Abundance
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025
“A must-read for progressives who want a blueprint for reforming government so it can deliver for working people.” —Barack Obama • “A terrific book...Powerful and persuasive.” —Fareed Zakaria • “Spectacular…Offers a comprehensive indictment of the current problems and a clear path forward…Klein and Thompson usher in a mood shift. They inspire hope and enlarge the imagination.” —David Brooks, The New York Times
From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.
“A must-read for progressives who want a blueprint for reforming government so it can deliver for working people.” —Barack Obama • “A terrific book...Powerful and persuasive.” —Fareed Zakaria • “Spectacular…Offers a comprehensive indictment of the current problems and a clear path forward…Klein and Thompson usher in a mood shift. They inspire hope and enlarge the imagination.” —David Brooks, The New York Times
From bestselling authors and journalistic titans Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance is a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting call to renew a politics of plenty, face up to the failures of liberal governance, and abandon the chosen scarcities that have deformed American life.
To trace the history of the twenty-first century so far is to trace a history of unaffordability and shortage. After years of refusing to build sufficient housing, America has a national housing crisis. After years of limiting immigration, we don’t have enough workers. Despite decades of being warned about the consequences of climate change, we haven’t built anything close to the clean-energy infrastructure we need. Ambitious public projects are finished late and over budget—if they are ever finished at all. The crisis that’s clicking into focus now has been building for decades—because we haven’t been building enough.
Abundance explains that our problems today are not the results of yesteryear’s villains. Rather, one generation’s solutions have become the next generation’s problems. Rules and regulations designed to solve the problems of the 1970s often prevent urban-density and green-energy projects that would help solve the problems of the 2020s. Laws meant to ensure that government considers the consequences of its actions have made it too difficult for government to act consequentially. In the last few decades, our capacity to see problems has sharpened while our ability to solve them has diminished.
Progress requires facing up to the institutions in life that are not working as they need to. It means, for liberals, recognizing when the government is failing. It means, for conservatives, recognizing when the government is needed. In a book exploring how we can move from a liberalism that not only protects and preserves but also builds, Klein and Thompson trace the political, economic, and cultural barriers to progress and propose a path toward a politics of abundance. At a time when movements of scarcity are gaining power in country after country, this is an answer that meets the challenges of the moment while grappling honestly with the fury so many rightfully feel.
BUY THE BOOK
These clubs recently read this book...
Community Reviews
In “Abundance,” Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson attempt to unravel the dilemma behind what keeps the government from working effectively for most of us. Specifically, why can’t government be the institution that works to guarantee the foundations of human flourishing as described in Maslow’s Hierarchy? By their account, it has been the fault of liberals of late.
There is a world in which the best politicians are the ones you forget and always vote for, not because they are incumbents but because your life is continuously and measurably better while they are in office. The type that take care of the “small” experiential things that we usually hate our government for. Potholes, traffic, crime, housing access, jobs, etc. Solve these, and you enter into an era of Abundance.
However, like similar books from well-meaning economists and professors, they omit or limit America’s historical racial tensions as a major, if not greatest, contributor to our current state. Anyone who studies history and understands wealth distribution knows that it is clear we have the means and ability to make the necessary changes but not the will. The root of why we don’t take this action is what I still believe is grounded in racism. Our authors act as if we are starting a rung higher than that on our social evolution.
Even in their policy examples, they contradict themselves. Houston is a repeated example of theirs of how to solve housing problems because they stripped away all zoning restrictions. Our authors fail to mention that Houston’s fast development has come at the cost of major ecological “flooding” problems. Everyone will be housed but only for as long as the water stays at bay. To be fair, they are correct in comparing California with its suffocating building rules, which keeps it perennially near the top of the homelessness index.
That said, Klein and Thompson choosing to punt on more specificity just shows the weakness in their argument. The book club I read this with decided to fill in that blank for them. What Liberals need is a new “4 R’s” to governing: Review, Remove, Revise, and Rapid Results. They should take this approach to solving five very specific issues: housing security, food security, education, occupation, and healthcare. It is our hope that an action-oriented liberal government can bring enough thriving for the majority to create room then to tackle our oldest battle.
See why thousands of readers are using Bookclubs to stay connected.