Books recommended on The Ezra Klein Show
Ezra Klein and guests brought up 97 books across 22 recent episodes, 65 of them explicit recommendations — each with the episode, the minute, and what was said.
Ezra Klein · US · YouTube · Jump to episode by episode ↓
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Books mentioned on this show
- 1 A Psalm for the Wild-BuiltBecky ChambersAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 2 A World AppearsMichael PollanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 3 Alan Opts OutCourtney MaumAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 4 Apple in ChinaPatrick McGeeAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 5 Barbarians at the gateBryan BurroughAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 6 Book of mercyLeonard CohenAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 7 Christie Malry's own double-entryB. S. JohnsonAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 8 Crossing the Red LineAkbar Shahid AhmedAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 9 De GaulleJulian Jackson - undifferentiatedAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 10 End Times Fascism:Amazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 11 From Life ItselfSuzy HansenAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 12 Gender TroubleJudith ButlerAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 13 How to Win a Trade WarChad Bound and Somaya KanesAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 14 I Regret Almost EverythingKeith McNallyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 15 Intimate CityMichael KimmelmanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 16 Les MisérablesVictor HugoAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 17 Life and fateВасилий Семёнович ГроссманAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 18 Lords of financeLiaquat AhamedAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 19 Madame de PompadourNancy MitfordAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 20 Magnifica humanitasAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 21 Master of the SenateRobert A. CaroAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 22 Men Like HoursBindu BansinathAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 23 MotherlandJulia IoffeAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 24 My silent warKim PhilbyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 25 My year of rest and relaxationOttessa MoshfeghAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 26 Our ManGeorge PackerAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 27 Party's Interests Come FirstJoseph TorigianAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 28 Regime ChangeJonathan SwanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 29 RightMatthew ContinettiAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 30 Romance of the Three KingdomsLuo GuanzhongAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 31 Sal and Gabi Break the UniverseCarlos HernandezAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 32 Seeing Like a StateJames C. ScottAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 33 Speak, MemoryVladimir NabokovAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 34 States of DenialStanley CohenAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 35 Suicide of the WestJames BurnhamAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 36 TakeoverCharlie SavageAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 37 Tender AgeChang-rae LeeAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 38 The Art of GatheringPriya ParkerAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 39 The Beginning Comes After the EndRebecca SolnitAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 40 The Brothers KaramazovФёдор Михайлович ДостоевскийAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 41 The Carbon WaveLeah StokesAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 42 The ChronolithsRobert Charles WilsonAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 43 The Crisis of the Common GoodChris MurphyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 44 The Cuckoo’s EggClifford StollAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 45 The divided cityNicole LorauxAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 46 The Fourth BranchDaniel SquadronAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 47 The FrackersGregory ZuckermanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 48 The Genius FactoryDavid PlotzAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 49 The GloriansTerry Tempest WilliamsAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 50 The GodfatherMario PuzoAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 51 The Holocaust and the NakbaAmos GoldbergAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 52 The Machiavellians, defenders of freedomJames BurnhamAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 53 The managerial revolutionJames BurnhamAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 54 The maniacBenjamín LabatutAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 55 The PartyRichard McGregorAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 56 The RevolutionaryStacy SchiffAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 57 The ShameMakenna GoodmanAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 58 The Souls of ChinaIan Johnson - undifferentiatedAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 59 The Technology TrapCarl Benedikt FreyAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 60 The volatility machineMichael PettisAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 61 Their Eyes Were Watching GodZora Neale HurstonAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 62 To hate like this is to be happy foreverWill BlytheAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 63 TranscriptionBen LernerAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 64 Treasure IslandRobert Louis StevensonAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 65 Unmasking the Administrative StateJohn MariniAmazon 1 episode · 1 recommended
- 66 1984George OrwellAmazon 1 episode
- 67 AbsurdistanGary ShteyngartAmazon 1 episode
- 68 America's Cultural RevolutionChristopher F. RufoAmazon 1 episode
- 69 Bronze Age MindsetBronze Age PervertAmazon 1 episode
- 70 Come to This Court and CryLinda KinstlerAmazon 1 episode
- 71 Death of a SalesmanArthur MillerAmazon 1 episode
- 72 Difficult WomenHelen LewisAmazon 1 episode
- 73 Ecce HomoFriedrich NietzscheAmazon 1 episode
- 74 Female Chauvinist PigsAriel LevyAmazon 1 episode
- 75 Genius MythHelen LewisAmazon 1 episode
- 76 Grand New PartyRoss Gregory DouthatAmazon 1 episode
- 77 Here Comes the SunBill McKibbenAmazon 1 episode
- 78 Just MercyBryan StevensonAmazon 1 episode
- 79 Lake SuccessGary ShteyngartAmazon 1 episode
- 80 Last MenCharles Cornish-DaleAmazon 1 episode
- 81 Laudato Si'Pope FrancisAmazon 1 episode
- 82 Portnoy's ComplaintPhilip RothAmazon 1 episode
- 83 RhetoricAristotleAmazon 1 episode
- 84 StrangersAmazon 1 episode
- 85 Super sad true love storyGary ShteyngartAmazon 1 episode
- 86 The Dragonriders of PernAnne McCaffreyAmazon 1 episode
- 87 The End of History and the Last ManFrancis FukuyamaAmazon 1 episode
- 88 The Feminine MystiqueBetty FriedanAmazon 1 episode
- 89 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyDouglas AdamsAmazon 1 episode
- 90 The J CurveIan BremmerAmazon 1 episode
- 91 The OresteiaAeschylusAmazon 1 episode
- 92 The reasoning voterSamuel L. PopkinAmazon 1 episode
- 93 The Russian Debutante's HandbookGary ShteyngartAmazon 1 episode
- 94 The Unbearable Lightness of BeingMilan KunderaAmazon 1 episode
- 95 Vera, or FaithGary ShteyngartAmazon 1 episode
- 96 When the Clock BrokeJohn GanzAmazon 1 episode
- 97 WhitepillAmazon 1 episode
By the host
- AbundanceEzra Klein plugged in 3 episodes
- Why We're PolarizedEzra Klein plugged in 2 episodes
Episode by episode
What the Heck Is Going On in the Bond Market? | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-28
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“I think the obvious first place, the first book is Barbarians at the Gate. I genuinely think it's kind of the gold standard of narrative business journalism today”
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“I'm going to go with Leak Ahmed's Lords of Finance. It's just a fabulous book about this kind of tumultuous interwar period”
This Is Why People Hate the Government | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-25
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“I'm saying it's a deranged object that I think everybody should read. And this is a book called My Silent War by Kim Philby.”
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“It is called to hate like this is to be happy forever by Will Blythe. I bring this up constantly and it is about the basketball rivalry.”
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“My third hobby horse book is Gender Trouble by Judith Butler. I feel like a lot of people have never actually read it.”
The Next China Shock Is Here | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-21
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“the one book that most shaped my understanding of China is an old book by a friend of mine, Richard McGregor, longtime Beijing correspondent for the Financial Times, who wrote a book called The Party”
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“Second book is another old book actually. It's called the Volatility Machine by Michael Pettis. It is a thin book and not an easy read.”
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“the third book, a book that exceeded my expectations is how to win a trade war by Chad Bound and Somaya Kanes”
The A.I.s Are Already Out of Control | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-18
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“It's uh from 1989. It's about one of the first big hacks um that that happened. written by the astronomer who was working at Lawrence National Lab and noticed uh 75 cents discrepancy in his computing bill.”
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“The Romance of the Three Kingdoms is one of the four great Chinese novels. If you're interested in uh sort of China and uh Chinese culture and Chinese literature, I think it's a a great place to start.”
The Warring Visions of American Power | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-14
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“She's a fellow at Harvard. She's a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, and the author of Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends.”
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“I recently read a George Packer's really fascinating, I really recommend this book to people, biography of Richard Holbrooke called Our Man.”
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“there's this wonderful scholar at Yeshiva University who many years ago about the Eichmann trial wrote that we've never escaped the problem of the Oresteia, the Aeschylus play, that the submission of moral wrongs to a legal order”
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“The first book I would recommend is it's called The Divided City by Nicole Loraux um who was a kind of French scholar to gorgeous writer.”
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“The second book is coming out in September. It's called Crossing the Red Line um by Akbar Shahid Ahmed which is about the Biden administration's uh shifts in policy towards Gaza.”
Ross Douthat on the Seismic Changes in Media, Religion and Politics | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-11
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“You and your former co-blogger Ryhan had written a book called Grand New Party.”
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“Speak Memory by Vladimir Nambacov, however you want to pronounce it, which is his memoir mostly of his boyhood as a Russian aristocrat before the Russian Revolution.”
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“I will recommend uh Julian Jackson's biography of Charles de Gaulle on general principles.”
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“I will finally recommend the most recent book that I read to my children which is Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.”
I Answer Your Questions on Peter Thiel, Chris Rufo and the D.S.A. | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-07
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“I have for many many many years and in fact it's part of my first book Why We're Polarized not just believed but talked a lot about how the immigration issue gets sanitized as about economics.”
The A.I. Revolt Is Here | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-08-04
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“I wrote Abundance uh last year with Derek Thompson or published it.”
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“which is uh Ben Yemin Labatut's The Maniac, um which includes a sort of lightly fictionalized biography of John von Neumann, the story of AlphaGo.”
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“The Technology Trap from Carl Benedikt Frey, which I think is very much about how people's attitudes towards technology and automation depend on to what extent the benefits, the economic growth, is shared”
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“Priya Parker's The Art of Gathering, cuz I do think that the relational stuff is going to become a lot more important than it always was”
Is Trump Running Out of Steam? | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-31
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“the single best book on the first 14 months of Donald Trump's second term”
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“I'm reading Charlie Savage's Takeover, The Return of the Imperial Presidency, which was a very very good look at how particularly Dick Cheney expanded executive power under W. Bush post 9/11.”
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StrangersDiscussed
“I am reading Bill Burdens Strangers. It's interesting. It's well written. It's definitely propulsive. It's an interesting choice to write about such wealth in this moment.”
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“Keith McNally's I Regret Everything. It's actually fantastic.”
The Democratic Party Needs Change | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-28
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“last time I was on the show, to pull a deep cut, I talked about this book, The Reasoning Voter, that marshaled a lot of persuasive evidence that has not been shaken by the last few years”
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“So, the first book I want to recommend is The Master of the Senate by Robert Caro.”
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“The second book that I want to recommend is a book called Seeing Like a State. And this is a book by someone who used to be a University of Wisconsin professor, actually, James C. Scott.”
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“And then the third book I want to recommend is probably my favorite book these days to read to my kids, which is a book called Sal and Gabi Break the Universe.”
Platner’s Top Strategist on What Went Wrong | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-24
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“when my godfather when Phil was doing Death of a Salesman uh early on he was describing like the best play ever written.”
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“A really, I think, stunning kind of human portrayal um of the ramifications of the Holocaust in that entire era.”
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“a really beautiful book of of uh kind of the friction of isolation and dreams and anxiety.”
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“it's a really astute um observation of where political power is and how we can kind of shape a government that's on a day-to-day basis improving people's lives.”
What Americans Need to Understand About China | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-14
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“he reminds me of that last scene in Orwell's novel with Winston, uh, where he realizes as he disappears into oblivion that he loved Big Brother all along and the party always comes first”
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“there's a great book by Joseph Tigian the party's interests come first the life of Xi Jong Shin father of Xiinping. It's a great book and a great read”
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“Ian Johnson uh the souls of China, the return of religion after Mao. Um and it's about uh what is occurred on the grounds in the grassroots with the rise of various forms of Dowoism, Buddhism, Protestant Christianity”
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Magnifica humanitasRecommended
“the encyclical on artificial intelligence, uh, which I've been working my way through. It's a great read uh about the essential dignity of the human person”
The Miracles (and Maddening Politics) of the Clean Energy Revolution | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-10
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“his most recent book is Here Comes the Sun, a last chance for the climate and a fresh chance for civilization”
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“a kind of conference to mark the 10th anniversary of Francis's great encyclical on climate change, Laudato Si”
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“Terry Tempest Williams, great nature essayist, a book called The Glorians”
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“Rebecca Solnit, pound for pound maybe our best political essayist, and her book The Beginning Comes After the End”
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“she tells that story in a book called The Carbon Wave”
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End Times Fascism:Recommended
“they have together a new book called End Times Fascism and the Fight for a Living World”
A Radical Vision for Israelis and Palestinians | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-07
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“the first one is the Holocaust and the Nakba edited by um good colleagues and friends Bashir Bashir and and Amos Goldberg. It's very important to understand”
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“The second is um state of denials. Um it's not about Israel Palestine, but the Israelis um are suffering from severe denial, collective denial and blindness.”
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“Um the second is the psalm for the wild built. It's um a genre that I do you know this book? this book by Becky Chambers has really allowed me to kind of sit with alternative futures”
Loving America Honestly | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-07-03
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“He is the author of the book Just Mercy, which was turned into a movie where he was played by Michael B. Jordan.”
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“I think a great book I recently reread was Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston.”
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“I recently um uh read uh again Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. Powerful.”
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“my third book would be in this moment uh Fyodor Dostoevsky, uh The Brothers Karamazov. Which is one of my favorite books in the world.”
What Has Chris Rufo Wrought? | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-30
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“He's the author of America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything.”
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“Aristotle has a great line in his book on rhetoric where he says the truth has a tendency to prevail.”
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WhitepillMentioned
“The right-wing writer Scott Greer. Um he's got a book coming out on the online right called White Pill.”
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“This is you know something I talk about in my first book why we're polarized is there's a huge upsurge in telling people the right way to understand life America is through identity groups.”
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“He's got this book about the '9s um called uh When the Clock Broke, I believe. And I've had him on to talk about the book.”
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“I wrote abundance which is entirely critique of democratic governance.”
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“The first I would recommend is a book by my mentor John Marini, Claremont Institute scholar called unmasking the administrative state.”
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“All conservatives and all liberals should read is a biography by Stacy Schiff called The Revolutionary, which is a biography of Samuel Adams.”
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“Recommend books by conservative journalist, former NYU professor James Burnham. Wrote Managerial Revolution, The Machavelians, Suicide of the West.”
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“James Burnham wrote Managerial Revolution, another called The Machavelians, another called Suicide of the West.”
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“James Burnham wrote Managerial Revolution, another called The Machavelians, another called Suicide of the West.”
Gary Shteyngart Warned Us | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-19
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“We are living in Super Sad True Love Story. Super Sad True Love Story is a 2010 book by Gary Shteyngart.”
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“Gary Shteyngart has written a number of wonderful novels, including The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Vera or Faith.”
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“Gary Shteyngart has written a number of wonderful novels, including The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Vera or Faith.”
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“Gary Shteyngart has written a number of wonderful novels, including The Russian Debutante's Handbook, Absurdistan, and Vera or Faith.”
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“The Year of Rest and Relaxation reads like a really cool, smart, and funny version of the sad girl novel.”
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“I teach Portnoy's Complaint. It's all set in a psychiatrist's office. It's this neurotic horny Jew.”
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“I wrote a book called Lake Success that was set in the world of hedge funders.”
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“Lenny is reading The Unbearable Lightness of Being to Eunice. Kundera had put too many words for her to gain excitement.”
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“I read Michael Kimmelman's book called The Intimate City. The beauty of New York is the juxtaposition of this with that.”
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“The book is called Men Like Hours by Bindu Bansinath. Set in New Jersey with really dark humor.”
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“A new book by Chang-rae Lee, the wonderful Korean-American writer called A Tender Age. His most memoiristic novel.”
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“Julia Ioffe's Motherland was a National Book Award finalist. A book about what the Soviet Union did to women.”
Graham Platner, Jon Ossoff, and the New Rules of Political Attention | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-16
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“I read and loved Ben Lerner's newest transcription. I will say as someone who went to Brown, and he was in my class there”
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“I recently read, and I can't believe I had never read this book, but I read The Godfather, the original novel by Mario Puzo”
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“a new novel that I just am about halfway through by someone else that I know, Courtney Mom, called Alan Oops Out, which is a great kind of really insightful, searing, comedic look”
What’s the Left’s Vision for Foreign Policy After Trump? | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-09
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“I think Senator Murphy has really articulated a strong theory of what really ails our politics, the loss of a sense of community.”
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“It's a book about Turkey through exploring one neighborhood in Istanbul, looking at the country's politics and how Turkey's democracy has changed.”
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“It's by Leonard Cohen who people know as a famous songwriter and singer, but this is a book of modern Psalms.”
The Right’s Pre-Modern ‘Masculinist’ Fantasy | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-05
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“Before Betty Friedan wrote The Feminine Mystique, before lifestyle feminism dominated every institution in the west.”
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“Helen Lewis is a staff writer of the Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and the Genius Myth.”
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“Helen Lewis is a staff writer of the Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and the Genius Myth.”
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“I read The Last Man by Charles Cornish Dale. It moved from saying it is impossible to be a man fully in liberal democracy to chuck out your plastic chopping board.”
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“I read Bronze Age Mindset and it's one of the first times I remember coming out of something like this thinking there was so much less there than I thought.”
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“Francis Fukuyama is talking about thymos in The End of History and the Last Man, this thing that is testosterone, and we are destroying it.”
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“He's got a book literally called Why I Am So Great. The idea that everybody around you is essentially cattle and you're not.”
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“I've written a book Abundance in part about the problems of institutional incentives taking over.”
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“There's a book from the 2000s by Ariel Levy called Female Chauvinist Pigs about women coping with male-dominated workforces.”
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“Christie Malry's Own Double Entry by B.S. Johnson is about a young alienated guy who discovers double entry bookkeeping and decides for every slight to enact one on society.”
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“Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour, Mistress of Louis XV. Nancy Mitford wrote biographies of Frederick the Great and Louis XIV.”
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“The Genius Factory by David Plotz is about a mad eugenicist millionaire who decides to get Nobel Prize winners to donate their sperm to couples.”
Ian Bremmer on the Risks America Poses to the World | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-02
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“The first big book that I wrote back in 2006 was called the J Curve. And I doubt you even remember it, right?”
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“I've got to start with the Hitchhiker's Guide. When I was in high school, there were three kinds of kids. The Douglas Adams kids were kind people, curious, interested.”
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“Actually, maybe the Dragonriders of Pern which I reread obsessively when I was like 10.”
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“I was going to say World Affairs by Michael Pollan. I've liked him for a long time because he talks about issues that are really important to human beings.”
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“The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson, written back in 2001. It's about intelligent folks not really succeeding in society who witness something from the future that could rip apart society.”
This is How Democrats Could Retake the Senate | The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-05-29
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“Matt Cottoni wrote a history of the right called The Right reminding us that not only did history not start in 2016 but not in 1980 either.”
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“Patrick McGee's Apple and China I found very interesting from an industrial policy, foreign policy, and national security standpoint.”
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“The frackers is really interesting for understanding our energy dominance evolution and revolution from a scarcity mindset to being Saudi Arabia of natural gas.”