Why Were Polarized, Ezra Klein
Why Were Polarized, Ezra Klein
12 Rating(s)
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Why We're Polarized

Bestseller

Author: Ezra Klein

Narrator: Ezra Klein

Unabridged: 8 hr 32 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/28/2020

Includes: Bonus Material Bonus Material Included


Synopsis

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

One of Bill Gates’s “5 books to read this summer,” this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this “superbly researched” (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results.

“The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.”

“A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis” (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.

America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis.

“Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics—and perhaps at yourself.

About Ezra Klein

Ezra Klein is an opinion columnist and host of the award-winning Ezra Klein Show podcast at The New York Times. He is the author of Why We’re Polarized, an instant New York Times bestseller, named one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2022. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.


Reviews

Goodreads review by David on December 05, 2019

Politics uses us for its own ends There are endless shelves of books on what has happened to politics in the USA, culminating in the rule of Trump. Most of them hit on polarization sooner or later. Ezra Klein’s book totally focuses on it, but in ways that are more engaging, relatable and relevant tha......more

Goodreads review by Raymond on March 29, 2020

My review is also published on Medium: [URL not allowed]-for-the-m... I've been waiting for this book ever since Ezra Klein first mentioned he was working on it during one of his podcast episodes. As the title explains, Klein's book tells the story of how and why the United States is curren......more

Goodreads review by Don on December 25, 2019

What began as a mostly balanced examination of why Americans are polarized transformed into multiple attacks on everything on the Right. It was almost as if two books had been written. In the first half, author Ezra Klein seemed to try hard to be fair in his analysis, although from time to time he di......more

Goodreads review by Trish on March 25, 2020

Ezra Klein does pick a side, but his great gift is disengagement to the extent we can see how ordinary Americans got to where they are ideologically. It is not enough to point to our sources of news and draw conclusions from that, though that is clearly a factor. He points to the way political and n......more

Goodreads review by Tim on March 23, 2025

Regretfully, this otherwise brilliant book perpetuates the mythology -- the lie -- that America's two dominant political parties are not only viewed as being substantially the same but are, in fact, substantially the same. This lie has contributed to America's current misfortunes. Rating=3.4......more


Quotes

"Ezra Klein, a political junkie who cofounded the website Vox, narrates his audiobook precisely, purposefully, and passionately. Often a guest on TV news programs, he has a delivery style that is direct and approachable. He conveys the urgency of his arguments with a kind of polite candor and frequently notes how ironic our politics have become, with many voters choosing partisanship over self-interest. Most telling, he takes on the unfairness built into a system in which his home state of California, with almost 40 million residents, has the same number of senators as Wyoming, with not quite 600,000. Klein is especially good at explaining how we got to our present situation, calling the Trump phenomenon 'predictable.' Listeners who want a nuanced and provocative discussion of our politically divided nation will find fertile turf here."