100 books like The Light that Failed

This book by Maria Sobolewska and Rob Ford – two political scientists at Manchester University – is superlative at unpacking the underlying political currents that fuelled the Brexit vote of 2016.

Of course there were lots of immediate factors that led to the vote to leave, but this book puts the underlying Brexit culture war in its historical context, mixing data and polling insights with forensic analysis.

What you start to see is that the decision of both Tory and Labour politicians to weaponise both EU membership and immigration slowly laid the foundations for Brexit to become the lightning rod issue that has set UK politics on fire these last seven years.

As a former foreign correspondent based in India, Beijing, and Washington I found myself wanting to press this book by former top UK diplomatic and national security advisor Peter Ricketts into the hands of every British politician I have ever met.

Having spent more than a decade overseas reporting on the UK’s struggle to stay relevant, I was struck on my return to the UK in 2015 at just how myopic and insular British politics had become.

Brexit was the most obvious expression of this. It has left the UK piggy-in-the-middle, between the US and the EU and this book sets out, alongside a wealth of personal anecdote and experience, how the UK needs to think strategically if it is to retain a place at the global top table.

There are a lot of books about these days analysing the nature of post-truth politics in Western democracies, where lies go unremarked and policy-making plays second fiddle to culture war narratives.

What makes Rafael Behr’s Survivor’s Guide stand out is the quality of the writing and the determination to keep things in perspective. This tour through the “fracking of democracy” crystalises those things we half-perceive in crackling metaphors and pointed aperçu.

But what differentiates this book most profoundly is that – after his own brush with mortality thanks to a near fatal attack – Behr reminds us that the rage and division of contemporary politics can inflict as much (if not more) damage on us, than the intended target.

As a young reporter in the mid-1990s, I cut my teeth reporting the end of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ and the eventual signing of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement peace deal. That deal was based around a constitutional ambiguity that was rocked by the Brexit vote.

This pithy volume by Queen's University Belfast politics professor Katy Hayward manages to blend absolute concision and with ambition, tracing the history of the Irish border that found itself at the heart of the UK’s often bitter Brexit negotiations with Europe.

Amid so much rhetoric, Hayward trades only in the facts while carefully framing the future choices that Brexit might bring to Northern Ireland.

Best recent book examining human morality from a scientific, psychological point of view.

Darwinians used to think humans had to be selfish and immoral. Contemporary evolution argues the opposite, that humans evolved moral limits on our selfishness in order to live together. Haidt’s is the best book presenting this new evolutionary psychology.

But it goes further to connect those scientific issues with contemporary politics, explaining why people from “red” and “blue” states cannot understand each other: they each embody a short list of human moral values, but different ones. This is a great book for thinking carefully about human morality and contemporary politics. Students love it, and so do I. 

Social Psychologist John Jost is a giant in the field of political psychology. In this book the reader is treated to a collection of his superb essays on political ideology. 

From neuroscience to psychology and sociology, Jost draws on research to present a complete picture of the nature, role, and implications of our political ideologies. Anyone interested in politics, and political psychology in particular, would benefit from the knowledge and insights Jost offers in this book.  

Robert Pippin is a well-respected philosopher who has written on Hegel, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. Here, he writes about westerns: Hawks’ Red River, and Ford’s The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence and The Searchers.

Pippin is interested in both political psychology and political philosophy within an American context, but there is nothing starchy or narrowly academic about this thoughtful reflection on these films.

Neither Hawks nor Ford was a philosopher, but Pippin shows that their movies are charged with philosophical meaning. 

Connecting the recent past with our contemporary moment, this book shows that humanitarian agendas have shaped the post-Cold War world in deeply unsettling ways.

I love this book because it brings together both academics and practitioners in a single volume, putting them into conversation with each other. All of the contributors are specialists in humanitarianism, but they approach this subject from very different angles and perspectives. Together, they raise provocative questions about humanitarian governance in the 21st century.

This book made me think deeply about the political and economic relationships involved in humanitarian activities. Above all, it invites us to learn from the less savory aspects of the history of humanitarianism in order to build a better humanitarian system in the future.

This book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the actors, interests, and politics that define contemporary global governance. Pouliot and Therien break down the “bricolage” of global governance policy-making, establishing a clear framework and methodological approach for assessing global governance in practice.

This book stands out for its “how-to” approach and reframing of global governance, not as a functional response to global problems but as the outcome of struggles about transboundary practices and universal values. It is a must-read for making sense of the patchwork of our increasingly connected but simultaneously conflicted global society.

Every so often, I encounter a piece of writing that is so good—so clear, so well-argued, so thought-provoking, such a needed response to what came before—that it is simply a joy to read. To me, this book is one of those pieces. (If you plan to read it, some prior familiarity with John Rawls’ Original Position thought experiment would be helpful.)

Many think that our participation in shared institutions means justice requires us to safeguard the welfare of our country’s most disadvantaged people. Beitz makes a compelling case that, if this is true, our shared participation in an interconnected global economy means justice also requires us to safeguard the welfare of the most disadvantaged people in the world, no matter their country of origin.