Why We're Polarized (CD-Audio)

Why We're Polarized By Ezra Klein, Ezra Klein (Read by) Cover Image

Why We're Polarized (CD-Audio)

By Ezra Klein, Ezra Klein (Read by)

$29.99


ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022

One of Bill Gates’s “5 books to read this summer,” this New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller shows us that America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this “superbly researched” (The Washington Post) and timely book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results.


“The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.”

“A thoughtful, clear and persuasive analysis” (The New York Times Book Review), Why We’re Polarized reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.

America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the 20th century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis.

“Well worth reading” (New York magazine), this is an “eye-opening” (O, The Oprah Magazine) book that will change how you look at politics—and perhaps at yourself.
Ezra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at the New York Times. He is the author of Why We’re Polarized, an instant New York Times bestseller, named one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2022. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Ezra Klein is a columnist and podcast host at the New York Times. He is the author of Why We’re Polarized, an instant New York Times bestseller, named one of Barack Obama’s top books of 2022. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Product Details ISBN: 9781797107653
ISBN-10: 1797107658
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Publication Date: January 28th, 2020
Language: English
"Ezra Klein, a political junkie who cofounded the website Vox, narrates his audiobook precisely, purposefully, and passionately. Often a guest on TV news programs, he has a delivery style that is direct and approachable. He conveys the urgency of his arguments with a kind of polite candor and frequently notes how ironic our politics have become, with many voters choosing partisanship over self-interest. Most telling, he takes on the unfairness built into a system in which his home state of California, with almost 40 million residents, has the same number of senators as Wyoming, with not quite 600,000. Klein is especially good at explaining how we got to our present situation, calling the Trump phenomenon 'predictable.' Listeners who want a nuanced and provocative discussion of our politically divided nation will find fertile turf here."
— AudioFile Magazine