Why We’re Polarized – Profile Books

A Barack Obama summer reading pick 2022

Ezra Klein

Polarisation is often invoked as proof that our societies are broken but what if it’s really the system working as intended?

A BARACK OBAMA AND A BILL GATES SUMMER READING PICK 2022
A NEW YORK TIMES AND WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER

‘This book helped me understand modern politics better’ – Bill Gates, Summer Reading Pick 2022

‘Superbly researched and written’ – Francis Fukuyama, The Washington Post

‘It’s been a long time since I learned so much from one book.’ – Rutger Bregman author of Utopia for Realists

‘Powerful [and] intelligent.’ – Fareed Zakaria, CNN

America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed.

In Why We’re Polarized, Ezra Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s deep political divisions, revealing how a system filled with rational, functional parts can combine into a dysfunctional whole. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicisation of everyday culture.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarised in the twentieth century, what that polarisation did to Americans’ views of the world and one another, and how feedback loops between polarised political identities and polarised political institutions drive the system toward crisis. This revelatory book will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.