This is a subjective Ranked version of Intriguing Connections: To Cooperate Or To Defect?
The Basic Premise
- The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
- Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua
- Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Cultures and the Secret Signals that Direct Our Lives by Michele Gelfand
- Race And Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell
- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
- The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
- Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom
- Individualism and Economic Order by Friedrich A. Hayek
- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
- Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua D. Greene
- Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship Is Poisoning the U.S. House of Representatives by Juliet Eilperin
- Inquisition by Edward Peters
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
The How
- Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
- Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics by Joseph S. Nye
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
- Hot Buttons: How to Resolve Conflict and Cool Everyone Down by Sybil Evans, Sherry Suib Cohen
- Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
- On Obligations by Marcus Tullius Cicero
- The Politics by Aristotle
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani
Cooperation
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
- Development and Connection in the Time of COVID-19: Corona’s Call for Conscious Choices by Cornelia C. Walther
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Defection
- In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth
- Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
- Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule by Tsering Woeser
- Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman
- Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
- Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump by Joseph E. Stiglitz
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
- October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville
A Choice
- The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World by Stewart Patrick
- The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire by Tore Skeie
- Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
- The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution by Brent Preston
Fiction
- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
