Opinion | ‘The Ezra Klein Show’ Book Recommendations (2022)

“The Ezra Klein Show” explores ideas with some of today’s most dynamic thinkers. We cover politics, culture, history, philosophy, psychology, technology and more. The topics are wide-ranging, but every episode ends with Ezra asking his guest (or guests) to recommend a few books that have shaped their thinking. Below is a list of all the books recommended on the show in 2022, in reverse-chronological order.

You can view book recommendations from the latest episodes here. Listen to and follow “The Ezra Klein Show” on Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.

Ezra Klein

What I’m Thinking About at the End of 2022 (Dec. 16, 2022)

• “Happy Birthday to You!” by Dr. Seuss

• “The Rabbit Listened” by Cori Doerrfeld

• “Here We Are” by Oliver Jeffers

• “The Pout-Pout Fish” by Deborah Diesen

Dean Buonomano

Time Is Way Weirder Than You Think (Dec. 13, 2022)

• “Noise” by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein

• “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamin Labatut

• “The Age of A.I.” by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher

Mohamed El-Erian

Three Signals We’ve Entered a New Economic Era (Dec. 9, 2022)

• “Invisible Women” by Caroline Criado Perez

• “Bad Blood” by John Carreyrou

• “The World For Sale” by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy

Jake Grumbach

There’s Been a Massive Change in Where American Policy Gets Made (Dec. 6, 2022)

• “Fragmented Democracy” by Jamila Michener

• “Private Government” by Elizabeth Anderson

• “Dilla Time” by Dan Charnas

Michael Brendan Dougherty

A Conservative’s Take on the Chaotic State of the Republican Party (Dec. 2, 2022)

• “The German War” by Nicholas Stargardt

• “The Demon in Democracy” by Ryszard Legutko

• “The Face of God” by Roger Scruton

Leah Garcés

The Hidden Costs of Cheap Meat (Nov. 29, 2022)

• “Wastelands” by Corban Addison

• “Meatonomics” by David Robinson Simon

• “Animal Machines” by Ruth Harrison

Maryanne Wolf

This Is Your Brain on ‘Deep Reading.’ It’s Pretty Magnificent. (Nov. 22, 2022)

• “The Gilead Novels” by Marilynne Robinson

• “World and Town” by Gish Jen

• “Standing by Words” by Wendell Berry

• “Love’s Mind” by John Dunne

• “Middlemarch” by George Eliot

Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben on the Power That Could Save the Planet (Nov. 15, 2022)

• “New York 2140” by Kim Stanley Robinson

• “Orwell’s Roses” by Rebecca Solnit

• “How It Went” by Wendell Berry

George Saunders

George Saunders on the ‘Braindead Megaphone’ That Makes Our Politics So Awful (Nov. 8, 2022)

• “The Storm Is Here” by Luke Mogelson

• “Sugar Street” by Jonathan Dee

• “Marlena” by Julie Buntin

J. Bradford DeLong

Inflation Does More Than Raise Prices. It Destroys Governments. (Nov. 4, 2022)

• “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order” by Gary Gestle

• “Free Market” by Jacob Soll

• “Adam Smith’s America” by Glory M. Liu

Pippa Norris

A Powerful Theory of Why the Far Right Is Thriving Across the Globe (Nov. 1, 2022)

• “Popular Dictatorships” by Aleksandar Matovski

• “Spin Dictators” by Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman

• “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt

Lynn Vavreck and John Sides

These Political Scientists Surveyed 500,000 Voters. Here Are Their Unnerving Conclusions. (Oct. 28, 2022)

• “The Increasingly United States” by Daniel J. Hopkins

• “Groundbreakers” by Elizabeth McKenna and Hahrie Han

• “The Loud Minority” by Daniel Q. Gillion

• “Rock Me on the Water” by Ronald Brownstein

• “State of Terror” by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny

Mark Leibovich

A Step-by-Step Guide to Becoming a Trump Enabler (Oct. 25, 2022)

• “Why We Did It” by Tim Miller

• “Confidence Man” by Maggie Haberman

• “NSFW” by Isabel Kaplan

Matt Yglesias

There’s Been a ‘Regime Change’ in How Democrats Think About Elections (Oct. 21, 2022)

• “Famine: A Short History” by Cormac Ó Gráda

• “Slouching Towards Utopia” by J. Bradford DeLong

• “Strangers to Ourselves” by Rachel Aviv

N.K. Jemisin

A Legendary World-Builder on Multiverses, Revolution and the ‘Souls’ of Cities (Oct. 18, 2022)

• “Fullmetal Alchemist” by Hiromu Arakawa

• “Mechanique” by Genevieve Valentine

• “Witch King” by Martha Wells

• “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs

Rachel Maddow

Rachel Maddow Looks Back on a Wild 14 Years (Oct. 14, 2022)

• “Hitler in Los Angeles” by Steven J. Ross

• “Nazis of Copley Square” by Charles R. Gallagher

• “Hitler’s American Friends” by Bradley W. Hart

• “The Oppermanns” by Lion Feuchtwanger

• “1940” by Susan Dunn

• “Down in New Orleans” Billy Sothern

Adam Tooze

How the Fed Is ‘Shaking the Entire System’ (Oct. 7, 2022)

• “The Neapolitan Novels” by Elena Ferrante

• “Youthquake” by Edward Paice

• “Slouching Towards Utopia” by J. Bradford DeLong

Rachel Aviv

Interrogating the Stories We Tell About Our Minds (Oct. 4, 2022)

Vitalik Buterin

Ethereum’s Founder on What Crypto Can — and Can’t — Do (Sep. 30, 2022)

• “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” by William L. Shirer

• “Harry Potter and The Methods of Rationality” by Eliezer Yudkowsky

• “Algorithmic Game Theory” by Noam Nisan, Tim Roughgarden, Eva Tardos and Vijay V. Vazirani

Patrick Collison

We Know Shockingly Little About What Makes Humanity Prosper (Sep. 27, 2022)

• “Empire and Revolution” by Richard Bourke

• “Scene of Change” by Warren Weaver

• “A Widening Sphere” by Philip N. Alexander

Andrea Kendall-Taylor

Why Russia Is Losing the War in Ukraine (Sep. 23, 2022)

Jesse Jenkins

The Single Best Guide to Decarbonization I’ve Heard (Sep. 20, 2022)

Felicia Wong

Now All Biden Has to Do Is Build It (Sep. 16, 2022)

• “The Middle Out” by Michael Tomasky

• “Elite Capture” by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò

• “Chords of Change” (forthcoming 2023) by Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce

Cecilia Ridgeway

We Build Civilizations on Status. But We Barely Understand It. (Sep. 13, 2022)

• “Envy Up, Scorn Down” by Susan T. Fiske

• “The Psychology of Social Status” by Joey T. Cheng, Jessica L. Tracy, Cameron Anderson

• “The Theory of the Leisure Class” by Thorstein Veblen

Chloé Cooper Jone

The Subtle Art of Appreciating ‘Difficult Beauty’ (Sep. 6, 2022)

• “Staring” by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

• “H is for Hawk” by Helen Macdonald

• “Romance in Marseille” by Claude McKay

Allison Russell

A Grammy-Nominated Singer Performs and Explores Music’s Deep Power Over Us (Aug. 30, 2022)

Russell Moore

Why the Evangelical Movement Is in ‘Disarray’ After Dobbs (August 23, 2022)

• “The Weight of Glory” by C.S. Lewis

• “Mere Christianity” by C.S. Lewis

• “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis

• “The Resurrection of the Son of God” by N.T. Wright

• “The Gilead Novels” by Marilynne Robinson

Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel

Is the Remote Work Revolution Flopping, Succeeding or Both? (August 16, 2022)

• “In the Age of the Smart Machine” by Shoshana Zuboff

• “The Myth of the Paperless Office” by Abigail J. Sellen and Richard H. R. Harper

• “Liquidated” by Karen Ho

• “Essential Labor” by Angela Garbes

Mohsin Hamid

How Do We Face Loss With Empathy? (August 12, 2022)

• “Beloved” by Toni Morrison

• “Ficciones” by Jorge Luis Borges

• “The Epic of Gilgamesh” translated by Andrew George

William MacAskill

Three Sentences That Could Change the World — and Your Life (August 9, 2022)

• “Moral Capital” by Christopher Leslie Brown

• “The Precipice” by Toby Ord

• “The Scout Mindset” by Julia Galef

Kathryn Bond Stockton

Gender Is Complicated for All of Us. Let’s Talk About It. (August 5, 2022)

• “Histories of the Transgender Child” by Jules Gill-Peterson

• “Brilliant Imperfection” by Eli Clare

• “Asegi Stories” by Qwo-Li Driskill

Sean Illing

How We Communicate Will Decide Whether Democracy Lives or Dies (July 26, 2022)

• “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman

• “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann

• “Mediated” by Thomas de Zengotita

Thomas Insel

A Top Mental Health Expert on Where America Went Wrong (July 22, 2022)

• “Nobody’s Normal” by Roy Richard Grinker

• “American Psychosis” by E. Fuller Torrey

• “Crazy” by Pete Earley

Jenny Schuetz

Why Housing Is So Expensive — Particularly in Blue States (July 19, 2022)

• “Crabgrass Frontier” by Kenneth T. Jackson

• “Neighborhood Defenders” by Katherine Levine Einstein, David M. Glick and Maxwell Palmer

Kim Stanley Robinson

A Weird, Wonderful Conversation With Kim Stanley Robinson (July 15, 2022)

• “A Brief History of Equality” by Thomas Piketty

• “The Dawn of Everything” by David Graeber and David Wengrow

• “The Echo Maker” by Richard Powers

Michelle Goldberg

Michelle Goldberg Grapples With Feminism After Roe (July 8, 2022)

• “Backlash” by Susan Faludi

• “No More Nice Girls” by Ellen Willis

• “Status and Culture” by W. David Marx

Larry Kramer

Liberals Need a Clearer Vision of the Constitution. Here’s What It Could Look Like. (July 5, 2022)

• “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution” by Joseph Fishkin and William E. Forbath

• “The Second Creation” by Jonathan Gienapp

• “When We Cease to Understand the World” by Benjamín Labatut

Kate Shaw

The Single Best Guide I’ve Heard to the Supreme Court’s Rightward Shift (July 1, 2022)

• “The Turnaway Study” by Diana Greene Foster

• “Torn Apart” by Dorothy Roberts

• “Who Decides?” by Jeffrey S. Sutton

• “51 Imperfect Solutions” by Jeffrey S. Sutton

Dahlia Lithwick

The Dobbs Decision Isn’t Just About Abortion. It’s About Power. (June 26, 2022)

• “Hope in the Dark” by Rebecca Solnit

• “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor E. Frankl

• “You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train” by Howard Zinn

Jamelle Bouie

Jan. 6 Has Surfaced America’s Disdain for Democracy (June 24, 2022)

• “Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men” by Eric Foner

• “Salmon P. Chase” by Walter Stahr

• “What It Took to Win” by Michael Kazin

Lekshmi Santhosh

Two Years Later, We Still Don’t Understand Long Covid. Why? (June 21, 2022)

• “In Shock” by Dr. Rana Awdish

• “Every Deep-Drawn Breath” by Wes Ely

• “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder

Rana Foroohar

The Stock Market Is Plummeting. Welcome to the End of the ‘Everything Bubble.’ (June 17, 2022)

• “All That She Carried” by Tiya Miles

• “Beautiful Country” by Qian Julie Wang

• “The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order” by Gary Gerstle

Ezra Klein

Is Climate Change a Reason to Avoid Having Children? and Other Listener Questions Answered (June 14, 2022)

• “Amusing Ourselves to Death” by Neil Postman

• “The Invention of Nature” by Andrea Wulf

• “Beautiful World, Where Are You” by Sally Rooney

Bhaskar Sunkara

Why One of America’s Leading Socialists Is Worried About His Movement (June 10, 2022)

• “Socialism: Past and Future” by Michael Harrington

• “The Age of Extremes” by Eric Hobsbawm

• “The South” by Adolph L. Reed, Jr.

Thomas Piketty

Thomas Piketty’s Case for ‘Participatory Socialism’ (June 7, 2022)

• “The Great Demarcation” by Rafe Blaufarb

• “The Emergence of Globalism” by Or Rosenboim

• “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt

Reihan Salam

Why Reihan Salam Thinks ‘Antiracialism’ Could Break the Democrats (June 3, 2022)

• “Classified” by David E. Bernstein

• “Criminal (In)Justice” by Rafael A. Mangual

• “Sir Vidia’s Shadow” by Paul Theroux

• “The Strategy of Denial” by Elbridge A. Colby

Erika Bachiochi

A Debate Over What Roe Did — and What Losing It Would Mean (May 31, 2022)

• “Rights Talk” by Mary Ann Glendon

• “Feminism Without Illusions” by Elizabeth Fox-Genovese

• “Public Man, Private Woman” by Jean Bethke Elshtain

Ada Limón

A Conversation With Ada Limón, in Six Poems (May 24, 2022)

• “Stones” by Kevin Young

• “Frank: Sonnets” by Diane Seuss

• “Postcolonial Love Poem” by Natalie Diaz

Kate Greasley

The Ethics of Abortion (May 20, 2022)

• “Beyond Roe” by David Boonin

• “Abortion: Three Perspectives” by Michael Tooley, Celia Wolf-Devine, Philip E. Devine and Alison M. Jaggar

• “About Abortion” by Carol Sanger

Anne Applebaum

Anne Applebaum on What Liberals Misunderstand About Authoritarianism (May 17, 2022)

Patrick Deneen

What Does the ‘Post-Liberal Right’ Actually Want? (May 13, 2022)

• “The New Class War” by Michael Lind

• “Dominion” by Tom Holland

• “The Art of Loading Brush” by Wendell Berry

Matthew Continetti

Donald Trump Didn’t Hijack the G.O.P. He Understood It. (May 6, 2022)

• “Let Us Talk of Many Things” by William F. Buckley Jr.

• “Making It” by Norman Podhoretz

• “The Prince of Darkness” by Robert D. Novak

Felix Salmon

Elon Musk Might Break Twitter. Maybe That’s a Good Thing. (April 29, 2022)

• “The Bond King” by Mary Childs

• “Typeset in the Future” by Dave Addey

• “The Surprise of Cremona” by Edith Templeton

Ivan Krastev

Putin May Not Like How He’s Changed Europe (April 26, 2022)

Emily St. John Mandel

Emily St. John Mandel on Time Travel, Parenting and the Apocalypse (April 22, 2022)

• “Scary Monsters” by Michelle de Kretser

• “Ill Will” by Dan Chaon

• “Suite Française” by Irène Némirovsky

Sean McElwee and Anat Shenker-Osorio

Can Democrats Turn Their 2022 Around? (April 19, 2022)

• “The Course” by Ed Miller

• “The Precipice” by Toby Ord

• “The Climate War” by Eric Pooley

• “A Theory of System Justification” by John T. Jost

• “Memorial” by Bryan Washington

• “These Precious Days by Ann Patchett

Volodymyr Yermolenko

A Ukrainian Philsopoher on What Putin Never Understood About Ukraine (April 12, 2022)

• “Ukraine in Histories and Stories” by Volodymyr Yermolenko

• “The Gates of Europe” by Serhii Plokhy

• “Lost Kingdom” by Serhii Plokhy

• “Chernobyl” by Serhii Plokhy

• “Blood of Others” by Rory Finnin

Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill on Whether Ukraine Can Win — and What Happens if Russia Loses (April 8, 2022)

Dan Olson

A Viral Case Against Crypto, Explored (April 5, 2022)

• “The Power Broker” by Robert A. Caro

• “The Tombs of Atuan” by Ursula K. Le Guin

• “Persuasive Games” by Ian Bogost

Nicholas Mulder

Sanctioning Russia Is a Form of War. We Need to Treat It Like One. (Apr. 1, 2022)

• “Collapse” by Vladislav M. Zubok

• “The Perfect Fascist by Victoria de Grazia

• “My Century” by Aleksander Wat

Larry Summers

I Keep Hoping Larry Summers Is Wrong. What if He’s Not? (March 29, 2022)

• “The Best and The Brightest” by David Halberstam

• “The Price of Peace” by Zachary D. Carter

• “Slouching Towards Utopia” by J. Bradford DeLong

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood on ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ Totalitarianism and U.F.O.s (March 25, 2022)

• “War” by Margaret MacMillan

• “Biased” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

• “Secrets of the Sprakkar” by Eliza Reid

• “Charlotte’s Web” by E. B. White

• “Lord of the Rings” by J.R.R. Tolkien

Daniel Yergin

How Energy Markets Are Shaping Putin’s Invasion — and the World (March 22, 2022)

• “Putin’s World” by Angela Stent

• “The Power of Law” by Sebastian Mallaby

• “The Cloud Revolution” by Mark P. Mills

Emma Ashford

A Realist Take on How the Russia-Ukraine War Could End (March 18, 2022)

• “The Economic Weapon” by Nicholas Mulder

• “Not One Inch” by M.E. Sarotte

• “The Sleepwalkers” by Christopher Clark

Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder on the Myths That Blinded the West to Putin’s Plans (March 15, 2022)

• “Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible” by Peter Pomerantsev

• “The Origins of Totalitarianism” by Hannah Arendt

• “The Gates of Europe” by Serhii Plokhy

Masha Gessen

Putin Is ‘Profoundly Anti-Modern.’ Masha Gessen Explains What That Means for the World (March 11, 2022)

• “The Last Empire” by Serhii Plokhy

• “Manual for Survival” by Kate Brown

• “Babi Yar” by Anatoly Kuznetsov

Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill on the War Putin Is Really Fighting (March 8, 2022)

• “Bloodlands” by Timothy Snyder

• “Not One Inch” by M.E. Sarotte

• “The Limits of Partnership” by Angela Stent

• “Putin’s World” by Angela Stent

• “Russia Under the Old Regime” by Richard Pipes

• “The Formation of the Soviet Union” by Richard Pipes

Fareed Zakaria

Fareed Zakaria Has a Better Way to Handle Russia —and China (March 4, 2022)

• “Man, the State, and War” by Kenneth N. Waltz

• “A World Safe for Democracy” by G. John Ikenberry

• “Memoirs 1925-1950” by George F. Kennan

Can the West Stop Russia by Strangling Its Economy? (March 1, 2022)

• “The Economic Weapon” by Nicholas Mulder

• “The End of the End of History” by Alex Hochuli, George Hoare and Philip Cunliffe

• “The Future of Money” by Eswar S. Prasad

Alex Tabarrok

A Critique of Government That Progressives — Myself Included — Need to Hear (Feb. 18, 2022)

• “The Anarchy” by William Dalrymple

• “India: A Story Through 100 Objects” by Vidya Dehejia

• “The Splendid and the Vile” by Erik Larson

Janet Lansbury

What if We Respected Toddlers as Whole People? (Feb. 15, 2022)

• “Dear Parent: Caring for Infants with Respect” by Magda Gerber

• “Siblings Without Rivalry” by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish

• “The Hurried Child” by David Elkind

• “Biased” by Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Johann Hari

It’s Not Your Fault You Can’t Pay Attention. Here’s Why. (Feb. 11, 2022)

• “The Anatomy of a Moment” by Javier Cercas

• “Visitors” by Anita Brookner

• “The Apology” by V (formerly Eve Ensler)

Jason Furman

Why (Most) Economists Got This Economy So Wrong (Feb. 8, 2022)

• “The Myth of the Rational Voter” by Bryan Caplan

• “The Weirdest People in the World” by Joseph Henrich

• “Who We Are and How We Got Here” by David Reich

Jamal Greene

Let’s Talk About How Truly Bizarre Our Supreme Court Is (Feb. 4, 2022)

• “Rights Talk” by Mary Ann Glendon

• “Law and Disagreement” by Jeremy Waldron

• “Cult of the Constitution” by Mary Anne Franks

Amanda Litman

Democrats Chase Shiny Objects. Here’s How They Can Build Real Power. (Feb. 1, 2022)

• “The Heart Principle” by Helen Hoang

• “Olga Dies Dreaming” by Xochitl Gonzalez

• “Let’s Get Physical” by Danielle Friedman

Ruth Ozeki

What We Gain by Enchanting the Objects in Our Lives (Jan. 25, 2022)

• “When You Greet Me I Bow” by Norman Fischer

• “The Aleph and Other Stories” by Jorge Luis Borges

• “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennett

Ron Klain

What Biden’s Chief of Staff Has Learned, One Year In (Jan. 21, 2022)

Zeynep Tufekci

The Pandemic Lessons We Clearly Haven’t Learned (Jan. 18, 2022)

• “The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy” by Irvin D. Yalom and Molyn Leszcz

• “Chaos” by James Gleick

• “The Dead Hand” by David Hoffman

Chris Hayes

Chris Hayes on How Biden Can Have a Better 2022 (Jan. 11, 2022)

• “The Braindead Megaphone” by George Saunders

• “The Three-Body Problem Series” by Cixin Liu

• “The Racial Contract” by Charles W. Mills