My New Year’s resolution for 2018 was to finish writing my book on smoking. As it turned out, I needed to make the identical resolution for 2019, and this year I finally followed through. As a result, much of my reading this year remained focused on books and articles in that area, as well as on reading and revising my own writing until I could no longer stand the sight of it. The product of that labor is The Rediscovery of Tobacco: Smoking, Vaping, and the Creative Destruction of the Cigarette, which I published at last in September. Though I no longer have any desire to read it again myself any time soon, if you’ve come to this post looking for book recommendations, I’ll immodestly lead with that one.

In my free reading time, most of my non-fiction selections reflect the present dismal moment in American politics and a re-evaluation of how I define my own. My views have gone somewhat leftward over the past decade, but in the past few years, especially, my perception of who my allies are has shifted even more pronouncedly left. When I came into the libertarian movement in the early 2000s, the Cold War fusion of libertarians and conservatives was already straining. With the rise of Trumpist nationalism, that break feels complete.

When I worked in DC, it wasn’t uncommon to hear from other libertarians that it would be easier if we could simply refer to ourselves as “liberals” without the stuffy “classical” modifier and without the confused meaning “liberal” had taken on in the United States. With the Trumpian takeover of the Republican party, defending liberalism writ large — in the broad sense that encompasses libertarians, much of the democratic left, and those on the limited government, free market right — has become an urgent cause. The current trajectory of American and global politics has served to increase, for me personally, the salience of the longer, wider, tradition of liberal thought relative to the narrower libertarian movement, even though I situate my own views within both of them.

At the same time, more people on the left now describe themselves as “socialist” or “progressive,” perhaps even viewing liberalism with disdain. The word “liberal,” therefore, seems up for grabs, and feels increasingly comfortable for me personally. This is not a renunciation of the libertarian label — as evidenced by one of the recommendations below, I remain open to even more radical approaches to libertarian thought than I’ve adopted in the past — but I am more willing of late to use the terms liberal and libertarian interchangeably as accurate self-descriptors.

With that digression out of the way, these are the books that stood out for me in 2019. As always, these are books I read this year, not ones that necessarily came out this year.

The Revolt of the Public, Martin Gurri — This was one of the most consistently recommended recent books among people I follow online, and with good reason. Originally published in 2014 and re-published in 2018, it offers a strikingly prescient analysis of politics through the lens of a technologically empowered public striking out against delegitimized elites. A chapter in the new edition looks back on Trump and Brexit, and considers two possible ways forward: destructive nihilism, or a more decentralized, modest liberal democracy. Thought-provoking throughout, and I highly recommend it; see also this review from Noah Smith and a new post from Gurri examining the events of 2019.

Open, Kimberly Clausing — The subtitle describes this as a “progressive case” for free trade and immigration, though much of it could be aimed just as squarely at trade-wary Trump voters as to Bernie Bros. Clausing persuasively acknowledges the difficulties some parts of the US have suffered adapting to trade, while arguing that new restrictions would only exacerbate their woes. I’d suggest this without hesitation to my progressive friends, but to conservatives as well.

Open Borders, Bryan Caplan and Zach Weinersmith — I loved this book, which is both a compelling argument for immigration and a demonstration of how effective the graphic novel format can be for something like this. (While reading it, I couldn’t help imagining how fun it would be to do a similar treatment of tobacco.) It’s not just economics: It’s also funny and a joy to read, with subtle jokes appearing in the illustrations, and forcefully makes the philosophical and moral case for immigration in ways that economics writing often shies away from.

Why Liberalism Works, Deirdre McCloskey — As an avid reader of McCloskey’s Bourgeois trilogy, I was eagerly anticipating this as a more approachable introduction to her writing and the benefits of what she calls the “Great Enrichment” for those unwilling to take on such lengthy tomes. And it is that, but as a collection of assorted essays rather than a tightly structured argument begun from scratch, I wonder how well it will be received by those not already primed to enjoy her work. Recommended with that caveat.

Technology and the End of Authority, Jason Kuznicki — Part political theory survey, part quietly radical argument for decentering the state’s role in our thinking and using technology to reduce its scope. One of the most provocative paragraphs I read this year: “In any case, however, the state should be understood as a last resort. We ought to be embarrassed rather than proud whenever we reach for the apparatus of government to solve a problem. The use of the state is always an admission that either our other social technologies have failed us or we have prematurely abandoned them.”

Achieving Our Country, Richard Rorty — My first dive back into Rorty in well over a decade, at the recommendation of Adam Gurri. Though published in 1998, the discussion of how to balance national pride and shame in a nation’s failings in a way that encourages reform is every bit as relevant today. My preferred reforms would not be Rorty’s, but I found this no less valuable a read for that. (As Adam notes, the book is also a thematic complement to questions raised in The Revolt of the Public.)

Ordinary Vices, Judith Shklar — I was unfamiliar with Shklar’s work until this year, when I picked this up after multiple recommendations online by Jacob Levy. Of most interest here was the essay “Putting Cruelty First,” emphasizing awareness of the potential for cruelty as a fundamental guide for liberals. Or as Levy describes her approach, “Shklar’s was a liberalism motivated not by a summum bonum, an ultimate good, but by a summum malum, an ultimate evil, something to be avoided: namely, cruelty and the fear it inspires.” Compare this with Adam Serwer’s Atlantic article last year, “The Cruelty is the Point.” Of Trump’s many illiberal aspects, his embrace of cruelty and its acceptance by his supporters is the most repulsive.

The Cigarette, Sarah Milov — This history of the cigarette was released within a couple weeks of my own book on tobacco. Points of disagreement will be obvious to anyone who reads them both, so I’ll mention a couple ways in which I think they complement each other. While my book agrees that the shift away from ubiquitous smoking is a good thing, Milov’s more vividly illustrates how difficult earlier decades were for sensitive non-smokers. And though Milov briefly gestures at the downsides of stigmatizing smoking, mine spends much more space exploring the detriments of the anti-smoking movement’s illiberal turn. Reading them together will provide a fuller picture than reading either in isolation. Milov also provides the most in-depth look at the farming side of the cigarette industry that I’ve come across in any books covering the history of tobacco in the United States.

Finally, some brief recommendations for fiction: I loved Charles Portis’s The Dog of the South, guided by this review from The Ringer. The Dispossessed and The Night Manager were my long overdue introductions to Ursula K. Le Guin and John le Carre, respectively, and I plan on reading more Le Guin in particular this year. I read Mirror, Shoulder, Signal by Dorthe Nors on a trip to Denmark and enjoyed its portrayal of a conflicted woman from Jutland trying to make a life in urban Copenhagen. The Final Solution is a charming, affecting mystery from Michael Chabon starring a familiar detective, veering into a chapter told from a very surprising perspective that he pulls of remarkably well. Update: I’d meant to include Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad, too, which is as good as everyone says it is.