This is an alphabetical version. For a subjective ranked version see: Ranked: When Intelligence Goes Wrong
Books about intellectually bright people who wanted to help but ended up creating harm. Or maybe they did not really want to help.
General Premise
- The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by Jonathan Rauch
- Inadequate Equilibria: Where and How Civilizations Get Stuck by Eliezer Yudkowsky
- Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein
- Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
- The Myth of Left and Right: How the Political Spectrum Misleads and Harms America by Verlan Lewis, Hyrum Lewis
- A Philosophy of Evil by Lars Svendsen
- Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters by Steven Pinker
- Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science by Stuart Ritchie
- Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Social Justice Fallacies by Thomas Sowell
- The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It: On Social Position and How We Use it by Will Storr
- Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant
Fiction / General Premise
- Berlin by Jason Lutes
- Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
- The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (The Three-Body Problem Series)
In Business
- Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou
- Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy by George Gilder
In Government
- The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror by Bernard Lewis
- Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World by Bruce Schneier
- The Challenge Of Africa by Wangari Maathai
- How America Works... and Why it Doesn't by William Cooper
- Hybrid Warfare: The Russian Approach to Strategic Competition & Conventional Military Conflict by Curtis L. Fox
- The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert A. Caro
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein
