Publishers Weekly
03/24/2025
In this probing treatise, New York Times columnist Klein (Why We’re Polarized) and Atlantic staff writer Thompson (Hit Makers) explore the legislative bottlenecks hampering progress on housing, infrastructure, and clean energy, among other pressing issues. Zooming in on San Francisco to explore the nation’s housing crisis, the authors explain how onerous zoning restrictions limiting the number of units developers can build per lot constrain housing supply growth, while a law requiring the government to prioritize small businesses when granting contracts means developers must wait until one of the few qualifying companies has availability. Effective governance necessitates cutting through red tape when it proves overly prohibitive, Klein and Thompson contend, citing how Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro restored a collapsed section of I-95 in 12 days, instead of the many months initially expected, by issuing a declaration of emergency that enabled the state to waive such time-consuming requirements as a bidding process and environmental impact statement. Elsewhere, the authors lament how caps on H-1B visas are limiting immigration of the highly skilled foreign scientists and mathematicians who have historically helped drive American innovation. Klein and Thompson are, by their own admission, more interested in diagnosing problems than outlining solutions, and while this feels like a bit of a cop-out, the remarkably unstuffy discussions offer as lucid an explanation of contemporary legislative quandaries as readers are likely to find. Policy wonks will rejoice. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
Spectacular . . . Offers a comprehensive indictment of the current problems and a clear path forward . . . Klein and Thompson usher in a mood shift. They inspire hope and enlarge the imagination by describing the good things that are actually within our grasp: abundant energy, cheaper housing, affordable cities, shorter workweeks, lab-grown meat so that we no longer have to use 25 percent of global land to raise livestock.” —David Brooks, New York Times
“A terrific book . . . powerful and persuasive . . . People will recruit [Klein and Thompson] to run the Democratic Party.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN
“Ambitious . . . Klein and Thompson want a ‘liberalism that builds,’ not just in housing and green energy but in artificial intelligence and in drug development, too, areas where they see similar patterns of stagnation. Their goals are broad. This group of policies, which they call the abundance agenda, offers, Klein and Thompson believe, ‘a path out of the morass we’re in. A new political order’ . . . Abundance is a fair-minded book, and it recognizes some of the trade-offs that come with redesigning government for dynamism.” —Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker
“An absolute must-read.” —Stephanie Ruhle, MSNBC
“Klein and Thompson are two of the smartest voices from their generation of policy-oriented journalists, moving beyond horse race coverage of politics and integrating serious social science into political commentary. . . . [Their] vision for more effective government is something like an anti-DOGE: They imagine a future United States where careful and informed elected officials find ways to strip back the barriers to effective policy and allow the government to invest efficiently in underdeveloped pockets of society.” —Julian Zelizer, The New Republic
“A potent political manifesto . . . Its optimism is also compelling, even joyous. . . . The book’s core lesson, convincingly delivered, is that liberals ought to make it easier to do the things they want to do. . . . A can-do antidote to blue-state malaise . . . The timing of Abundance is extraordinary.” —Slate
“Helping liberals get out of their own way . . . It’s time to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful. Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Deftly diagnoses America’s sclerotic inability to build, well, much of anything across multiple domains in the physical world. . . . Trump supporters in Silicon Valley love saying ‘it’s time to build,’ and here are some influential liberals who wholeheartedly agree. . . . The nascent abundance movement is a tailwind for a broad effort that pro-growth conservatives can and should work with. . . . The modern right might not like everything Abundance has to offer, but it sure beats a bipartisan program of artificial scarcity.” —James Pethokoukis, Washington Post
“A guide for liberals shaken by an age of factional polarization . . . [Klein and Thompson] are the best in the business at digesting and synthesizing expertise from a host of fields. . . . Abundance might inspire a demoralized Democratic Party to think big again.” —Samuel Moyn, New York Times Book Review
“A forceful, quick-moving broadside against the left-coded pathologies they see as standing in the way. . . . Klein and Thompson’s diagnosis gets much right. . . . A worthy read.” —Financial Times
“Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson want you to hold space to dream about utopia. No need to tighten the belt, they argue: We have everything we need to build the future that liberals want, clean energy and affordable housing included, today! Their book explains how.” —New York Times
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2025-01-16
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, aNew York Times columnist, and Thompson, anAtlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
