Reading recommendations for books with a contested thesis

The books in this category are of an "applied" nature. They draw on ideas across many fields to advocate for a case. The cases made in these books may be controversial among scholars. Readers of the books should not blindly accept the arguments put forth by the authors, but should use the books to obtain a richer understanding of the ideas being discussed. For a richer understanding, readers are encouraged to look for online reviews, debates, and discussions surrounding the books and the theses presented in them.

Readers often require a strong interdisciplinary grasp in order to be able to form independent informed evaluations of the arguments presented in the books. Readers without such a grasp should be particularly wary of accepting statements made by the authors at face value without verifying them against independent sources.

Cognitive psychology

Book	Author	ISBN and purchase links	What it's about
Thinking, Fast and Slow	Daniel Kahneman	Amazon	The book is a summary of decades of research into human behavior, in particular the systematic biases and cognitive errors that humans commit. Kahneman was awarded a Nobel Prize for the work that he describes in this book.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion	Jonathan Haidt	Amazon Kindle	The book describes findings related to a relatively new field of research in psychology called moral psychology. This field aims to understand the different dimensions of what people call morality, and the researchers have identified about five axes. Their website, where you can take a survey to find out your own brand of morality, is yourmorals.org.
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion	Robert Cialdini	Amazon	This is the Bible of influence.
The New Personality Self-Portrait: Why You Think, Work, Love and Act the Way You Do	John Oldham and Lois Morris	Amazon Kindle	??

Global trends

Explaining the past

Book	Author	ISBN and purchase links	What it's about
The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined	Steven Pinker	Amazon Kindle	The book presents numerous arguments to argue that violence has declined, and offers as well as rejects numerous explanations for the phenomenon.
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can't Explain the Modern World	Deirdre McCloskey	Amazon Kindle	McCloskey's book is an attempt to answer the question of why standards of living did not improve much until the 18th century, and then improved dramatically between the 18th and the 20th century. McCloskey considers numerous hypotheses proposed by others, and offers rebuttals to each. She then offers her own thesis and attempts to justify it. The book is part of a lengthy series. we recommend the book largely because of its discussion of a wide variety of theories for economic growth over the last 200 years, rather than for McCloskey's own thesis, though that may also be of interest to many readers.
The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics	William Easterly	Amazon paperback	Easterly argues that development economists have had a decidedly mixed record in helping kickstart economic growth around the world. We recommend that this book be read together with books by other development economists, in order to get broad perspective on development economics.
Out of Mao's Shadow	Philip P. Pan	Amazon Kindle	Summary pending.
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty	Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo	Amazon paperback	Summary pending.

Predicting the future

Book	Author	ISBN and purchase links	What it's about
The Rational Optimist	Matt Ridley	Amazon Kindle	Ridley argues for an optimistic vision of the future. He considers a number of concerns people currently have about the future.
Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation	Tyler Cowen	Amazon Kindle	Cowen offers up his predictions of how the American and world economy will look in the future. (Wikipedia page)
Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era	James Barrat	Amazon Kindle	?

Applied ethics

The books in this category are of an "applied" nature. They draw on ideas across many fields to advocate for a case. The cases made in these books may be controversial among scholars. Readers of the books should not blindly accept the arguments put forth by the authors, but should use the books to obtain a richer understanding of the ideas being discussed. For a richer understanding, readers are encouraged to look for online reviews, debates, and discussions surrounding the books and the theses presented in them.

Book	Author	ISBN and purchase links	What it's about
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty	Peter Singer	Amazon Kindle	Singer makes the case that people should do more to end world poverty, and can do so feasibly at minimal cost to themselves.
The Ethics of Voting	Jason Brennan	Amazon Kindle	Brennan argues against the consensus embodied in civics education that people have a moral obligation to vote.