Name: Why We're Polarized
ISBN: 9781797107653

Ezra Klein

Why We're Polarized

Mariane Ferrantino 

This is another one that I really wish everyone would read. You can’t fight psychology most of the time, and it’s very interesting to look at our political polarization in terms of the psychology of groups. Took me a bit to get through it, but it was worth it.

Riah Forbes 

5 stars for how thought-provoking this book was. I didn’t agree with everything in here — e.g. social psych studies tend to make me side-eye a bit, unless they’ve been replicated to the hills — but his core arguments resonate: group identities matter, they matter exponentially more when overlaid on each other (as they often are today), a two-party political system lends itself more to polarisation by overlaid identity, and polarisation is getting worse through institutional feedback loops. 

Three reasons to read this book: 1) the chapters on the history of the Dixiecrats and the one on demographics today 2) Ezra’s writing style, which, if you listen to his podcast, is almost creepily consistent with the way he speaks 3) it’s a good way to engage with US politics while zooming out a little from the day-to-day insanity of 2020.