Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-04-10
Books mentioned on The Moral Cost of Trump’s War | The Ezra Klein Show
Fareed Zakaria recommended A World Safe for Democracy by G. John Ikenberry, The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr, and The Quiet American by Graham Greene.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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A World Safe for Democracy
A World Safe for Democracy is an analytical history examining the origins and structures of the liberal international order established by the United States, authored by scholar G.
Recommended“The best scholar who's written on this is a guy named John Ikenberry at Princeton. And I think the book is called A World Safe for Democracy. And encapsulates what is this thing, the rules-based international order, the liberal international order that the US created.”
Where to get it
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The Irony of American History
The Irony of American History is a classic theological and political critique examining the moral perils of national power, written by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.
Recommended“The second is a book by Reinhold Niebuhr called The Irony of American History. And it's really all about the great danger when you are powerful of believing you are virtuous and believing that you know, might is right.”
Where to get it
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The Quiet American
The Quiet American by Graham Greene is a brilliant political novel set in Vietnam that examines the tragic consequences of misguided Western idealism and foreign intervention through the eyes of a cynical, world-weary British journalist.
Recommended“And the final one in a similar vein is uh Graham Greene's book The Quiet American. Uh I think that one of the one of sometimes novels do it better than than anything else. It's a novel set in Vietnam through the eyes of a sour, dyspeptic, world-weary British journalist who sees this very idealistic American who believes that America”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (1) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Joining me now is Fareed Zakaria, the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, a columnist for The Washington Post, and the author of, among other books, The Age of Revolutions.”