Political philosophy and ideology

The True Believer

“My favourite book to recommend is The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer. There is no discussion about investing, but it is extremely helpful in understanding…”Joe Rosenberg

Expert Political Judgment

“All pundits and commentators should publish their prediction track records, yet don't. What to pay attention to and what to ignore.”Marc Andreessen

Private Truths, Public Lies

“So this is one of the all time great books. Incredible.”Marc Andreessen

The Machiavellians

“The book that I always recommend on this topic is called "The Machiavellians," which is this sort of a famous book from the 1940s”Marc Andreessen

The Sovereign Individual

“One of Andreessen's most-cited books publicly, especially on cryptocurrency and digital sovereignty. The 1997 prediction that cryptography would allow individuals to route around nation-state taxation and censorship maps almost exactly onto his crypto investment thesis and his views on network states.”Marc Andreessen

The Network State

“His own book laying out how to start a new country; the centerpiece of his current intellectual project.”Balaji S. Srinivasan

The End of History and the Last Man

“Fukuyama's thesis that liberal democracy represents the endpoint of ideological evolution is exactly the kind of consensus Thiel builds his career against. He has engaged with it publicly not to dismiss it but to argue that Fukuyama's endpoint may have arrived prematurely, and that the real contest between order and chaos is still open.”Peter Thiel

The Myth of the Rational Voter

“The median American is a moderate national socialist – statist to the core on both economic and social policy.”Marc Andreessen

The Righteous Mind

“Recommended on Marginal Revolution and discussed across several Conversations with Tyler episodes. Cowen finds Haidt's moral foundations framework more useful as a descriptive tool than as a normative one — he cares less about Haidt's prescriptions for political reconciliation than about the cross-cultural data showing how differently moral intuitions are organized across populations.”Tyler Cowen

How Democracies Die

“Obama recommended this Harvard political scientists' comparative study on his 2018 list, calling it a bracing read for anyone worried about democratic erosion. Levitsky and Ziblatt examine how elected leaders in Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela, and Peru undermined democratic norms from within, often without a single dramatic rupture.”Barack Obama

The Republic

“Plato's dialogues, especially the Republic, are a recurring reference in Thiel's speeches and writing. The allegory of the cave maps cleanly onto his account of how mimetic conformity keeps people from seeing first-principle truths. His interest in philosopher-kings—technically competent decision-makers shielded from mob opinion—is a thread he picks up from Plato and runs through to his political investments.”Peter Thiel