Smart Stuff

by Anne Applebaum

From the Pulitzer-prize winning, New York Times bestselling author, an alarming account of how autocracies work together to undermine the democratic world, and how we should organize to defeat them

by Anne Applebaum

In Twilight of Democracy, prize-winning historian Anne Applebaum asserts that there is a deep and inherent appeal to authoritarianism, to strongmen, and, especially, to one-party rule--that is, to political systems that benefit true believers, or loyal soldiers, or simply the friends and distant cousins of the Leader, to the exclusion of everyone else.

by Maria Ressa

How to Stand Up to a Dictator is the story of how democracy dies by a thousand cuts, and how an invisible atom bomb has exploded online that is killing our freedoms. It maps a network of disinformation—a heinous web of cause and effect—that has netted the globe: from Duterte's drug wars, to America's Capitol Hill, to Britain's Brexit, to Russian and Chinese cyber-warfare, to Facebook and Silicon Valley, to our own clicks and our own votes.

by Preet Bharara

By the one-time federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York, an important overview of the way our justice system works, and why the rule of law is essential to our society.

by Timothy Snyder

On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.

by Timothy Snyder

Timothy Snyder’s book On Tyranny has inspired millions around the world to fight for freedom. Now, in this tour de force of political philosophy, he helps us see exactly what we’re fighting for.

by Bill Browder

A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin’s corruption.

by Erik Loomis

Powerful and accessible, A History of America in Ten Strikes challenges all of our contemporary assumptions around labor, unions, and American workers. In this brilliant book, labor historian Erik Loomis recounts ten critical workers' strikes in American labor history that everyone needs to know about.

by George Orwell

A masterpiece of rebellion and imprisonment where war is peace freedom is slavery and Big Brother is watching. Thought Police, Big Brother, Orwellian - these words have entered our vocabulary because of George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984.

by Ray Bradbury

Sixty years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before.

by Steven D. Levitt + Stephen J. Dubner

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime? Freakonomics will literally redefine the way we view the modern world.

by Barry M. Goldwater

Written at the height of the Cold War and in the wake of America's greatest experiment with big government, the New Deal, Goldwater's message was not only remarkable, but radical. He argued for the value and importance of conservative principles--freedom, foremost among them--in contemporary political life.

by Daron Acemoğlu + James A. Robinson

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine?

by Josh Campbell

Josh Campbell, a career special agent who served under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald J. Trump before resigning from the FBI in February 2018, takes readers behind the scenes of the Russia investigation’s earliest days and makes a compelling case for the power of functioning institutions in American life.

by Susan Hennessey, Benjamin Wittes

Rarely if ever has the nature of a president clashed more profoundly with the nature of the office. Unmaking the Presidency tells the story of the confrontation between a person and the institution he almost wholly embodies.

by Isabel Wilkerson

The Pulitzer Prize–winning, bestselling author of The Warmth of Other Suns examines the unspoken caste system that has shaped America and shows how our lives today are still defined by a hierarchy of human divisions.

by Mehdi Hasan

Win Every Argument shows how anyone can communicate with confidence, rise above the tit for tats on social media, and triumph in a successful and productive debate in the real world.

by Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.

by Edward L. Glaeser

America is an urban nation. More than two thirds of us live on the 3 percent of land that contains our cities. Yet cities get a bad they're dirty, poor, unhealthy, crime ridden, expensive, environmentally unfriendly... Or are they?