Books like The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save 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

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty

Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson · Economics

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that the fundamental difference between rich and poor countries is not geography, culture, or bad luck.

A kindred economics read.

03

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.

Both dig into free markets.

04

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Jared Diamond · Science

Guns, Germs, and Steel is Jared Diamond's attempt to answer a question posed to him by a Papua New Guinean politician named Yali: why did Europeans end up with so much cargo — wealth, technology, power — while other peoples had comparatively little?

A kindred economics read.

05

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.

Shares innovation and capitalism with The Capitalist Manifesto: Why the Global Free Market Will Save the World.

06

Capital: Volume I

Karl Marx · Economics

Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I, published in 1867, is Karl Marx's systematic analysis of the capitalist mode of production.

Both dig into capitalism.

07

Economics in One Lesson

Henry Hazlitt · Economics

Henry Hazlitt wrote Economics in One Lesson in 1946, based on a single insight he credited to the nineteenth-century French economist Frédéric Bastiat: the difference between a good economist and a bad economist is that the good economist considers the effects of a policy on all groups, not just the immediately visible beneficiaries, and over the long run, not just the immediate term.

Both dig into free markets.

08

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World

Hans Rosling · Economics

Hans Rosling spent decades testing audiences of students, professors, journalists, and politicians on basic facts about global development — child mortality rates, literacy, extreme poverty, life expectancy — and found consistently that even well-educated, well-intentioned people performed worse than chance.

Both dig into poverty reduction.

09

Free to Choose: A Personal Statement

Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman · Economics

Free to Choose began as a ten-part television series on PBS in 1980, later expanded into the book Milton and Rose Friedman wrote together.

Both dig into free markets.

10

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.

11

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.

12

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 innovation.