Why Nations Fail
A wide-ranging argument that political and economic institutions shape whether prosperity can spread and endure.
Open the guide04
Idea hub
Democracy & Power
Read political argument beside testimony, history and social analysis. These works show that citizenship is not only a constitutional idea; it is also a daily question of voice, access, recognition and organized power.
Questions to carry
Read with a live question.
- 01
Who is included when a text says “the public”?
- 02
Which institutions make freedom practical?
- 03
How does private testimony challenge an official account?
Read the present
Contemporary guides
Original Linden maps for deciding how—and whether—to read important recent nonfiction.
The Righteous Mind
A model of moral intuition, group belonging and why disagreement often begins before reasons arrive.
Open the guideInvisible Women
A data-centered argument that systems designed around an assumed default person can distribute risk and inconvenience unevenly.
Open the guideThe Warmth of Other Suns
An intimate history of the Great Migration told through individual lives moving inside a vast national transformation.
Open the guideThe Age of Surveillance Capitalism
A large-scale argument about how behavioral data became a source of prediction, profit and private power.
Open the guideRead the foundations
Classic texts in the conversation
Public-domain works that reveal earlier arguments, methods and social conditions.
The Federalist Papers
Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison
History · B2–C1 · 17 hr0% read
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois
Essays · B2–C1 · 6 hr · Guide0% read
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass
Biography & Memoir · B1–B2 · 4 hr0% read
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
Mary Wollstonecraft
Philosophy · B2–C1 · 8 hr · Guide0% read
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