Marginal Revolution Book Rankings

Tyler and Alex's favorites from Marginal Revolution

How it works: I scraped every post categorized under 'books'. Then extracted book titles and relevant review context from each post. I then submitted a couple million pairs of reviews to an LLM to compare and determine which book review had more positive sentiment. I used these comparisons to fit a Bradley-Terry model which produces these rankings. I racked up a gemini bill so stopped shy of exhaustive 16 million comparisons, so it's not perfect, but roughly accurate.

Genre: Cultural Criticism ×
Showing 52 books in Cultural Criticism
Perfumes: The Guide
1. Perfumes: The Guide
BT: 8.48 95 comparisons
consumer guide cultural criticism non-fiction perfume
MR Post
T
2. The Queen’s Throat
BT: 6.09 121 comparisons
critical theory cultural criticism literary criticism music +2
MR Post
W
3. We Have Never Been Woke
BT: 5.59 128 comparisons
cultural criticism politics social commentary sociology
MR Post
H
4. How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read
BT: 5.41 136 comparisons
cultural criticism literary criticism literary theory philosophy +1
MR Post
G
5. Give My Regards to Eighth Street: Collected Writings of Morton Feldman
BT: 5.15 147 comparisons
american music cultural criticism essays music +1
MR Post
A
6. An Economist gets Lunch: Enlightened consumerism, not ideology, is the surest path to tasty and responsible dining
BT: 5.04 168 comparisons
consumerism cultural criticism economics food +2
MR Post
A
7. Against Everything, Essays
BT: 4.01 174 comparisons
cultural criticism essays philosophy
MR Post
W
8. What are Intellectuals Good For?
BT: 2.88 248 comparisons
cultural criticism essays intellectual history politics +1
MR Post
S
9. Shop Class as Soulcraft
BT: 2.44 191 comparisons
cultural criticism philosophy philosophy of work social philosophy
MR Post
M
10. Militant Modernism
BT: 2.13 250 comparisons
aesthetics art cultural criticism philosophy +1
MR Post
S
11. Sontag & Kael: Opposites Attract Me
BT: 1.74 280 comparisons
american culture biography cultural criticism dual biography +1
MR Post
S
12. Small World: Ireland 1798-2018
BT: 1.53 315 comparisons
cultural criticism history irish history literary criticism
MR Post
T
13. The Power Notebooks
BT: 0.61 322 comparisons
cultural criticism essays non-fiction philosophy +2
MR Post
D
14. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World
BT: 0.40 321 comparisons
cultural criticism identity studies memoir non-fiction +1
MR Post
P
15. Provocations
BT: 0.13 308 comparisons
cultural criticism essays film criticism literary criticism
MR Post
C
16. Crisis of the Negro Intellectual
BT: -0.02 351 comparisons
african american history african american studies american history american political thought +6
MR Post
G
17. Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars
BT: -0.07 373 comparisons
art art history cultural criticism mythology
MR Post
E
18. Eurasian Mission: Introduction to Neo-Eurasianism
BT: -0.09 327 comparisons
cultural criticism eurasian studies geopolitics history +6
MR Post
P
19. Polemics
BT: -0.19 331 comparisons
cultural criticism european politics philosophy politics +1
MR Post
A
20. A Little Devil in America: Notes in Praise of Black Performance
BT: -0.32 361 comparisons
african american studies american culture arts criticism black studies +3
MR Post
A
21. At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches
BT: -0.32 395 comparisons
american studies cultural criticism essays philosophy +3
MR Post
T
22. The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
BT: -0.33 325 comparisons
cultural criticism european history intellectual history philosophy +2
MR Post
C
23. Chic Ironic Bitterness
BT: -0.52 326 comparisons
american studies cultural criticism philosophy politics +1
MR Post
Y
24. You are Not a Gadget
BT: -0.91 389 comparisons
cultural criticism digital culture social commentary technology
MR Post
T
25. The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
BT: -0.95 908 comparisons
cultural criticism non-fiction political science religion +2
MR Post MR Post +1 more
R
26. Retromania: Pop Culture’s Addiction to its Own Past
BT: -1.07 390 comparisons
cultural criticism cultural studies music pop culture +1
MR Post
G
27. Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes on A Tribe Called Quest
BT: -1.15 387 comparisons
american music cultural criticism hip-hop music +2
MR Post
S
28. Science Left Behind: Feel-Good Fallacies and the Rise of the Anti-Scientific Left
BT: -1.25 405 comparisons
cultural criticism political commentary politics science
MR Post
R
29. Return of the Primitive
BT: -1.26 406 comparisons
cultural criticism philosophy political philosophy politics +1
MR Post
T
30. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
BT: -1.30 423 comparisons
cultural criticism current events education non-fiction +4
MR Post
T
31. The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus
BT: -1.31 347 comparisons
cultural criticism essays literary criticism non-fiction
MR Post
T
32. The Decadent Society
BT: -1.35 380 comparisons
contemporary issues cultural criticism politics social commentary +1
MR Post
L
33. Let’s Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste
BT: -1.39 374 comparisons
cultural criticism music pop culture
MR Post
T
34. The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution
BT: -1.43 389 comparisons
american history cultural criticism history philosophy +2
MR Post
B
35. Break, Blow, Burn
BT: -1.47 354 comparisons
cultural criticism literary criticism literature poetry
MR Post
Y
36. You Aren’t What You Eat: Fed Up with Gastroculture
BT: -1.57 360 comparisons
cultural criticism food studies social commentary
MR Post
T
37. The Trouble with Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality
BT: -1.70 370 comparisons
cultural criticism economics politics social philosophy +1
MR Post
S
38. Straw Dogs
BT: -1.77 731 comparisons
cultural criticism philosophy social philosophy
MR Post MR Post
S
39. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
BT: -2.27 363 comparisons
american popular culture cultural criticism essay collection popular culture +1
MR Post
T
40. They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us
BT: -2.28 324 comparisons
cultural criticism essays non-fiction
MR Post
S
41. Sexual Personae
BT: -2.41 1000 comparisons
art criticism cultural criticism gender studies humanities +2
MR Post MR Post +1 more
T
42. The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture
BT: -2.44 338 comparisons
american studies cultural criticism non-fiction political commentary +1
MR Post
U
43. Umberto Eco on Peanuts
BT: -2.61 330 comparisons
comics studies cultural criticism cultural studies semiotics
MR Post
B
44. Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up
BT: -2.65 378 comparisons
cultural criticism mental health psychology social science +1
MR Post
T
45. The Road to Wigan Pier
BT: -2.71 369 comparisons
british history cultural criticism non-fiction political philosophy +2
MR Post
C
46. Cynical Theories: How Activist Scholarship Made Everything About Race, Gender, and Identity — and Why This Harms Everybody
BT: -2.83 314 comparisons
academic criticism cultural criticism philosophy politics +1
MR Post
A
47. Against Interpretation
BT: -2.91 294 comparisons
art criticism cultural criticism essays literary criticism +1
MR Post
R
48. Retromania
BT: -3.93 186 comparisons
aesthetics cultural criticism music social commentary
MR Post
H
49. Hegel in a Wired Brain
BT: -4.74 157 comparisons
cultural criticism futurism philosophy political philosophy +2
MR Post
B
50. Bubbles, Spheres 1
BT: -6.35 85 comparisons
continental philosophy cultural criticism german philosophy philosophy +1
MR Post
W
51. We are Doomed
BT: -6.51 90 comparisons
cultural criticism non-fiction social commentary
MR Post
M
52. Molly
BT: -6.56 79 comparisons
cultural criticism ethics memoir social commentary
MR Post