What people recommend, in their own words, with the receipt.
Writer and podcaster; co-author of Abundance with Ezra Klein, a staff writer at The Atlantic from 2008 to 2025, and host of the Plain English podcast.
1 thing
Battle Cry of FreedomBook James M. McPherson
Battle Cry of Freedom is a relentlessly compelling history of the antebellum years followed by a cinematic history of the Civil War.
A newsletter roundup of the most interesting ideas he read during two months of paternity leave; one of his two favorite nonfiction books that break.
derekthompson.org ↗·2026-02-10
Every entry is a verbatim quote and a link to the public post it came from. Nothing is paraphrased. If it is not on record somewhere public, it is not here.
The verdict is what they actually said: loved and liked are explicit; recommended means they told others to get it; uses means they only say they use it; read is a book on their public shelf with no verdict; mixed and disliked are kept too.
A dashed affiliate link, sponsored or their own label means the post disclosed a relationship. It is shown, never hidden.
The small bar beside a date shows how dated a recommendation is for its kind of thing.
The bar shows how dated a recommendation is, for its kind of thing. Full and green is recent. It drains, and turns amber and then grey, as the post gets older.
What counts as old depends on the thing. A laptop praised four years ago has been replaced twice; a book loved twenty years ago is probably still loved. The bar is empty after about:
A striped bar means the post carries no date and the date shown is an estimate. No date at all, no bar.