45 underrated books that explain the modern world

I asked twitter: What are some underrated books that best explain the modern world? 250 people replied. Here are 49 of the most interesting recommendations:

1. The Demon in Democracy

2. How Should We Then Live?

3. The Lessons Of History

4. Beautiful Losers

5. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

6. Modern Times by Paul Johnson

7. Culture of Narcissism

8. Ideas Have Consequences

9. The End of the Modern World

10. The Uses of Pessimism by Roger Scruton

11. The Madness of Crowds

12. Snow Crash

13. The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism

14. That Hideous Strength

15. The Reign of Quantity

16. The Crisis of Modernity

17. Life at the Bottom by Theodore Dalrymple

18. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell

19. The Crowd by Gustav Le Bon

20. Family and Civilization

21. Sovereign Individual

22. The Ultimate Resource by Julian Simon

23. Quest for Community

24. For the New Intellectual by Ayn Rand

25. Watership Down

26. This Perfect Day by Ira Levin

27. The Re-enchantment of the World

28. Spiral Dynamics

29. The Leopard

30. Power vs. Force: The Hidden Determinants of Human Behavior

31. The Thanatos Syndrome

32. What has government done to our money

33. The Way We Live Now

34. Sources of the Self

35. The age of entitlemen

36. Lord of the World (1907)

37. The New Science (1725)

38. Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott

39. Forest Passage by Ernst Jünger

40. Technological Society

41. From Bauhaus to Our House

42. The Fourth Turning

43. Dark Age Ahead

44. After Shock

45. The Ominous Parallels