[thread] Responding to Michael’s question - which 5-10 readings (a) by social scientists and (b) relatively unknown among non-social scientists are fundamental? My starting list (which reflects all my own biases and reading failures - take this as an invitation to correct).

1. Jane Jacobs (as Michael says), The Death and Life of American Cities amzn.to/3EmWXe4 . He hadn't heard of it before coming across it at Crooked Timber - that suggests that many other well read people haven't come across it either. Essential on civic life.

2. Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market. The first chapter - www.dropbox.com/s/deuu0h47nl3p9jm/Przeworski%20Democracy%20and%20the%20Market%20Chapter%20One.pdf?dl=... - is fundamental to understanding democratic stability. Though I just read this great paper by @profjennabednar which emphasizes democratic robustness instead - www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2113843118

3. Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict. amzn.to/36mEthl The beautiful writing and deceptively simple math disguise how fundamental the insights are. Applicable to everything from childrearing to nuclear war (which turn out to have more in common than you'd imagine)

4. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons. amzn.to/37qUMtV . When she won the Nobel Prize, economists I know asked who she? And still underappreciated. Her work remade our understanding of how human beings can creatively and intelligently manage common resources.

5. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial amzn.to/37qYaF1. As per Cosma's advice, ignore the third edition cruft at the end and focus on the early chapters. We need to revisit his insights into what individuals, organizations and AI share and how they differ.

6. Danielle Allen, Why Plato Wrote amzn.to/3rzEUMF . CoI notice - Danielle is a co-author, on completely different topics. This tells us about Plato, about 5th c BCE Athens, but more than anything else about how ideas can lead to social, cultural and political change.

7. Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty. amzn.to/3jL4w4H Even social scientists mostly focus on his nationalism work. Skip from intro through to the main discussion of civil society for a brilliant account of where we are now, written by someone who died 20 years ago.

8. Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture. amzn.to/3uMVhaD The 'materialist' account of cultural change rearranged my brain in ways that are still percolating a decade later. Also, his and Hugo Mercier's The Enigma of Reason (but again CoI - Hugo is another co-author).

9. I am sure that I am missing a lot here. Equally, I am sure that this list is in part an inadvertent map of my own crotchets and blind spots. But I think that all these are extraordinary books, that everyone ought read. And if you have others, say so in replies!

10. [and addendum - I haven't mentioned Scott's Seeing Like a State, on the assumption that this _is_ a book that has escaped the social sciences into broader discourse - but obviously, it is wonderful]