4.11.25 - Abundance by Ezra Klein Book and Derek Thompson Review
Okay so I finished this book a couple weeks back.
Fun story, I've been listening or reading to Ezra Klein since High School, like when he was on Vox and did the Weeds with Matthew Yglesias. I remember when he started at the New York Times. I had a Professor who was somewhat instrumental in his early career who was also pretty instrumental in mine. I had to read Why We're Polarized in College. So this guy Ezra Klein is one of those younger thinkers and writers who has just had a profound impact on me. More than any normie/popular thinker he's kind of shaped how I look at contemporary politics. So he's to me what maybe Thomas Friedman or David Brooks is to a boomer. Which now that I think about it, means I should start looking for newer writers and commentators, so I don't become an old fart. Klein has gotten pretty successful and I'm getting older, which means that some of his value prop is declining. I need to find the equivalent of someone doing Vox TODAY. You know what I mean? Like there is a high schooler listening to a smaller time up and coming commentator right now like I was listening to Klein in 2017ish. I need to find that person.
Anyways, that's my relationship to Ezra Klein. I've listen to his podcast on the NYT a lot, and he has this very open, intellectually curious, thinking in systems approach that I've found very few other people succesfully replicate. And a lot of the ideas in Abundance have been strewn throughout his Podcast over the past three years or so. He's had recurring discussions on the need for state capacity, a liberalism that builds, he's been circling around the idea that we've lost a vision for the future that we used to have in midcentury and that the environmental movement did more to our national psyche than we give it credit for. And now, all of that is tightly condensed in this book.
Also Derek Thompson seems cool and I'm going to check him out more.
I'm not going to talk about the ideas in the book too much. In short, both authors are like, liberals should think about making it easier to make and deploy material goods, whether it is houses or scientific inventions or energy. They think that would reorient our politics in a healthier direction and get us back on track for a Star Trek future. I agree with them basically one hundred percent.
I will talk about whether its worth reading. The answer is yes, for most people. However if you listen to his show as regularly as I do, you won't find much NEW here. So weirdly enough, if you're a big Ezra Klein fan you're not missing much by just sitting this one out or just skimming it. But most disillusioned liberals should read this because its a manifesto, an agenda setter, of sorts. Read it, decide if you agree with, and you should read it just to know the ideas percolating in the idea-verse. This is probably going to be pretty influential with a lot of staffers and up and comers in the party, so I would imagine it will be pretty influential in the years to come. I think they timed the release well, because it comes at a time when the Dems are just hunting for a narrative, or some brand modification they can latch on to. I think DemWorld is ready to move on from White Fragility and on to something like this. Expect this to be as influential as the former, and probably a far more effective contribution to the liberal movement.
Also, it's an easy read. I read half of it walking across Central Park, beacuse the day it came out the only Barnes and Noble that had it near me was on the west side, and I just walked home that evening. I finished literally almost half of it in that time. Overall it that and three more lazy days of reading. It's an easy enough read, like two hundred pages with big font, and skimmable enough that if you can't easily read it you're not really literate. It's also written in that very digestible editorial style prose. So, take that as you will. I think people should read more in general.
Cheers,
knxnts