Praise for The Gardens of Democracy
“The Gardens of Democracy provides a refreshing new conceptual approach to understanding our economic and political situation, and it will help us move past the fossilized ideas in today’s public debates.”
FRANCIS FUKUYAMA, author of The Origins of Political Order and Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University
“In highly engaging style, Liu and Hanauer capture the revolution underway in our understanding of how economies and social systems work. They offer a provocative, inspiring vision of citizenship, democracy, and the role of government. This slender book with big ambitions deserves to be read, debated, and read again.”
ERIC BEINHOCKER, author of The Origin of Wealth
“Society is a garden. Liu and Hanauer’s simple metaphor makes the complexities and limits of social policy emerge before your eyes. Statists can’t see the interconnections of organic systems. Free marketers can’t see that a garden needs some tending. If you’re looking for a way forward out of America’s dangerous gridlock, read this wonderful book.”
JONATHAN HAIDT, professor of psychology, University of Virginia, and author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
“Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer are progressives who always think outside the box, and that’s why everyone should pay attention to them. The Gardens of Democracy shakes up our stale debate over government’s role in a dynamic society, and in a thoughtful, creative, and inventive way. Everyone will find something to disagree with here, and that’s the point: getting us out of our comfort zones is an immensely useful democratic undertaking.”
E. J. DIONNEJR., author of Why Americans Hate Politics
“Liu and Hanauer get it right. They powerfully show how the complex, modern world requires new thinking and new policies that recognize the adaptive, mutualist nature of our economic, political, and social systems. This is a fabulous book!”
SCOTT E. PAGE, author of Diversity and Complexity and director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan
“The great contribution of Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer in The Gardens of Democracy is to explain how the very categories we use to think about our political problems prevent us from understanding and solving them. They’re a scouting party venturing upriver for the rest of us, and we’d be foolish not to heed their reports.”
MICHAEL TOMASKY, editor, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas