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
- The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams
- Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua D. Greene
- The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant
- 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
- World Cultures: Analyzing Pre-Industrial Societies In Africa, Asia, Europe, And the Americas by James T. Shea
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
- The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
- From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
- Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
- 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
- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
- 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
- The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist
- The Secret Network of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things-- Stories from Science and Observation by Peter Wohlleben
- When Women Ruled The World by Maureen Quilligan
- The Heroine With 1,001 Faces by Maria Tatar
- 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
- The Battle of the Little Bighorn: A Good Day To Die by Francis Hayes
Cooperation
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
- Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini
- The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
- 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
- The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin
Defection
- In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth
- The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis, Hyrum Lewis
- Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
- A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
- Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
- Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie
- Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
- Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule by Tsering Woeser
- The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society by Debra Soh
- 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
- Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns
- The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
- 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
- Genghis Khan: A Life From Beginning to End by Henry Freeman
A Choice
- The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World by Stewart Patrick
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall
- The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good by Robert H. Frank
- War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
- The Second Stage by Betty Friedan
- Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter
- The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire by Tore Skeie
- The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau
- Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
- Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland by Shlomo Sand
- Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming by Gary Gorton
- The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution by Brent Preston
- The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means For The United States by Ross Terrill
- Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz
- Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
- Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose by John Nathan
- The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya
Fiction
- Circe by Madeline Miller
- Berlin by Jason Lutes
- The Guest by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- Candide by Voltaire
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
- A Voracious Grief by Lindsey Lamh
- Jonas, or The Artist at Work by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- Elektra by Jennifer Saint
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- The Voiceless by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- The Renegade, or A Confused Mind by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
