Episode · The Ezra Klein Show · 2026-06-05
Books mentioned on The Right’s Pre-Modern ‘Masculinist’ Fantasy | The Ezra Klein Show
Ezra Klein discussed The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan and The Last Men by Charles Cornish-Dale. Helen Lewis recommended Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford and The Genius Factory by David Plotz.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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The Feminine Mystique
The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan is a landmark 1960s feminist text that investigated the widespread unhappiness and unfulfilled potential of women trapped in domestic suburban roles.
Discussed“It would look like what we had before Betty Ferdan wrote the feminist mystique, before lifestyle feminism dominated every institution in the west.”
Where to get it
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The Last Men
Discussed“I read your piece and then I read The Last Man by Charles Cornish Dale, uh, The Raw Egg Nationalist.”
Where to get it
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Madame de Pompadour
Madame de Pompadour by Nancy Mitford is a biographical work detailing the life of the influential mistress of King Louis XV of France.
Recommended“Nancy Mittford's biography of Madame de Pompador, Mistress of Louis the 15th of France.”
Where to get it
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The Genius Factory
The Genius Factory by David Plotz is a non-fiction book that recounts the history of a controversial repository established by a wealthy eugenicist to collect genetic material from Nobel Prize winners in an attempt to engineer gifted children.
Recommended“So, I have brought The Genius Factory by David Plots, which is the story of one mad eugenicist millionaire who decides that the way to solve all of America's problem is to get lots of Nobel Prize winners to donate their sperm...”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (4) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
“Helen Lewis is a staff writer of the Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and the Genius Myth.”
“Helen Lewis is a staff writer of the Atlantic and the author of Difficult Women: A History of Feminism in 11 Fights and the Genius Myth.”
“In my first book, which is a history of feminism, I wrote about some of the women who wrote to Mary Stoopes, who was our kind of version of Margaret Sanger, a contraceptive pioneer.”
“I wrote in difficult women about the problems of boys in school which again I think are real.”