My ten most influential books of 2023
Not everything I read — the books from 2023 that left the deepest mark, counted down from the honorable mentions to number one.
Honorable mentions
Click a cover to turn it over. After the first one, hovering another turns it too.
The Great Economists: How Their Ideas Can Help Us Today
Linda Yueh
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
GOAT: Who Is the Greatest Economist of All Time and Why Does It Matter?
Tyler Cowen
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Reductionism in Art and Brain Science: Bridging the Two Cultures
Eric R. Kandel
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Deep Medicine: How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again
Eric Topol
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Libertarianism: What Everyone Needs to Know
Jason Brennan
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Marx and Marxism
Gregory Claeys
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets: Surviving the Public Spectacle in Finance and Politics
William Bonner & Lila Rajiva
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Why Information Grows: The Evolution of Order, from Atoms to Economies
César Hidalgo
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism
Keyu Jin
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action
Elinor Ostrom
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct
Thomas Szasz
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment
Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony & Cass R. Sunstein
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Sculptor and Destroyer: Tales of Glutamate — the Brain’s Most Important Neurotransmitter
Mark P. Mattson
One sentence on what this one was — to be written.
Nos. 15–11
Psychedelics: The Revolutionary Drugs That Could Change Your Life
David Nutt
Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence
Anna Lembke
The New Science of Narcissism: Understanding One of the Greatest Psychological Challenges of Our Time
W. Keith Campbell
Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization
Move: The Forces Uprooting Us
Parag Khanna
Ergodicity: Definition, Examples, and Implications, as Simple as Possible
Luca Dellanna
The ten
No.10
How to Be a Conservative
Roger Scruton
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.9
Nineteen Eighty-Four
George Orwell
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.8
The Road to Serfdom
Friedrich A. Hayek
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.7
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
Shoshana Zuboff
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.6
Bernoulli’s Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science
Aubrey Clayton
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.5
The Money Formula: Dodgy Finance, Pseudo Science, and How Mathematicians Took Over the Markets
Paul Wilmott & David Orrell
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.4
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity
David Graeber & David Wengrow
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.3
Breaking Through Depression: A Guide to the Next Generation of Promising Research and Revolutionary New Treatments
Philip W. Gold
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.2
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain
Lisa Feldman Barrett
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.
No.1
Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How It Can Succeed Again
Bent Flyvbjerg
What this one changed — to be written. One or two sentences on the idea that moved something, not a summary of the book.