Ezra Klein Show's Most Recommended Books

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Ezra Klein Show, 177 Books

This is a collation of all the books recommended by every guest that came on The Ezra Klein Show organized by most recommended and by guest appearances. It is one of the best long form interview shows when it comes to the depth of the topics discussed, the diversity and expertise of the lineup of guests and the very thoughtful interview questions that had yielded such nuanced and insightful responses.

The guests were not just nobodies - we have CEOs, ex presidents, famous writers, politicians, scientists... The list is therefore a combination of classics and those works that have caught the attention of the great and the good.
The total number of books recommended is over 1500, this list is only those that were mentioned by at least 2 show guests

Who voted:
528 guests voted. All their names are listed on the website

This list was originally published in 2024 and was added to this site almost 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1392 Evicted Matthew Desmond 2016 American English
1252 Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari 2011 Israeli Hebrew
19 The Bible Unknown -1400 Jewish Hebrew, aramaic, greek
2611 What It Takes Richard Ben Cramer 1992 American English
229 Democracy in America Alexis de Tocqueville 1835 French French
306 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
909 The Warmth Of Other Suns Isabel Wilkerson 2010 American English
440 The Origins of Totalitarianism Hannah Arendt 1951 German English
2048 Amusing Ourselves To Death Neil Postman 1985 American English
12 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
5036 Black Reconstruction In America W. E. B. Du Bois 1935 American English
2936 The Better Angels Of Our Nature Steven Pinker 2011 American English
1495 Behind the Beautiful Forevers Katherine Boo 2012 American English
749 The Fire Next Time James Baldwin 1963 American English
475 Gilead Marilynne Robinson 2004 American English
10 Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy 1877 Russian Russian
5329 Grant Ron Chernow 2017 American English
421 A Visit From The Goon Squad Jennifer Egan 2010 American English
553 The Dispossessed Ursula K. Le Guin 1974 American English
9819 The Precipice Toby Ord 2020 British English
5706 The Sum Of Us Heather McGhee 2021 American English
10204 Slouching Towards Utopia Bradford DeLong 2022 American English
3494 Eating Animals Jonathan Safran Foer 2009 American English
941 Collected Essays of George Orwell George Orwell 1968 British English
8845 Our Kids Robert D. Putnam 2015 American English
1209 Between the World and Me Ta-Nehisi Coates 2015 American English
8424 Coming Apart Charles Murray 2012 American English
100 Dune Frank Herbert 1965 American English
1818 Barbarian Days William Finnegan 2015 American English
2712 Reasons And Persons Derek Parfit 1984 British English
9219 On Tyranny Timothy Snyder 2017 American English
28 Middlemarch George Eliot 1871 British English
582 Man's Search for Meaning Viktor Frankl 1946 Austrian German
2076 Thinking, Fast and Slow Daniel Kahneman 2011 Israeli English
6378 Leonardo Da Vinci Walter Isaacson 2017 American English
4290 Finite And Infinite Games James P. Carse 1986 American English
5096 Where Do We Go From Here Martin Luther King 1967 American English
8064 A Paradise Built In Hell Rebecca Solnit 2009 American English
5927 Hope in the Dark Rebecca Solnit 2004 American English
2339 Master of the Senate Robert Caro 2002 American English
8573 Fear Itself Ira Katznelson 2013 American English
3594 Thick Tressie McMillan Cottom 2019 American English
404 The Federalist Papers Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay 1787 American English
6577 Crashed Adam Tooze 2018 British English
6788 The Splendid And The Vile Erik Larson 2020 American English
1529 Orientalism Edward W. Said 1978 Palestinian English
6251 Why Nations Fail Daron Acemoğlu, James A. Robinson 2012 American English
7577 The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen 1997 American English
6311 Getting Things Done David Allen 2001 American English
4894 Influence Robert B. Cialdini 1984 American English
934 The Theory of the Leisure Class Thorstein Veblen 1899 American English
313 Meditations Marcus Aurelius 161 Roman Greek
8021 The Rise And Fall Of American Growth Robert J. Gordon 2016 American English
133 Confessions Augustine 397 Roman Latin
4577 No Ordinary Time Doris Kearns Goodwin 1994 American English
6199 Metaphors We Live George Lakoff, Mark Johnson 1980 American English
8207 My Life Bill Clinton 2004 American English
6605 Hillbilly Elegy J. D. Vance 2016 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
7603 The Beginning Of Infinity David Deutsch 2011 British English
3 The Great Gatsby F. Scott Fitzgerald 1925 American English
1638 Postwar Tony Judt 2005 British English
7964 Nothing Is True And Everything Is Possible Peter Pomerantsev 2014 British English
162 Silent Spring Rachel Carson 1962 American English
9617 Give Us The Ballot Ari Berman 2015 American English
4458 The Truly Disadvantaged William Julius Wilson 1987 American English
2325 Being Mortal Atul Gawande 2014 American English
3235 When Breath Becomes Air Paul Kalanithi 2016 American English
293 A Wrinkle In Time Madeleine L'Engle 1962 American English
1384 Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond 1997 American English
5611 The Righteous Mind Jonathan Haidt 2012 American English
1698 Stories of Your Life and Others Ted Chiang 2002 American English
4455 Mountains Beyond Mountains Tracy Kidder 2003 American English
4942 Ghettoside Jill Leovy 2015 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
1159 Eichmann in Jerusalem Hannah Arendt 1963 German English
4814 Dreamland Sam Quinones 2015 American English
3589 Just Mercy Bryan Stevenson 2014 American English
9772 Democracy For Realists Christopher H. Achen, Larry Bartels 2016 American English
1750 The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 1986 American English
5628 Mindfulness In Plain English Henepola Gunaratana 1994 American English
361 Foundation Isaac Asimov 1951 American English
4195 The Oppermanns Lion Feuchtwanger 1933 German German
2415 Educated Tara Westover 2018 American English
5642 Enlightenment Now Steven Pinker 2018 American English
2503 Homegoing Yaa Gyasi 2016 Ghanaian English
2642 The Power Naomi Alderman 2016 British English
2659 Boys on the Bus Timothy Crouse 1973 American English
6816 Open Andre Agassi 2009 American English
5004 Feel Free Zadie Smith 2018 British English
8101 How Not To Die Michael Greger, Gene Stone 2015 American English
6531 Born A Crime Trevor Noah 2016 South African English
45 Fictions Jorge Luis Borges 1944 Argentinian Spanish
10077 One Person, No Vote Carol Anderson 2018 American English
6514 The Control Revolution James R. Beniger 1986 American English
10077 Give People Money Annie Lowrey 2018 American English
6957 There Will Be No Miracles Here Casey Gerald 2018 American English
5996 The Coddling Of The American Mind Jonathan Haidt, Greg Lukianoff 2018 American English
10077 To Shape A New World Tommie Shelby, Brandon M. Terry 2018 American English
2337 There There Tommy Orange 2018 American English
2953 Exit, Voice, And Loyalty Albert Hirschman 1970 American English
3522 Bad Blood John Carreyrou 2018 American English
8258 Strangers In Their Own Land Arlie Russell Hochschild 2016 American English
8279 The Authoritarian Dynamic Karen Stenner 2005 American English
820 The Captive Mind Czesław Miłosz 1953 Polish Polish
1474 Chaos James Gleick 1987 American English
4851 Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, And Wear Cows Melanie Joy 2010 American English
6957 The Fifth Risk Michael M. Lewis 2018 American English
7752 The Age of Surveillance Capitalism Shoshana Zuboff 2019 American English
9772 Racial Realignment Eric Schickler 2016 American English
9252 The Entrepreneurial State Mariana Mazzucato 2013 British English
1881 The Machiavellians James Burnham 1943 American English
24 The Odyssey Homer -740 Greek Ancient greek
639 Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke 1790 British English
9509 Political Order And Political Decay Francis Fukuyama 2014 American English
10236 In Love With The World Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, Helen Tworkov 2019 Unknown English
5642 These Truths Jill Lepore 2018 American English
2627 Capital in the Twenty-First Century Thomas Piketty 2013 French French
3600 Debt David Graeber 2011 American English