Books like Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World

01

Enlightenment Now

Steven Pinker · Science

Enlightenment Now is Steven Pinker's argument that the ideals of the Enlightenment — reason, science, humanism, and progress — have been responsible for a dramatic and continuing improvement in human wellbeing across virtually every measurable dimension, and that these ideals are under threat from counter-Enlightenment movements on both the left and the right.

A kindred economics read.

02

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Matt Ridley · Economics

Matt Ridley's argument in The Rational Optimist is evolutionary in the literal sense: he treats the expansion of human prosperity as the result of a Darwinian process operating at the cultural level, where ideas combine, compete, and recombine to produce innovations that raise living standards.

Both dig into human progress.

03

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.

04

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

05

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 poverty reduction.

06

Expert Political Judgment

Philip Tetlock · Psychology

Expert Political Judgment is Philip Tetlock's report on a twenty-year study of political forecasters.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

07

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb · Psychology

Fooled by Randomness is Nassim Nicholas Taleb's argument that humans are wired to misread luck as skill, noise as signal, and random outcomes as the product of ability or effort.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

08

Irrationality

Stuart Sutherland · Psychology

Irrationality is Stuart Sutherland's rigorous and often mordant survey of the ways human beings consistently fail to reason well.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

09

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos Tversky · Psychology

Judgment Under Uncertainty is the academic anthology that launched a research program.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

10

Mind Over Money

Claudia Hammond · Psychology

Mind Over Money is Claudia Hammond's survey of the research on how people actually think about, feel about, and make decisions with money — which turns out to be considerably less rational than economic theory assumes.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

11

Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioral Economics

Richard H. Thaler · Psychology

Richard Thaler is one of the founders of behavioral economics, the field that took the anomalies in standard economic theory seriously rather than dismissing them as noise.

Both dig into cognitive bias.

12

Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein · Psychology

Bias gets most of the attention in discussions of judgment error.

Both dig into cognitive bias.