A review by nickjagged
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman

2.0

It's a decent bit of mainstreaming of viable but oft-ridiculed paths to a more "ideal" society. Reads like an inverted Freakonomics, where instead of a "it's just the way things are, lol sorry!" message it adopts the "TIL stuff can be better!". The problem boils down to tone. It's a great book for giving facts, but there doesn't seem to be any underlying criticism of the current mindset beyond "oh, we were wrong, silly us!". It plays as flippant at worst and toothless at best, and that can be really incongruous when you're discussing vast income inequality or life expectancy. It's more likely than most to convince others, but if you're already immersed in these topics then I wouldn't expect much benefit from it.