Reading List

Authors Like Anand Giridharadas

In July 2015 Anand Giridharadas, a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute since 2011, stood up at the institute's summer gathering and told a room of wealthy, well-meaning people that their habit of doing good without ever questioning the system that made them rich was part of the problem. He called it the Aspen Consensus, and three years later he turned the speech into Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World (2018), his first New York Times bestseller. He had come to it by an unusual route: born in Shaker Heights, Ohio, he moved to Mumbai in 2003 as a McKinsey consultant, then covered India for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times, which produced India Calling (2011). The True American (2014) follows a Bangladeshi immigrant shot in Texas after 9/11 who campaigned to save his attacker from execution; The Persuaders (2022) is about the people trying to change minds rather than write them off; and Man in the Mirror (Knopf, September 2026) spends three years on the death of Jordan Neely on a New York subway train. Readers come to him for two things that rarely share a writer: a hard argument about money and power, and patient, sympathetic reporting on individual people on either side of a divide. The writers below share one or both.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Inequality and power · Narrative nonfiction · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Anand Giridharadas, start with Michael Sandel, whose The Tyranny of Merit makes the philosopher's version of the same case against the winners. Rutger Bregman made the argument to Davos's face, Matthew Desmond asks who profits from poverty, and George Packer tells the story of American unravelling through single lives, the way The True American does. For India Calling, read Katherine Boo.

10 authors like Anand Giridharadas

01
The philosophy behind the critique

Michael Sandel

American · b. 1953 · Philosopher

Sandel is a political philosopher at Harvard, where his course “Justice” was the first Harvard course made freely available online and on television. What Money Can't Buy (2012) asks which goods markets should never be allowed to price; The Tyranny of Merit (2020) argues that the idea that success is earned has turned the winners smug and the losers resentful. He received Spain's Princess of Asturias Award for Social Sciences in 2018.

The closest argument to Winners Take All, made from the seminar room rather than the conference circuit. Giridharadas attacks the elite's belief that it can fix the world on its own terms; Sandel attacks its belief that it deserves its place at all. Read together, they cover both halves of the meritocratic story: how the winners justify winning, and what they do with the money.

— Lisanne
02
Said it at Davos

Rutger Bregman

Dutch · b. 1988 · Historian

Bregman is a Dutch historian and journalist. Utopia for Realists, first published in Dutch in 2014 as Gratis geld voor iedereen, argues for a universal basic income and a shorter working week; Humankind (2019) argues that most people are fundamentally decent. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2019 he told the audience that the real subject was taxes, not philanthropy. Moral Ambition appeared in 2025, the year he gave the BBC Reith Lectures.

His Davos remarks were Winners Take All said out loud in the room it describes. Where Giridharadas is suspicious of the do-gooding class, though, Bregman wants to recruit it: Moral Ambition asks talented people to leave consultancy for work that matters. The two books make a useful argument with each other.

— Lisanne
Every book by Rutger Bregman →
03
Who profits from poverty

Matthew Desmond

American · b. 1979 · Sociologist · Pulitzer 2017

Desmond is a sociologist at Princeton, where he leads the Eviction Lab. Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (2016) follows eight families in Milwaukee and their landlords; it won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Poverty, by America (2023) asks who benefits from poverty continuing. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2015.

Poverty, by America turns the question Giridharadas asks of billionaires on the comfortable middle: what do we gain from a system that keeps others poor? Desmond builds the case with data where Giridharadas builds it with interviews, but the conclusion is the same — that the people who benefit from a problem are poorly placed to solve it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Matthew Desmond →

04
America through single lives

George Packer

American · b. 1960 · Reporter · National Book Award 2013

Packer is a staff writer at The Atlantic and was long a staff writer at The New Yorker. The Unwinding, a portrait of American decline from the late 1970s told through a handful of lives, won the National Book Award. Last Best Hope (2021) is a short essay dividing the country into four competing narratives.

The Unwinding does what The True American and Man in the Mirror do: a national story told through a few ordinary people, with the powerful glimpsed at the edges. Packer is more elegiac and less polemical than Giridharadas, but readers of both will recognise the same country and the same anger at who has been left behind.

— Lisanne

Every book by George Packer →

05
Mumbai, from the bottom

Katherine Boo

American · b. 1964 · Reporter · National Book Award 2012

Boo reported on poverty for The Washington Post and The New Yorker and received a MacArthur Fellowship. She spent more than three years reporting in Annawadi, a settlement of some three hundred shacks beside Mumbai's airport. Behind the Beautiful Forevers, her first book, won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2012.

The essential companion to India Calling. Giridharadas wrote about the ambition of a changing India from among its strivers; Boo wrote about the same city in the same years from among the people the boom passed by. Her book is more immersive and she removes herself entirely, which makes the contrast with his first-person reporting instructive.

— Lisanne

Every book by Katherine Boo →

06
The rich, and the fury

Evan Osnos

American · b. 1976 · Reporter · National Book Award 2014

Osnos reported from China for the Chicago Tribune and The New Yorker; Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China won the National Book Award for Nonfiction in 2014. Wildland: The Making of America's Fury (2021) traces the United States between 9/11 and the Capitol attack through three places, and The Haves and Have-Yachts (2025) collects his reporting on the ultrarich.

The career runs parallel to Giridharadas's: a rising Asian power reported from inside, then a return home to explain American division and the very rich. Age of Ambition pairs naturally with India Calling, and The Haves and Have-Yachts with Winners Take All, though Osnos observes the wealthy with more curiosity and less indictment.

— Lisanne

Every book by Evan Osnos →

07
The anti-corporate classic

Naomi Klein

Canadian · b. 1970 · Journalist

Klein was born in Montreal in 1970. No Logo (1999) became a founding text of the movement against corporate globalisation, and The Shock Doctrine (2007) argues that crises are used to push through policies that would otherwise be resisted. Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World (2023) won the inaugural Women's Prize for Non-Fiction in 2024. She holds a professorship in climate justice at the University of British Columbia.

The older, angrier voice in the same argument about corporate power dressed as progress. Doppelganger is the closest to The Persuaders: both ask how people slide into conspiracy and grievance, and what it would take to reach them. Klein is more theoretical and more personal; Giridharadas spends more time with the people doing the reaching.

— Lisanne

Every book by Naomi Klein →

08
Where the money goes

Jane Mayer

American · b. 1955 · Reporter

Mayer has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1995. The Dark Side investigates how the Bush administration came to authorise torture after 9/11 and won the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize; Dark Money (2016) traces how a small group of very wealthy donors built a network of foundations and think tanks to shape American politics.

Winners Take All describes the soft power of the rich — conferences, foundations, thought leaders; Dark Money documents the hard version, funding records included. Mayer is a reporter rather than an essayist and makes no argument she cannot source, which makes her the evidence locker behind much of what Giridharadas argues.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jane Mayer →

09
Divides that cost everyone

Heather McGhee

American · b. 1980 · Policy writer

McGhee was born in Chicago in 1980 and was president of the think tank Demos from 2014 to 2018. The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together (2021) opens with the towns that drained their public swimming pools rather than integrate them, and argues that zero-sum thinking about race has cost white Americans too. It was longlisted for the National Book Award.

The book closest in spirit to The Persuaders. McGhee travels the country talking to people on the other side of a divide and looks for the shared interest underneath, which is exactly the work Giridharadas follows his organisers doing. She is also the more hopeful of the two.

— Lisanne
Every book by Heather McGhee →
10
Class, without the euphemisms

Barbara Ehrenreich

American · b. 1941 · Journalist

Ehrenreich trained as a biologist and became one of America's sharpest writers on class. For Nickel and Dimed (2001) she took a series of low-wage jobs — waitress, hotel maid, house cleaner, Walmart associate — and showed that full-time work did not cover rent. Bright-Sided (2009; Smile or Die in Britain) traced America's faith in positive thinking through motivational speakers and the self-help industry. She died in 2022.

Bright-Sided is the ancestor of Winners Take All's satire of thought leaders: a journalist walking into the seminars of an optimistic industry and asking whom the optimism serves. Nickel and Dimed supplies what Giridharadas's elites rarely see — the arithmetic of a life on low wages.

— Lisanne

Every book by Barbara Ehrenreich →

Where to start if you loved Anand Giridharadas

If you want Winners Take All's argument deepened, read Michael Sandel.

The Tyranny of Merit: why the winners think they deserve it.

If you want the reporting of The True American, read George Packer.

The Unwinding: a country told through a handful of lives.

If you want India Calling's Mumbai from below, read Katherine Boo.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, three years in one settlement.

If you want a counter-argument, read Rutger Bregman.

Moral Ambition: what if the elite could be recruited rather than exposed?

Frequently asked questions about authors like Anand Giridharadas

Who should I read if I love Anand Giridharadas?

Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit is the closest argument to Winners Take All. For his reporting side, read George Packer's The Unwinding and Evan Osnos's Wildland; for poverty and who benefits from it, Matthew Desmond; for India, Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers. Rutger Bregman and Naomi Klein make related arguments from Europe and Canada.

What books are like Winners Take All?

Michael Sandel's The Tyranny of Merit (2020), Matthew Desmond's Poverty, by America (2023), Jane Mayer's Dark Money (2016) and Evan Osnos's The Haves and Have-Yachts (2025) all examine how wealth shapes power and how the rich explain themselves. Barbara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided (2009) shares its satire of the inspiration industry.

Where did Winners Take All come from?

It grew out of a speech Giridharadas gave at the Aspen Institute in July 2015, where he had been a Henry Crown Fellow since 2011. He argued that elites were urged to do more good but never to question the system that enriched them, an idea that became known as the Aspen Consensus. Knopf published the book in August 2018 and it entered the New York Times bestseller list.

What is Man in the Mirror about?

Man in the Mirror: Hope, Struggle, and Belonging in an American City (Knopf, September 2026) is about the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man known for his Michael Jackson impersonations, who was put in a fatal chokehold by Daniel Penny, a former Marine, on a New York subway train in 2023. Giridharadas spent three years reporting on the people around the case, including a lawyer, a homeless outreach worker and a city official working on mental health care.

What is The True American about?

The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (2014) tells the story of Rais Bhuiyan, a Bangladeshi immigrant shot by Mark Stroman in a series of revenge attacks in Dallas after 9/11, and of Bhuiyan's later campaign to save Stroman from execution. Stroman was executed in 2011. It is the book closest in method to George Packer's The Unwinding.

What books are like India Calling?

Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers (2012) covers the same Mumbai in the same years from the slums rather than among the strivers, and won the National Book Award. Evan Osnos's Age of Ambition (2014) does for China what India Calling does for India: a rising country seen through individual ambitions.

Footnotes

  1. Anand Giridharadas — Wikipedia
  2. Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World — Wikipedia
  3. Man in the Mirror — Anand Giridharadas
  4. 'Man in the Mirror': new book tells story of Jordan Neely — Connecticut Public / WBUR
  5. Michael Sandel — Biography, Harvard
  6. Rutger Bregman — Wikipedia
  7. Evan Osnos — Wikipedia
  8. Naomi Klein and V.V. Ganeshananthan win Women's Prize literary awards — AP

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

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