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The cover of Abundance

Abundance

Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson, 2025

See why housing, clean energy, and public projects stall even where leaders want them, and learn to spot the rules and bottlenecks that keep necessary things from getting built.

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7 parts, about 19 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Argues that shortages of homes, clean energy and cures are often chosen, built into rules that block their own production
  • Gives you a lens for any stalled project: what is scarce that should be plentiful, and what bottleneck keeps it so
  • Written by liberals who turn the critique on their own side, from California housing to slow public building

Who it is for

  • Policy staff frustrated by projects that never get built
  • Renters priced out of productive cities
  • Progressives who want government to deliver, not just fund

What the summary covers

  1. Scarcity Is a Choice2 min
  2. Grow: Open the Cities of Opportunity3 min
  3. Build: Clean Growth Needs a Physical Economy3 min
  4. Govern: Capacity, Judgment, and Focus3 min
  5. Invent: Give Unlikely Ideas Room to Live3 min
  6. Deploy: Progress Goes from One to One Billion3 min
  7. Toward a Politics of Abundance2 min

Recommended by

  • Barack Obama44th President of the United States
    A must-read for progressives who want a blueprint for reforming government so it can deliver for working people.
  • Andrew MarrScottish journalist and broadcaster
    Downing Street's current hot read

About the authors

  • Ezra KleinNew York Times columnist, podcast host and cofounder of Vox
    • Born in Irvine, California, on 9 May 1984
    • Raised in Irvine, California
    • BA in political science from UCLA in 2005 after two years at UC Santa Cruz
    • Managed Wonkblog at The Washington Post
    • Cofounded Vox in 2014 with Matthew Yglesias and Melissa Bell; joined The New York Times in November 2020
    • Left Vox for The New York Times as columnist and podcast host in November 2020
    • Author of Why We're Polarized (January 2020) and Abundance (March 2025)
    • Won the Online News Association Award for Best Online Commentary in 2013
  • Derek ThompsonThe Atlantic contributing writer and podcaster; coauthor of Abundance
    • Born in McLean, Virginia, on 18 May 1986
    • Graduated from Northwestern University in 2008 with a triple major in journalism, political science and legal studies
    • Began as a writer at The Atlantic in 2009
    • Published Hit Makers in 2017, winner of the AMA Leonard L. Berry Marketing Book Award
    • Hosts the podcast Plain English on The Ringer network since November 2021
    • Left The Atlantic in June 2025 after 17 years to write independently on Substack

Read it alongside

  • Goes deeperThe Elements of Power

    Klein and Thompson argue for making clean energy so abundant that rising living standards no longer need more fossil fuel. Nicolas Niarchos adds that the battery part of that shift moved pollution and risk onto mining and refining communities, so a transition cannot be judged only where it is used.

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