Best Political Books: 50 Picks Recommended by CEOs

George Orwell imagines Oceania, a totalitarian state under constant watch by Big Brother, where Winston Smith is in danger simply because he still remembers, in a novel about how power rewrites reality. Lex Fridman ranks it among the most influential books ever written.

Machiavelli, an Italian diplomat, wrote a short guide for new rulers that accepts immoral means when glory and survival are at stake, drawing on his own political career. Neil deGrasse Tyson recommends it to show how hard people fight to win power and to hold it.

Doris Kearns Goodwin follows Lincoln alongside Seward, Chase and Bates, the rivals he defeated for the Republican nomination, then shows how he brought them into his cabinet to keep the Union together through the Civil War. Bill Gates loved it, and Kobe Bryant drew leadership lessons from it.

Ron Chernow traces Hamilton from an illegitimate Caribbean childhood to leading the Federalist Party, coauthoring The Federalist Papers and serving as the first Treasury Secretary. John Ciancutti read it as the story of a founder of America, rich in lessons on persuasion and human politics.

Nelson Mandela tells how he joined the African National Congress, organized underground resistance to apartheid, spent decades imprisoned at Robben Island and Pollsmoor, then met de Klerk and rose to lead his country. Barack Obama and James Mattis both recommend it.

Plato has Socrates and his companions argue over what justice means and how an ideal city could be built from very imperfect people. Mark Manson calls it the origin of political science, and Maria Popova would make every public official read it.

Robert A. Caro shows how Robert Moses, who never won an election, turned public authorities into a political machine stronger than New York’s mayors and governors. Mark Manson values it for using one man’s life to study what power is.

Eric Hoffer, a San Francisco dockworker and philosopher, argues that mass movements of every kind, nationalist, religious or political, attract the same frustrated recruits and use similar tactics. Marc Andreessen praises it on group psychology, and Mark Manson notes it was reportedly Eisenhower’s favorite.

James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg predicted in 1997 that the information age would free individuals, weaken governments, make taxation harder and end the nation-state. Marc Andreessen recommends it, and James Stanley singled out its early prediction of cryptocurrency.

Evan Thomas portrays Richard Nixon as an architect of the modern Republican Party, the president who opened ties with communist China and a schemer whose tactics hurt him well before Watergate. Bill Gates was struck by how badly Nixon managed his staff.

Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson argue that rules written for the 1970s now block housing, clean energy and public works, and ask liberals and conservatives alike to rethink what government should do. Barack Obama recommends it to progressives as a plan for reforming government.

Edmund Morris tracks Theodore Roosevelt from childhood to 1901, through the state legislature, the civil service board, the New York police, the Navy Department, the Rough Riders and the governor’s office. Ryan Holiday calls it a lifetime favorite he keeps rereading.

Ron Chernow follows George Washington from the French and Indian War to leading the Continental Army, sitting in the Constitutional Convention and serving two presidential terms, and finds a passionate man held in check by self-control. Ryan Holiday found it worth every page.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argue that political and economic institutions, not culture, climate or geography, explain why some countries grow rich and others stay poor, starting with the two halves of Nogales. Mark Zuckerberg chose it for his book series, and Bill Gates flagged its big questions.

Henry Kissinger argues that no genuine world order has ever existed, compares four historic systems from the Peace of Westphalia to China’s imperial idea, and asks how nations could agree on shared rules now. Mark Zuckerberg picked it as a book on foreign relations and peace.

George Orwell’s beast fable opens on Manor Farm, where the animals drive out their drunken owner and declare every animal equal, a story Orwell based on the Russian Revolution and Stalin’s era. Jordan B. Peterson has it on his reading list.

Henry Kissinger, once Secretary of State, traces the balance of power and Realpolitik from Richelieu and Bismarck through both World Wars and the Cold War, writing as a realist and often drawing on his own years in office. James Mattis and Bogdan Savonea both recommend it.

Lee Kuan Yew recounts governing Singapore from an uncertain independence in 1965: defeating the communist threat, raising an army, rooting out corruption, building public housing and taking a hard line with opponents. Will Shu marvels that Lee remade the country within a single generation.

Michael Beschloss studies presidents who took the country into major wars, from Madison in 1812 to Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam, and how each dealt with Congress, the courts, the press and protesters. Bill Gates drew lessons on presidential leadership across nine conflicts.

Michael Lewis reports on the first Trump transition at the Departments of Energy, Agriculture and Commerce, where few appointees arrived and some discarded their briefings, and profiles the civil servants who keep government running and the risks they quietly manage.

Friedrich Hayek argues that central economic planning leads to tyranny, tracing fascism, Nazism and state socialism to common roots in raising the state above the individual. Elon Musk has it on his list of recommendations.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt show how elected leaders can wear democracy down from inside, and argue that mutual toleration and institutional forbearance serve as its soft guardrails, with cases from Hungary and Venezuela to the United States. Barack Obama put it on his best books list.

David Halberstam traces the Vietnam War to the academics and whiz kids who shaped foreign policy under Kennedy and Johnson, and shows how slow escalation avoided early criticism yet made both winning and leaving harder. Barack Obama counts it among his favorite books.

Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay wrote these anonymous newspaper essays to defend the proposed Constitution, explaining federalism, checks and balances, a single executive and judicial review. Barack Obama lists it among his all-time favorites.

Barack Obama’s first presidential memoir runs from his early campaigns and the 2008 election through the financial crisis, the Affordable Care Act and the Situation Room, closing with the raid on Osama bin Laden. Bill Gates, drawn to books on presidents, especially loved it.

Doris Kearns Goodwin tells how the friendship of Theodore Roosevelt and Taft broke apart in the bitter 1912 contest, alongside the muckraking journalists of McClure’s who built demand for reform. Bill Gates was drawn to its question of how social change happens.

Archie Brown, an Oxford politics professor, argues that dominant leaders are overrated and that collegial ones often achieve more, surveying a century of political leadership from Roosevelt to Gorbachev. Bill Gates read it during a fierce election and saw that history’s biggest contributors tend to collaborate and negotiate.

Tim Shipman, a Sunday Times political editor, follows the leaders and aides behind the 2016 Brexit referendum and asks why David Cameron took the largest gamble of his career and lost. Marc Andreessen recommends it as the inside account of Britain’s choice to leave the EU.

Amy Chozick, a New York Times reporter, covered Hillary Clinton’s two presidential runs across nearly a decade, from the campaign bus to the Brooklyn headquarters, and sets her own career beside the story. Marc Andreessen found it revealing and entertaining, possibly the best account of the 2016 race.

Jared Cohen profiles the eight men who reached the presidency because the incumbent died, from John Tyler to Lyndon Johnson, and argues that the officeholder’s character shapes the nation. Ray Dalio found it timely for thinking about the challenges facing the next president.

Francis Fukuyama’s second volume follows the modern state from the French Revolution onward, weighing state capacity, rule of law and democratic accountability in cases from Prussia and Japan to the United States. David Heinemeier Hansson found its diagnosis of modern societies timely.

George Lakoff explains how conservatives have framed American political issues and how progressives can reframe them by arguing from shared values rather than programs. Ryan Holiday counts it among the two best books on political thinking and theater from left and right.

Sinclair Lewis imagines 1930s America falling to fascism when Senator Buzz Windrip, a populist demagogue, wins the presidency and makes himself dictator, seen through Vermont newspaper editor Doremus Jessup. Ryan Holiday suggested it in 2016 to anyone who wanted to be scared about the years ahead.

John F. Kennedy sketches eight senators who paid in popularity for defying their party or their voters, from Daniel Webster backing the Compromise of 1850 to Edmund Ross voting to acquit Andrew Johnson. Ryan Holiday lists it among biographies that teach moral lessons.

Saul D. Alinsky draws on decades of community organizing to explain how low-income communities can organize and gain power without violence, with lessons that reach from tactics to ethics. Ryan Holiday sees it as an idealist’s guide to pushing a radical agenda through words and media.

Political scientist Fred I. Greenstein uses declassified diaries and memos to show that Dwight Eisenhower led deliberately behind a bland public manner, including a secret effort against Joe McCarthy. Ryan Holiday says it shows leaders get results through organization, delegation and quiet influence.

Robert A. Caro’s fourth Johnson volume covers 1958 to 1964: the race against John Kennedy, a humiliating vice presidency, the assassination and Johnson’s quick mastery of the presidency on the budget and civil rights. Ryan Holiday says nearly every page teaches something about power.

Alexis de Tocqueville turned nine months of travel through the United States, begun in 1831, into a study of how equality was displacing aristocracy and how American government and religion shaped a democratic culture. Patrick Collison has it on his bookshelf list.

Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels challenge the folk theory of democracy, finding that even informed voters choose mostly by social identity and party loyalty rather than issues. Mark Manson calls it a sober look at the data on whether democracy is effective.

Francis Fukuyama traces where lasting political order comes from and names three pillars, a capable state, legal limits on rulers and accountability to the governed, tested on cases from China and India to Europe before the French Revolution. Mark Manson calls it Fukuyama’s magnum opus.

Madeleine Albright, the first woman to serve as secretary of state, warns that fascism did not end with the last century and examines leaders from Mussolini to Chávez and Erdoğan. Brad Feld notes that she spends some 250 pages showing what real fascism is, as the word loses meaning.

Robert A. Caro uses Lyndon Johnson’s twelve Senate years to explain how legislative power works in America, following his climb to Majority Leader after one term and his fight over the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Robert Greene named it his favorite biography.

Mainly a novel about social engineering, Aldous Huxley’s story imagines a World State that breeds its citizens into castes, conditions them in their sleep and keeps them content with drugs. Yuval Noah Harari calls it the 20th century’s most prophetic book.

Richard Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein write mainly about behavioral economics and how choices are framed. For politics they offer libertarian paternalism: designing policies on schools, health and retirement saving that steer people toward better outcomes while leaving them free to opt out.

J. D. Vance’s memoir is mainly a family story from Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio, but it examines the decline of America’s white working class and asks how much Appalachian culture feeds its troubles. Ramit Sethi saw in it what one family’s struggles mean for a large part of the country.

Margaret Atwood’s novel is mainly about women’s lives in Gilead, a theocracy that has seized power in America, where the narrator Offred is forced to bear children for a Commander. Grady Booch found it, like 1984, relevant to present politics.

Evan Osnos writes mainly about people in a fast-changing China, from Ai Weiwei to a street sweeper, and sets personal ambition against the Communist Party’s need for control. Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann valued its picture of modern China through famous and ordinary lives.

Thomas Piketty’s study is mainly economic history, tracking wealth and income since the 1700s, but its finding that returns on capital outpace growth leads to a political remedy, a global progressive tax on wealth. Bill Gates agreed that governments should help reduce inequality.

Bryan Stevenson’s memoir is mainly about criminal justice, defending the poor and wrongly condemned through the Equal Justice Initiative, above all Walter McMillian, whose death sentence was bound up with conspiracy and political maneuvering. Brene Brown calls it a call to personal and collective courage.

Jonathan Haidt writes mainly moral psychology, arguing that intuition comes first and reasoning follows, then applies six moral foundations to liberals, conservatives and libertarians. Mark Manson calls it hugely important for seeing why people hold the beliefs they do.