Person
Matt Yglesias's book recommendations
Key facts
- Matt Yglesias has recommended or discussed 11 books on podcasts, as of July 2, 2025.
- Matt Yglesias has talked about books on 4 podcasts, as of July 2, 2025.
- Those books came up in 6 episodes, as of July 2, 2025.
- The 3 books Matt Yglesias has mentioned in the most episodes, as of July 2, 2025: Evicted, Anarchy, State, and Utopia and Awakening Corporate Soul.
- The latest episode with a book mention from Matt Yglesias aired on July 2, 2025.
Updated
Across 4 podcasts. Every show Matt Yglesias appears on, in one place — not just one.
Matt Yglesias’s most recommended books
- Evicted by Matthew Desmond
- Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick
- Awakening Corporate Soul by Eric Klein, John Baptist Izzo
- God is on the Road by Paul Dixon
- Middlemarch by George Eliot
- Proto by Laura Spinney
- The social transformation of American medicine by Paul Starr
- The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
- Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
- The System by Haynes Johnson
Matthew Yglesias is an American blogger and journalist who writes about economics and politics. Yglesias has written columns and articles for publications such as The American Prospect, The Atlantic, and Slate. In 2014, he co-founded the news website Vox. During his appearances on podcasts such as The Ezra Klein Show, The Realignment, and Modern Wisdom, Yglesias recommended several notable fiction and non-fiction books. He suggested Laura Spinney's Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global for its insights into proto-Indo-European languages and recommended Emily Brontë's classic novel Wuthering Heights. Yglesias also revisited Paul Starr's The Social Transformation of American Medicine while focusing on healthcare issues, and he recommended George Eliot's Middlemarch as a premier English-language novel. Additionally, he highlighted Eric Klein and John Baptist Izzo's Awakening Corporate Soul regarding the Bronze Age collapse, Paul Dixon's The Rise of the GI Army concerning WWII military preparations, Matthew Desmond's Evicted to illustrate housing issues in Milwaukee, and Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union as an example of alternate history set in Alaska.
Books recommended by Matt Yglesias
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Evicted
Evicted by Matthew Desmond is a rigorous sociological study that follows low-income families and their landlords in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, shedding light on the devastating systemic cycle of poverty and housing instability in American cities.
Recommended“so a lot of people who i know read matthew desmond's book evicted which is basically about shitty landlords in milwaukee um and it's a great book”
Where to get it
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Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick is a foundational 1974 political philosophy book that defends libertarianism and introduces famous thought experiments like the pleasure machine.
Recommended“Uh I think most people do not pay attention to what um The End of Anarchy, State, and Utopia actually says or to some of his other books.”
Where to get it
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Awakening Corporate Soul
Awakening Corporate Soul by Eric Klein and John Baptist Izzo is a business and leadership book focused on bringing purpose, values, and mindfulness into the modern workplace.
Recommended“uh Eric Klein's book 1177 the year civilization collapsed has been recommended to me by so many people over the years I finally read it it's fantastic this is about things that happened thousands of years ago but it's really interesting”
Where to get it
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God is on the Road
God is on the Road by Paul Dixon is a historical examination focusing on the pivotal efforts to build up the American military prior to the United States entry into World War II.
Recommended“and I I came across a book by a guy named Paul Dixon called the rise of the GI Army that's about the effort to sort of build up the World War II American Military before Pearl Harbor and really making the case of the kind of like wisdom of the people who saw in 1939 1940 that America was”
Where to get it
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Middlemarch
Middlemarch by George Eliot is widely celebrated as a masterwork of Victorian literature, chronicling the lives and aspirations of provincial society in the fictional town of Middlemarch.
Recommended“Middlemarch is by many people's estimate uh the greatest English language novel ever written”
Where to get it
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Proto
Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney is a historical and scientific investigation into the origins and spread of the Proto-Indo-European language.
Recommended“Laura Spinney's book Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global about the rise of the protoinduropean language.”
Where to get it
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The social transformation of American medicine
The Social Transformation of American Medicine by Paul Starr is a comprehensive historical analysis examining how the medical profession gained economic and cultural authority in the United States.
Recommended“But I also revisited Paul Star's classic social transformation of American medicine because I've been trying to get my attention back on the healthcare issue.”
Where to get it
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon is a celebrated alternate history novel that imagines a temporary Jewish settlement established in Sitka, Alaska, during World War II, following the collapse of the Zionist effort in Palestine.
Recommended“i don't know if you know that michael chabon's novel um the yiddish policeman's union but it's basically like alternate history”
Where to get it
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Wuthering Heights
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë is a classic Gothic novel examining the destructive, all-consuming passion between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw across the bleak Yorkshire moors.
Recommended“Weathering Heights, uh, which I just finished, um, a classic novel.”
Where to get it
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The System
Discussed“David Broer wrote a book about the 1994 healthcare fight, the Bill Clinton healthcare fight called the system.”
Where to get it
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White House Witness, 1942-1945
Discussed“Yeah, because if you read Jonathan Conn's book about the 10-year war, about Obamacare, right, that's a halfway house, right?”
Where to get it
Books by Matt Yglesias
Appearances
Other mentions (3: passing, ad reads, own books)
“and the book is about trying to recapture those sort of very traditional very american sentiments and then also just discuss um a project that sounds a little loopy to people in sort of real technical terms and see that it's it's not as loopy as it sounds”
“so we've got a whole chapter in the book about this”
“so when they listen to this they're going to be saying do you know what matthew just said on that episode no but they're not against it either”