Wow what a fun idea! Okay 1 Like = 1 book that influenced my political thinking. Limit 30 because I've only read like 100 books total.

But also read @Sharon_Kuruvila's thread for some good recommendations! https://twitter.com/Sharon_Kuruvila/status/1287390837530398720

1. Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. I disavow pretty much all of it now, but it made me libertarian for about a decade and got me interested in political thinking in the first place, so it hardly seems fair to exclude it.

2. Constitution of Liberty, by Friedrich A Hayek. I still think of myself as a Hayekian. Hayek expresses well what I think of as openness. We want a political/economic order that fosters the kind of freedom that enables people to create the things we didn't even know we needed.

3. Development as Freedom, by Amartya Sen. Very important to me. Introduced me to the capabilities approach. Procedure *and* comprehensive outcomes matter. Political and economic freedoms matter. Values are plural. Highly recommended.

4. Frontiers of Justice, by Martha Nussbaum. This is the capabilities approach from a more formal philosophical perspectives, with applications to disability, animal welfare, and foreign peoples. A really rich text and my intro to Nussbaum iirc.

5. Justice and the Politics of Difference, by Iris Marion Young. I didn't appreciate this book when I read it, but afterward I realized I use her conception of the "faces" of oppression. This forms a strong basis for identity politics and is a must-read if you want to talk idpol.

6. Rationalism, Pluralism, and Freedom, by @jtlevy. A wonderful book that explores importance of intermediate gruops and the fertile tension between local power and central authority. Oppression arises at both levels, and freedom can flourish at their tension.

7. Why Nations Fail, by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson. My introduction to the institutional perspective. Prosperity is made possible by "inclusive" institutions, which replace "extractive" institutions when accidents of history roughly equalize power between groups.

8. @FukuyamaFrancis's Political Order duology. Similar in theme to Why Nations Fail, but with more focus on state-building and bureaucracy, as well as the mechanisms by which political order decays (esp. "repatrimonialization").

9. Private Government, by Elizabeth Anderson. Tyranny and hierarchy that liberals and egalitarians oppose happens in the workplace as well as the political arena. We need to rethink ideologies that argue employers can dominate employees as a matter of freedom.

Women, Race, and Class, by Angela Y Davis. This classic of Black feminism explores themes of intersectionality about a decade before the term was coined. Radical yet pragmatic, Davis abjures utopia to focus on concrete ways to improve marginalized lives. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2472895903?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

11. Stamped from the Beginning, by @DrIbram. Racism & antiracism coevolve. This history of racist ideas immerses you in *context*. Plausible deniability comes from acontextual thinking. Racial inequality *precedes* the racist ideology that justifies it. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2294354459?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

12. Black Rights/White Wrongs, by Charles W Mills. Liberalism can and must be quite radical if we step away from ideal theory and focus on how to achieve liberal values by rectifying existing (esp racist) injustice. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2176331916?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

13. Tyranny of the Ideal, by Jerry Gaus. A thoroughly rich and powerful account of the importance of perspectival diversity in a free society. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1624101461?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

14. Socialism after Hayek, by Theodore Burczak. The first thing I read of liberal socialism that made me very curious about the ideological space where socialism and liberalism meet and exchange ideas. I wrote an extensive review here: https://sweettalkconversation.com/2015/07/28/socialism-after-burczak/

15. Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny, by @kate_manne. Misogyny is a *moral reaction* to women acting outside their "proper roles". And misogyny should be thought of in terms of the actual social obstacles women face rather than anyone's innermost feelings. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2750379031?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

16. Capitalism For and Against: A Feminist Debate, by Ann Cudd & Nancy Holmstrom. Cudd discusses the feminist liberatory features of historical capitalism and proposes how to adapt capitalism to more fully overcome patriarchy, poverty, and oppression. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2192015856?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

17. Free Market Fairness, by John Tomasi. Tomasi presents a strong case for how a market democracy in which economic freedoms are protected at the same level as more personal rights satisfies Rawlsian justice. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1765062929?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

18. Disadvantage, by @JoWolffBSG & Avner de-Shalit. Back to capabilities. The authors take a bottom-up approach by interviewing disadvantaged persons and social workers. Also introduce the concepts of "fertile functioning" and "corrosive disadvantage". https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1972792808?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

19. The Lost History of Liberalism, by Helena Rosenblatt. A history of liberalism focusing on the word "liberal" (noun), as well as liberal parties, especially in France and Germany. Early liberalism was great, and pretty different from what we think of as "classical liberalism."

20. The Primacy of Politics, by Sheri Berman. A fascinating history social democracy as it emerged from revisionist Marxism. This book both deepened my respect for social democracy and firmed up my self-conception as a liberal (bc of the communitarian streak in socdem).

21. Sex and Social Justice, by Martha Nussbaum. My favorite Nussbaum book. A collection of her feminist essays. I would say Nussbaum's feminism resonates with me more than it has shaped my views, but this book certainly gave me a valuable set of tools. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1422170812?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

22. Main Currents of Marxism, by Leszek Kolakowski. This mammoth tome taught me a lot about Marxism. It's written by a former Marxist, but to be honest he made the case for Marxism better than when I read Marx. Kolakowski also introduced me to very interesting socialist thinkers.

23. The Tyranny of Experts, by @bill_easterly. Easterly defends a Hayekian account of economic development based on human rights, especially democratic rights. We should treat the global poor like human beings with agency.

24. The Imperative of Integration, by Elizabeth Anderson. A robust case for spatial and institutional racial integration to overcome the corrosive disadvantage (see 18) of de facto segregation. Converted me on affirmative action. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1400840600?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

25. Are Prisons Obsolete? by Angela Y Davis. Yes, in a word. We need a fundamental rethinking of the retributive and exploitative ideas that permit us to put human being in cages.

26. The Captured Economy, by @lindsey_brink and Steven Teles. A timely book on regulatory capture and how incumbents influence the rule writing to preserve their advantages. A pro-democracy, pro-state capacity public choice analysis. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2421025610?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1

27. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, by @robertwrighter. One of the first "big idea" books I ever read that was a real formative influence. Institutional complexity is driven by the need to solve greater non-zero-sum problems. Probably due for a reread tbh.

28. Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing, by Miranda Fricker. A really fascinating exploration of the social epistemic dimensions of marginalization and oppression.

29. Stubborn Attachments, by @tylercowen. A much needed defense of economic growth, in terms not of GDP alone but something value-plural closer to capabilities. This can be (vastly) overstated, but growth now enables us to problems along the way.

30. The Culture novels, by Iain M Banks. I am anti-utopian in general, but when I do slip into thinking of what the end looks like, it's something very like the Culture, with freedom, cosmopolitanism, and limitless resources coinciding with real individual and social flourishing.

And that concludes the series! I said 30 and delivered 30. I left out many books that are lovely but didn't really take my thinking in new directions (and I left out some that did). Thanks for reading!