Jason BlakelyLost in Ideology: Interpreting Modern Political Life

Great for understanding why and how the country and its citizens have acted and justified their actions in particular ways over the centuries. Important for non-philosophers to understand what happens under the hood of movements.

Forget the trendy politics books and candidate memoirs that come out in an election year. With the way politics are in the U.S. right now, it's far more useful to have a guidebook that zooms out and helps trace how we got here--and why it's so hard to understand/empathize with the political views of your family, neighbors, colleagues, [fill in the blank]. That's what Blakely's book does. It's rare to find an author who can go deep on a range of ideological views and reconstruct why each is attractive, tracing how each has gained the following it has. Also: you think you understand political ideologies. This book will show you that your political education is nowhere near as broad/comprehensive as you think it is.