It Takes, with his former form saying Bernie "seems to have more inspiration in the Soviets, Sandinistas, Chavistas and Castro than in America." (Source)

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Give People Money

How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake the World

Annie Lowrey | 3.88

A brilliantly reported, global look at universal basic income--a stipend given to every citizen--and why it might be necessary for our age of rising inequality, persistent poverty, and dazzling technology

Imagine if every month the government deposited $1,000 into your checking account, with nothing expected in return. It sounds crazy, but it has become one of the most influential and hotly debated policy ideas of our time. Futurists, radicals, libertarians, socialists, union representatives, feminists, conservatives, Bernie supporters, development economists,... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinThis book is great and everyone should read it (and really everyone should preorder it right now) and no I'm not biased. https://t.co/qkUrm3YWvZ (Source)

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Asymmetric Politics

Ideological Republicans and Group Interest Democrats

Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins | 4.16

Why do Republican politicians promise to rein in government, only to face repeated rebellions from Republican voters and media critics for betraying their principles? Why do Democratic politicians propose an array of different policies to match the diversity of their supporters, only to become mired in stark demographic divisions over issue priorities? In short, why do the two parties act so differently-whether in the electorate, on the campaign trail, or in public office?

Asymmetric Politics offers a comprehensive explanation: The Republican Party is the vehicle of an... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, Greg Dworkin, and 2 others.

Ezra KleinSorry to both Dave and Dan. As penance, here’s another plug for Asymmetric Politics, which everyone should read: https://t.co/1gKUZEQkmU And for Dan’s great book, The Increasingly United States: https://t.co/oVlgXajE6w https://t.co/0aU1mF1SQk (Source)

Greg Dworkin@KnowTheSystem @Edsall @RyanDEnos love that book (Source)

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Something Deeply Hidden

Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime

Sean Carroll | 4.31

As you read these words, copies of you are being created.

Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist and one of this world’s most celebrated writers on science, rewrites the history of 20th century physics. Already hailed as a masterpiece, Something Deeply Hidden shows for the first time that facing up to the essential puzzle of quantum mechanics utterly transforms how we think about space and time. His reconciling of quantum mechanics with Einstein’s theory of relativity changes, well, everything.

Most physicists haven’t even recognized the uncomfortable truth: physics has... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinThis is a good place to recommend @seanmcarroll's new book "Something Deeply Hidden," which is great if you like feeling very confused about the nature of reality, which I guess I do https://t.co/C2gfupSJAO (Source)

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This Is How You Lose the Time War

Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone | 4.10

Two time-traveling agents from warring futures, working their way through the past, begin to exchange letters—and fall in love in this thrilling and romantic book from award-winning authors Amal-El Mohtar and Max Gladstone.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic.... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, Ken Liu, and 2 others.

Ezra KleinThis book is amazing and if you haven't read it you should. https://t.co/0PNy4Kmbip (Source)

Ken LiuI suppose you could call it a time travel story. It takes place across all history, and features two protagonists, two women who are essentially spies—saboteurs for rival visions of the future, who are trying to twist the timeline to lead to their respective faction’s visions. But then they fall in love with each other. The story is incredibly beautiful and moving, and the language is so poetic. (Source)

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The Field of Blood

Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War

Joanne B. Freeman | 4.22

In The Field of Blood, the historian Joanne B. Freeman offers a new and dramatically rendered portrait of American politics in its rowdiest years. Drawing on an extraordinary range of sources, she shows that today's hyperpolarized environment cannot compare with the turbulent atmosphere of the decades before the Civil War, when the U.S. Congress itself was rife with conflict. Legislative sessions were routinely punctuated by mortal threats, canings, flipped desks, and all-out slug-fests. Congressmen drew pistols and waved bowie knives at rivals. One representative even killed another in a duel. Many were bullied in an attempt to intimidate them into compliance or silence, particularly on the issue of slavery.

These fights didn't happen in a vacuum. Freeman's accounts of fistfights and threats tell a larger story of how bullying, brawling, and the press - and the powerful emotions they elicited - raised tensions between North and South and fueled the coming of the war. In the process, she brings the antebellum Congress to life, revealing its rough realities - the feel, sense, and sound of it - as well as its nation-shaping import. Funny, tragic, and rivetingly told, The Field of Blood offers a front-row view of congressional mayhem and sheds new light on the careers of luminaries such as John Quincy Adams and Thomas Hart Benton, as well as introducing a host of lesser-known but no less fascinating characters. We see slaveholders silence Northerners with threats and violence. We learn how newspapers promoted conspiracy theories that helped polarize the nation. And we witness an entire legislative chamber erupt into a massive fist-throwing, spittoon-tossing battle royal. By 1860, armed congressmen, some carrying pistols sent by their constituents, fully expected bloody combat in the House. In effect, the first battles of the Civil War were fought in Congress itself.

The Field of Blood demonstrates how a country can come apart as conflicts over personal honor, party loyalty, and moral principle combine and escalate. The result is a fresh understanding of the workings of American democracy and the bonds of Union on the eve of their greatest peril. less

Recommended by Ezra Klein, Jeff Stein, Julian E. Zelizer, and 3 others.

Ezra Klein"Field of Blood" is an amazing book that really puts modern politics in perspective. And @jbf1755 is just brilliant — we did a podcast on political violence that I still think about often: https://t.co/RC3KoHkdXx https://t.co/8M7mFXieX0 (Source)

Jeff Stein@jbf1755 Joshua Giddings was the best part of your book (Source)

Julian E. ZelizerThe book’s point is that in the nineteenth century, Congress was an incredibly contentious place. Today, we think the parties can’t get along, but back in the nineteenth century, tensions were so severe that members were physically fighting on the floor of Congress. The book is well-written, and it brings Congress to life through these stories. Freeman conveys the flavor of the floor in a way... (Source)

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Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows

An Introduction to Carnism

Melanie Joy PhD, John Robbins | 4.34

In this paperback edition is a foreword by activist and author John Robbins and a reader's group study guide. This ground-breaking work, voted one of the top ten books of 2010 by "VegNews" Magazine, offers an absorbing look at why and how humans can so wholeheartedly devote ourselves to certain animals and then allow others to suffer needlessly, especially those slaughtered for our consumption.

Social psychologist Melanie Joy explores the many ways we numb ourselves and disconnect from our natural empathy for farmed animals. She coins the term "carnism" to describe the belief system...

Recommended by Ezra Klein, and 1 others.

Ezra KleinI love this twist on the best books list. @ConstanceGrady asked us not what our best book of the 2010s was, but what were the books that stuck with us the most, personally. https://t.co/ylK2Uq1jgi (Source)

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Creativity, Inc.

Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace | 4.45

“What does it mean to manage well?”
From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business—sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath. Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.” For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.

As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as:

• Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.
• If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead.
• It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.
• The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.
• A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.
• Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board. less

Recommended by Mark Zuckerberg, Timothy Ferriss, Ezra Klein, and 24 others.

Mark ZuckerbergThis book is written by the founder of Pixar and is about his experience building a culture that fosters creativity. His theory is that people are fundamentally creative, but many forces stand in the way of people being able to do their best work. I love reading first-hand accounts about how people build great companies like Pixar and nurture innovation and creativity. This should be inspiring to... (Source)

Timothy FerrissNo matter your circumstances, storytelling and creativity are two 'meta-skills' that can take your business and life to the next level. Ed is a master. (Source)

Ezra KleinAn amazing, amazing book. (Source)

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How to Do Nothing

Resisting the Attention Economy

Jenny Odell | 3.94

This thrilling critique of the forces vying for our attention re-defines what we think of as productivity, shows us a new way to connect with our environment and reveals all that we’ve been too distracted to see about our selves and our world.

When the technologies we use every day collapse our experiences into 24/7 availability, platforms for personal branding, and products to be monetized, nothing can be quite so radical as… doing nothing. Here, Jenny Odell sends up a flare from the heart of Silicon Valley, delivering an action plan to resist capitalist narratives of... more

Recommended by Ezra Klein, Bryan Formhals, Bo Ren, and 8 others.

Ezra KleinThat's from @the_jennitaur's book "How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy," which hit me particularly hard, and made this conversation such a delight. https://t.co/y7SgRMhRsZ (Source)

Bryan FormhalsSuch a great book. Gave me a lot of confidence to pursue some new ideas. https://t.co/SA9PP7mIAc (Source)

Bo Ren@ClaytonHartford @the_jennitaur Best book I read in 2019! A must-read. (Source)

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Don't have time to read Ezra Klein's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.

Ezra Klein's Top Book Recommendations

Don't have time to read Ezra Klein's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Don't have time to read Ezra Klein's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.