Books like Anarchy, State, and Utopia

01

The Open Society and Its Enemies

Karl Popper · Philosophy

Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies during World War II, and the wartime context is inseparable from its argument.

A kindred philosophy read.

02

The Republic

Plato · Philosophy

The Republic is Plato's most ambitious work, a sustained inquiry into the nature of justice staged as a dialogue among Socrates and his companions in Athens.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

03

Leviathan

Thomas Hobbes · Philosophy

Leviathan, published in 1651 in the aftermath of the English Civil War, is one of the founding texts of modern political philosophy.

A kindred philosophy read.

04

The Road to Serfdom

F. A. Hayek · Politics

The Road to Serfdom, published in 1944, is Friedrich Hayek's argument that central economic planning is incompatible with political freedom and will, regardless of intent, produce a form of totalitarianism.

A kindred philosophy read.

05

A Theory of Justice

John Rawls · Philosophy

A Theory of Justice, published in 1971, is John Rawls's attempt to construct a systematic alternative to utilitarianism in political philosophy.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

06

Natural Right and History

Leo Strauss · Philosophy

Natural Right and History is Leo Strauss's sustained argument that the modern rejection of natural right — the idea that there is a standard of justice discoverable by reason, independent of convention and history — represents a profound intellectual and political crisis.

Shares political philosophy and justice with Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

07

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Michael J. Sandel · Philosophy

Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?

Both dig into justice.

08

The Divine Comedy: Inferno

Dante Alighieri · Philosophy

The Inferno is the first of three canticles in Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, written between approximately 1308 and 1320.

Both dig into justice.

09

Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill · Philosophy

Utilitarianism, first published in 1863 after appearing in Fraser's Magazine the previous year, is Mill's defense and refinement of the utilitarian moral theory he inherited from Jeremy Bentham.

Both dig into justice.

10

American Kingpin

Nick Bilton · Biography

American Kingpin is Nick Bilton's account of the rise and fall of Silk Road, the dark-web drug marketplace run by Ross Ulbricht under the pseudonym "Dread Pirate Roberts." Bilton traces the story from its ideological origins — Ulbricht's libertarian belief that a free market for drugs would reduce violence, cut out cartels, and let individuals make their own choices — through its rapid growth into a billion-dollar operation, and finally to the multi-agency investigation that culminated in Ulbricht's arrest in a San Francisco public library in 2013.

Both dig into libertarianism.

11

In Cold Blood

Truman Capote · Memoir

Truman Capote's account of the 1959 murders of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas — and of the investigation, capture, trial, and execution of the killers Perry Smith and Richard Hickock — is the founding document of the true crime genre and one of the most admired works of American nonfiction of the twentieth century.

Both dig into justice.

12

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson · Memoir

Bryan Stevenson's memoir of his career as a capital defense attorney in Alabama, and specifically of his years working on the case of Walter McMillian — a Black man wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Monroe County, Alabama — is simultaneously a riveting legal narrative and a sustained moral argument about the American criminal justice system's treatment of the poor and of Black defendants.

Both dig into justice.