Books like Capital: Volume I

01

The Wealth of Nations

Adam Smith · Economics

An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published in 1776, is Adam Smith's comprehensive account of how modern commercial economies work and what policies promote prosperity.

A kindred economics read.

02

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

A kindred economics read.

03

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 economics read.

04

The Communist Manifesto

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels · History

Published in 1848 on the eve of a wave of European revolutions, The Communist Manifesto is a short political pamphlet that has shaped more history than almost any other document of its length.

Shares capitalism and labor with Capital: Volume I.

05

Poverty, by America

Matthew Desmond · Economics

Poverty, by America is Matthew Desmond's follow-up to Evicted, and it makes a more explicit and polemical argument: poverty in the United States is not a natural condition or a problem of insufficient resources.

Both dig into exploitation.

06

Prosperity: Better Business Makes the Greater Good

Colin Mayer · Economics

Prosperity is Colin Mayer's argument that the modern corporation has lost its sense of purpose — and that recovering it requires not marginal adjustments but a fundamental rethinking of what corporations are for.

Both dig into capitalism.

07

The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World

Johan Norberg · Economics

Johan Norberg has made a career of making the case that open markets have lifted more people out of poverty than any other force in human history, and The Capitalist Manifesto is his most direct statement of that argument.

Both dig into capitalism.

08

The Great Transformation

Karl Polanyi · Economics

The Great Transformation is Karl Polanyi's 1944 account of how a self-regulating market economy emerged in nineteenth-century England, what social catastrophe that emergence caused, and why the market society created its own political reaction.

Both dig into capitalism.

09

Americana

Bhu Srinivasan · History

Americana is Bhu Srinivasan's attempt to tell the history of American capitalism through its defining industries and the entrepreneurs who built them.

Both dig into capitalism.

10

Atlas Shrugged

Ayn Rand · Philosophy

Atlas Shrugged is Ayn Rand's philosophical novel and the fullest expression of her system, Objectivism.

Both dig into capitalism.

11

Empire of Cotton: A Global History

Sven Beckert · History

Sven Beckert's Empire of Cotton argues that cotton was not just the raw material of the Industrial Revolution but the commodity through which modern capitalism was invented.

Both dig into capitalism.

12

Fast Food Nation

Eric Schlosser · Science

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is one of the most consequential pieces of American investigative journalism of the early twenty-first century.

Both dig into labor.