Why We’re Polarized

Journalist Ezra Klein argues that the American political system is not broken but working as designed, its rational parts adding up to a dysfunctional whole. The main force is identity: over the past fifty years partisan identities have fused with religious, racial, cultural, geographic and ideological ones into what he calls mega-identities. He traces how the party system after the Civil War kept an artificial peace at the expense of minorities, especially African Americans, and how the Civil Rights Act of 1964 set off a re-sorting of both parties. Klein also faults his own profession, arguing that journalism feeds partisanship, and describes feedback loops between polarized identities and polarized institutions.

Bill Gates, choosing it for his 2022 summer list, said that beyond American politics it offers a fascinating view of human psychology.