The Gardens of Democracy

The Age of the Unthinkable: Why the New World Disorder Constantly Surprises Us and What We Can Do About It, Joshua Cooper Ramo (Back Bay Books, 2010)

Big Citizenship: How Pragmatic Idealism Can Bring Out the Best in America, Alan Khazei (PublicAffairs, 2010)

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, Dacher Keltner (W. W. Norton & Company, 2009)

The Case for Big Government, Jeff Madrick (Princeton University Press, 2010)

Chaos: Making a New Science, James Gleick (Penguin, 2008)

Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership, Lewis Hyde (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010)

Complex Adaptive Systems: An Introduction to Computational Models of Social Life, John H. Miller and Scott E. Page (Princeton University Press, 2007)

Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives—How Your Friends’ Friends’ Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do, Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler (Back Bay Books, 2011)

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, Bill McKibben (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2008)

Deep Simplicity: Bringing Order to Chaos and Complexity, John Gribbin (Random House, 2005)

Democracy’s Discontent: America in Search of a Public Philosophy, Michael J. Sandel (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)

Diversity and Complexity, Scott E. Page (Princeton University Press, 2010)

Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Elinor Ostrom (Cambridge University Press, 1990)

Growing Public: Volume 1, The Story: Social Spending and Economic Growth Since the Eighteenth Century, Peter H. Lindert (Cambridge University Press, 2004)

How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities, John Cassidy (Picador, 2010)

Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Garry Wills (Mariner Books, 2002)

Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas (America: A Cultural History), David Hackett Fischer (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004)

Linked: How Everything Is Connected to Everything Else and What It Means, Albert-László Barabási (Plume, 2003)

The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups, Mancur Olson (Harvard University Press, 1971)

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr, editors (The MIT Press, 2006)

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves, W. Brian Arthur (Free Press, 2009)

Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein (Penguin, 2009)

The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics, Eric D. Beinhocker (Harvard Business School Press, 2006)

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, Francis Fukuyama (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011)

The Real Wealth of Nations: Creating a Caring Economics, Riane Tennenhaus Eisler (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008)

Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost—And How It Can Find Its Way Back, Mickey Edwards (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, James C. Scott (Yale University Press, 1999)

Self-Rule: A Cultural History of American Democracy, Robert H. Wiebe (University Of Chicago Press, 1996)

The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement, David Brooks (Random House, 2011)

The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson (Bloomsbury Press, 2011)

The Theory Of Moral Sentiments, Adam Smith (Kessinger Publishing, 2004, originally published in 1759)

Trust: The Social Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity, Francis Fukuyama (Free Press, 1996)

Up from Conservatism, Michael Lind (Free Press, 1997)