This is an alphabetical version. For a subjective ranked version see: Ranked: To Cooperate Or To Defect?
The title is misleading. It's not whether to cooperate or to defect, but how to cooperate or to defect. There are many ways in which individuals or groups can cooperate or defect with each other. This list of books describes why there is a choice to either cooperate or defect, and the how to go about it.
The Basic Premise
- The Ape that Understood the Universe: How the Mind and Culture Evolve by Steve Stewart-Williams
- The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod
- The Evolution of God by Robert Wright
- Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship Is Poisoning the U.S. House of Representatives by Juliet Eilperin
- Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action by Elinor Ostrom
- Individualism and Economic Order by Friedrich A. Hayek
- Inquisition by Edward Peters
- The Lessons of History by Will Durant, Ariel Durant
- Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them by Joshua D. Greene
- On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
- Political Tribes: Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations by Amy Chua
- Race And Culture: A World View by Thomas Sowell
- Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Cultures and the Secret Signals that Direct Our Lives by Michele Gelfand
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
- The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it by Will Storr
- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
- World Cultures: Analyzing Pre-Industrial Societies In Africa, Asia, Europe, And the Americas by James T. Shea
The How
- The Battle of the Little Bighorn: A Good Day To Die by Francis Hayes
- Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier
- Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
- Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology by Chris Miller
- Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara
- The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
- Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us by Brian Klaas
- Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler
- From Third World to First: The Singapore Story: 1965-2000 by Lee Kuan Yew
- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William B. Irvine
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 1]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 2]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- The Gulag Archipelago [Volume 3]: An Experiment in Literary Investigation by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
- Hot Buttons: How to Resolve Conflict and Cool Everyone Down by Sybil Evans, Sherry Suib Cohen
- The Heroine With 1,001 Faces by Maria Tatar
- How America Works... and Why it Doesn't by William Cooper
- I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong
- Indonesia, Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation by Elizabeth Pisani
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini
- The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist
- Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age by A. C. Grayling
- Napoleon: A Life by Andrew Roberts
- On Obligations by Marcus Tullius Cicero
- The Politics by Aristotle
- Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
- Saladin: The Sultan Who Vanquished the Crusaders and Built an Islamic Empire by John Man
- The Secret Network of Nature: Trees, Animals, and the Extraordinary Balance of All Living Things-- Stories from Science and Observation by Peter Wohlleben
- The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics by Joseph S. Nye
- SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard
- Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization by Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
- When Women Ruled The World by Maureen Quilligan
Cooperation
- The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power by Shoshana Zuboff
- Development and Connection in the Time of COVID-19: Corona’s Call for Conscious Choices by Cornelia C. Walther
- Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel H. Pink
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl
- Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss
- The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
- Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini
- Woman in Hiding: A True Tale of Backdoor Abuse, Dark Secrets & Other Evil Deeds by Kathleen Hoy Foley
- The Wealth Of Nations by Adam Smith
- The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism by Jeremy Rifkin
Defection
- The Age of Reason: Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology by Thomas Paine
- Boss Tweed: The Corrupt Pol Who Conceived the Soul of Modern New York by Kenneth D. Ackerman
- Class Struggle Unionism by Joe Burns
- Crazy Horse by Larry McMurtry
- The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
- The End of Gender: Debunking the Myths about Sex and Identity in Our Society by Debra Soh
- In Defense of Troublemakers: The Power of Dissent in Life and Business by Charlan Jeanne Nemeth
- Genghis Khan: A Life From Beginning to End by Henry Freeman
- Globalization and Its Discontents Revisited: Anti-Globalization in the Era of Trump by Joseph E. Stiglitz
- Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
- The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis, Hyrum Lewis
- Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
- October: The Story of the Russian Revolution by China Miéville
- Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
- A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell
- Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie
- Tibet on Fire: Self-Immolations Against Chinese Rule by Tsering Woeser
- Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us by Seth Godin
- The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson
A Choice
- Babylon: Mesopotamia and the Birth of Civilization by Paul Kriwaczek
- Breaking Through Silence: A No-Nonsense Love Letter to Women by Kathleen Hoy Foley
- The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good by Robert H. Frank
- Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy by Joseph E. Stiglitz
- From Plato To NATO: The Idea of the West and Its Opponents by David Gress
- The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World by Marie Favereau
- Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- The Invention of the Land of Israel: From Holy Land to Homeland by Shlomo Sand
- Islam: A Short History by Karen Armstrong
- Japan Unbound: A Volatile Nation's Quest for Pride and Purpose by John Nathan
- Korea: A History by Eugene Y. Park
- The Man from the Future: The Visionary Ideas of John von Neumann by Ananyo Bhattacharya
- Nature Wars: The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards into Battlegrounds by Jim Sterba
- Misunderstanding Financial Crises: Why We Don’t See Them Coming by Gary Gorton
- The New Chinese Empire: And What It Means For The United States by Ross Terrill
- The New Farm: Our Ten Years on the Front Lines of the Good Food Revolution by Brent Preston
- The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
- Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World by Tim Marshall
- The Second Stage by Betty Friedan
- The Sovereignty Wars: Reconciling America with the World by Stewart Patrick
- War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
- Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter
- The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons and the Battle for the North Sea Empire by Tore Skeie
Fiction
- The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
- Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
- Berlin by Jason Lutes
- Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
- Candide by Voltaire
- Circe by Madeline Miller
- The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
- Death's End by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
- Elektra by Jennifer Saint
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- The Guest by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride
- Jonas, or The Artist at Work by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- The Renegade, or A Confused Mind by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin
- The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
- The Voiceless by Albert Camus (Exile and the Kingdom)
- A Voracious Grief by Lindsey Lamh
