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29 Dec, 18 tweets, 4 min read
This isn’t a “best books of 2021” list. I don’t read enough for that. And this isn’t a list of books published in 2021.

These are the books I read or reread in 2021 that I still find myself thinking about the most. They did the most to shape me this year.
“Under a White Sky,” by Elizabeth Kolbert. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/617060/u…
“The Alignment Problem,” by Brian Christian brianchristian.org/the-alignment-…
“Klara and the Sun,” by Kazuo Ishiguro penguinrandomhouse.com/books/653825/k…
“The Sabbath World,” by Judith Shulevitz penguinrandomhouse.com/books/166512/t…
“Story of Your Life and Others,” by Ted Chiang penguinrandomhouse.com/books/538163/s…
“Locking Up Our Own,” by James Forman Jr. jamesformanjr.com
“Lincoln in the Bardo,” by George Saunders georgesaundersbooks.com/books/lincoln-…
“Children of Time,” by Adrian Tchaikovsky panmacmillan.com/authors/adrian…
“The Extended Mind,” by Annie Murphy Paul anniemurphypaul.com/books/the-exte…
"The WEIRDest People in the World," by Joseph Heinrich. us.macmillan.com/books/97803747…
“Bewilderment,” by Richard Powers wwnorton.com/books/97803938…
“No Bad Kids,” by Janet Lansbury janetlansbury.com/recommended-ca…
“The Book of Form and Emptiness,” by Ruth Ozecki penguinrandomhouse.com/books/536695/t…
“Matrix,” by Lauren Groff penguinrandomhouse.com/books/318609/m…
I think of myself as primarily a nonfiction reader, but making this list, it's pretty fiction-heavy.

I kept better notes on my reading this year, so I wonder if that's always true, and my self-impression is wrong, or this year, for one reason or another, was different.
And I'll just add to this list, because I think it fits, the magazine I read most this year was "New York," and magazines are still much better read in print than digitally, so subscribe if you can.
I knew that as soon as I posted this I'd realize I'd forgotten something I really loved, and sure enough.

"Ledger," by Jane Hirshfield. penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612680/l…

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More from @ezraklein

Ezra Klein Profile picture
28 Dec
The implied population-level infection numbers here are just wild. Avoiding this thing will be very, very hard, in a way I’m not sure our public conversation has caught up to.

Strong case for being very, very cautious if you have immunocompromised people in your life.
I’d really like to hear more public health officials or elected officials clearly state their goal at this point. Is it spacing out hospitalizations? Minimizing cases? Minimizing severity of cases through vaccination?
And note that the goal for public health might be different than the goal for any individual or family.

But what is the public health goal now? Because I think a lot of people still think it’s to minimize cases, and I’m not sure it is, or if it is, if that’s achievable.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
28 Dec
I’m all for rapid tests but I am kind of puzzled as to how we’ve gotten maximally focused on their power at the same time we’re seeing them clearly swamped in Europe.
Two things can be, and are, true:

1. We should have far more rapid tests approved and distributed, and there’s been both an FDA and administration failure here.

2. Rapid tests, within any real world usage level we’ve seen, will not contain Omicron.
Pay particular attention to the UK on that chart. They’ve had pretty much the ideal approach to rapid tests. And Omicron is just exploding.
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
16 Dec
“The thought experiment that helped me is if I could die, or have a member of my family die, by being euthanized by gas, or have what I just described happen to them, what would I give to get the gas? And the answer is everything.” nytimes.com/2021/12/16/opi…
This isn't just a parade of horrors though. This is a piece about amazing groups trying to build a better future, and how you can support them: @GoodFoodInst, @humaneleague, @MercyForAnimals, @NewHarvestOrg and the Material Innovation Initiative.
I'm indebted to the great work done by @AnimalCharityEv and @Open_Phil have done evaluating the workings and result of groups trying to build a more humane world for animals on factory farms.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
13 Dec
My version of this thread:

In DC, the culture was forged by watching solvable problems prove impossible to solve.

In SV, the culture was forged by watching (seemingly) impossible problems get (seemingly) solved.

Both places overlearned their experience.
I think this schema still largely holds, but it was truer 5 years ago on both sides.

In DC, Trump, and in a different way, Sanders, convinced people the boundaries weren't what they thought.

In SV, the success stories of the Aughts are the problems of the 2020s.
This is, as best I can tell, one of the cultural drivers of the Web3 mania in SV.

It feels to many in SV like an opportunity to wipe the slate clean, to go back to solving impossible problems rather than being the impossible-to-solve problem.
Read 4 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
9 Dec
"Lawyers, not managers, have assumed primary responsibility for shaping administrative law in the United States. And if all you’ve got is a lawyer, everything looks like a procedural problem."

Must-read from @nicholas_bagley here. niskanencenter.org/the-procedure-…
"Legitimacy is not solely — not even primarily — a product of the procedures that agencies follow. Legitimacy arises more generally from the perception that government is capable, informed, prompt, responsive, and fair."
"Democrats do not usually ask the obvious follow-up. If new administrative procedures can be used to advance a libertarian agenda, might not relaxing existing administrative constraints advance progressive ones?"
Read 5 tweets
Ezra Klein Profile picture
8 Dec
This is a good thread, and it's both what I was thinking about when I tied the parklets to broader problems of liberal governance, and worth talking about at a bit more length.
A key failure of liberalism in this era is the inability to build in a way that inspires confidence in more building.

Infrastructure comes in overbudget and late, if it comes in at all. There aren't enough homes, enough rapid tests, even enough good government web sites.
I've covered a lot of these processes, and it's important to say: Most decisions along the way make individual sense, even if they lead to collective failure.

If the problem here was idiots and crooks, it'd be easy to solve. Sadly, it's (usually) not.
Read 14 tweets

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