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Every book Dwarkesh Patel recommended on podcasts
Across 2 podcasts. Every show Dwarkesh Patel appears on, in one place — not just one.
Dwarkesh Patel’s most recommended books
- The Power Broker by Robert A. Caro
- The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich
- How Asia Works by Joe Studwell
- The Prize by Daniel Yergin
- The Case against Education by Bryan Caplan
- 1493 by Charles C. Mann, Charles Mann
- Talent by Tyler Cowen
- The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen
- Open Borders by Bryan Caplan
- Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen
Dwarkesh Patel is the host of the Dwarkesh Podcast. Across various episodes, he discussed and recommended several influential books. Patel named Robert A. Caro's Means of Ascent his favorite book ever, praising its compelling portrait of the 1948 Senate election between Lyndon Johnson and Coke Stevenson. He also recommended Nick Lane's The Vital Question to help his audience follow the chemical inevitability of life discussed in their interview. While exploring China's political and economic systems, Patel praised Arthur R. Kroeber's China's Economy: What Everyone Needs to Know, describing it as the most valuable resource available on how China works and noting that a friend originally recommended it during his travels. When discussing human cultural evolution, he brought up Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success. Patel also praised Robert A. Caro's multi-volume set The Years of Lyndon Johnson as his favorite history books, extracting key lessons about leadership from them. Finally, at the close of an interview with David Reich, Patel highly recommended Who We Are and How We Got Here for its eye-opening account of human history.
Books recommended by Dwarkesh Patel
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The Power Broker
The Power Broker by Robert A.
Discussed“The Power Broker came out. It was an immensely influential book. And we were concerned about so much power being centralized and given, delegated to one person so they could build.”
Where to get it
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The Secret of Our Success
The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich explores how human cultural evolution and cooperation, rather than raw individual intelligence alone, drove our species to dominate the globe.
Discussed“But we have so many innate biases to follow social norms. I mean Joe Heinrich's The Secret of our Success is all about this. Even if kids aren't in the conventional school system, I think it's sometimes noticeable that they aren't following social norms in the same ways.”
Where to get it
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How Asia Works
How Asia Works by Joe Studwell is a prominent economic study that analyzes the developmental trajectories of East Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
Discussed“There's a book, How Asia Works, by this economist Joseph Studwell, where he is trying to analyze why Korea, Taiwan and Japan did so well after World War II. In the case of Korea, he tells a story”
Where to get it
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The Prize
The Prize by Daniel Yergin is a Pulitzer Prize-winning historical account exploring the central role that energy, particularly oil, has played in global power, geopolitics, and international conflict for over a century.
Discussed“Last year, I interviewed Daniel Yergin, who wrote this big history of oil. He has like 300 pages about World War II in his book and specifically claims that Barbarossa was motivated by Hitler's desire to get the oil fields.”
Where to get it
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The Case against Education
The Case against Education by Bryan Caplan is an economic critique arguing that the modern education system is largely a waste of time and money because higher education functions primarily as a social signal for employers.
Discussed“Now, the way I read your book about talent, it seems like also a critique of Brian's book, The Case Case Against Education.”
Where to get it
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1493
1493 by Charles C.
Discussed“There’s a really interesting book by Charles Mann. I think it's called 1493. It’s about how during the Ming Dynasty in 17th-century China, they kept issuing different paper currencies and it was super unstable.”
Where to get it
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Talent
Talent by Tyler Cowen and Daniel Gross is a practical guide and framework for identifying exceptionally capable individuals.
Discussed“Is there something you've learned about talent spotting through writing the book that um you wish wasn't so that you find it disturbing or you find it disappointing in some way?”
Where to get it
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The Complacent Class
The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen is an insightful social commentary exploring how contemporary society's self-defeating quest for safety, comfort, and predictability ultimately breeds stagnation and hinders the American dream.
Discussed“one way of reading tyler accounts complacent class is basically just a way of like our preference we've just our preferences for optionality have grown a lot”
Where to get it
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Open Borders
Open Borders by Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith is a graphic novel that makes an economic and moral case for the global freedom of movement.
Discussed“I don't remember the exact figures, but didn't Bryan address this in his Open Borders book as well, that even if the national IQ lowers on average, if you're still raising the global IQ, that still nets out positive, or am I remembering that wrong?”
Where to get it
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Stubborn Attachments
Stubborn Attachments by Tyler Cowen is a philosophical and economics book that argues sustained long-term economic growth is a moral imperative essential for human flourishing.
Discussed“tyler cotton writes and stubborn attachments that if you really care about the long term the best you can do is just promote economic growth uh do you agree with that”
Where to get it
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The Smartest Guys in the Room
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind is an investigative book detailing the rise and corporate collapse of Enron.
Discussed“I'm really curious to ask you this, because in Hive Mind you're talking about the fact that higher IQ people on average are more cooperative in prisoner's dilemma type situations and I just interviewed Bethany McClean on the podcast. She wrote the Smartest Guys in the Room which is about Enron.”
Where to get it
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Where Is My Flying Car?
Where Is My Flying Car? by J.
Discussed“I really like I read this in um the book where is where is my flying car but that it's basically crazy that our cities are designed with roads like all intersect with each other”
Where to get it
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Against the Grain
Why people recommend it: Challenging traditional assumptions about the rise of human civilization and the origins of state control, Against the Grain by James C.
Discussed“James Scott, who I think just died a couple of weeks ago, wrote his book, Against the Grain. The whole book is like, “Agriculture sucked but we were forced to adopt it because it allowed some humans to organize nation states that were very abusive.””
Where to get it
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Master of the Senate
Master of the Senate by Robert A.
Discussed“Master of the Senate, you make two points about how Johnson is effective, or at least this is the way I read it. One is that he is very persuasive if you're talking to him.”
Where to get it
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The beginning of infinity
The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch is a profound work of popular science and philosophy exploring human progress, knowledge creation, and cosmic optimism.
Discussed“So in the fabric of reality um you discuss the possibility that virtual reality generators could plug in directly into our nervous system and give us sense data that way.”
Where to get it
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The Fabric of Reality
Why people recommend it: Exploring foundational scientific explanations, human reasoning, and the overarching nature of reality, The Fabric of Reality by David Deutsch is a profound work of physics and philosophy.
Discussed“So in the fabric of reality um you discuss the possibility that virtual reality generators could plug in directly into our nervous system and give us sense data that way.”
Where to get it
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The Origin of Species
Charles Darwin’s foundational work on evolutionary biology, The Origin of Species, outlines the theory of evolution by natural selection and presents extensive evidence connecting biological and geological phenomena.
Discussed“So Principia Mathematica is released in 1687. The Origin of Species is released in 1859.”
Where to get it
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The making of the atomic bomb
The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes is a comprehensive historical account of the scientific breakthroughs, political forces, and personalities behind the development of nuclear weapons during World War II.
Discussed“Let's start talking about The Making of the Bomb. One question I have is — if World War II doesn't happen, is there any possibility that the bomb just never gets developed?”
Where to get it
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Land Is a Big Deal
Land Is a Big Deal by Lars A.
Discussed“there's like a whole analysis in that book about you know if you could uh if if people are still commuting like 20 minutes a day you know a lot more land is actually in the same travel distance as was before”
Where to get it
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Conflict
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine by David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts is a comprehensive historical and strategic analysis that traces how military combat and geopolitical leadership have transformed from the end of the Second World War into the modern era.
Discussed“I have the pleasure of speaking with Andrew Roberts, who is most recently the author of “Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine.””
Where to get it
- The Laws of Trading by Agustin Lebron
- How We Got Here by David Frum
- Who We Are and How We Got Here by David Reich
- China's Economy by Arthur R. Kroeber
- The prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich
- Survival of the City by Edward L. Glaeser, David Cutler
- Discourses on Livy by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P. Bix
- Mao by Jung Chang
- Plagues upon the Earth by Kyle Harper
- The Fate of Rome by Kyle Harper
- The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya
- The Founders by Jimmy Soni
- The Panorama of the City of New York by Marc H. Miller
- 10% Less Democracy by Garett Jones
- 1491 by Charles C. Mann, Charles Mann
- A Journey by Tony Blair
- Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism by Michael Huemer
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes [12 stories] by Arthur Conan Doyle
- The Culture Transplant by Garett Jones
- The Napoleonic Wars by Alexander Mikaberidze
- The Symbolic Species by Terrence W. Deacon
- The Wizard and the Prophet by Charles C. Mann
- How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler
- Knowledge, Reality, and Value by Michael Huemer
- Labor Econ Versus the World by Bryan Douglas Caplan
- Means of Ascent by Robert A. Caro
- Palaces for the People by Eric Klinenberg
- Robert A. Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson Set by Robert A. Caro
Books Dwarkesh Patel wrote
Dwarkesh Patel’s latest episodes with books
Dwarkesh Patel’s book recommendations by year
All 119 books Dwarkesh Patel recommended or discussed across 72 episodes, filed by the year each episode came out. Each year goes episode by episode, with the minute every book came up.