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Why Nothing WorksBook

by Marc J. Dunkelman

Who uses, recommends or left Why Nothing Works, in their own words: each a verbatim quote with a link to where it was said.

1 person

Francis Fukuyama
American political scientist at Stanford; author of The End of History and the Last Man and The Origins of Political Order.
recommended

Uh the second one is Mark Dunkelman's why nothing works where he puts everything [snorts] in a bigger historical context a swing between uh Jeffersonianism where power is pushed down as far as possible to the people and a Hamiltonian vision where the government itself is the uh is the engine of change. and he argues that we've been in a Jeffersonian period ever since the 1960s and we need to switch to a more Hamiltonian uh perspective.

Answering The Ezra Klein Show's closing question, three books to recommend, in “Why I Can't Stop Thinking About 'The End of History'” (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/11/opinion/ezra-klein-podcast-francis-fukuyama.html). Quoted from the episode's YouTube auto-captions.

2026-09-11·youtube.com ↗

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