One of Zocalo's 10 Favorite Books of 2016 "Brennan has a bright, pugilistic style, and he takes a sportsman's pleasure in upsetting pieties and demolishing weak logic. Voting rights may happen to signify human dignity to us, he writes, but corpse-eating once signified respect for the dead among the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea. To him, our faith in the ennobling power of political debate is no more well grounded than the supposition that college fraternities build character."--Caleb Crain,New Yorker "A brash, well-argued diatribe against the democratic system. There is much to mull over in this brazen stab at the American electoral process... [I]n the current toxic partisan climate, Brennan's polemic is as worth weighing as any other."--Kirkus Reviews "A brash, well-argued diatribe against the democratic system. There is much to mull over in this brazen stab at the American electoral process... Sure to cause howls of disagreement, but in the current toxic partisan climate, Brennan's polemic is as worth weighing as any other."--Kirkus "Important."--Ilya Somin, Washington Post Volokh Conspiracy "Against Democracychallenges a basic precept that most people take for granted: the morality of democracy... Brennan presents a variety of strategies by which the quality of the electorate could be improved, while still keeping it large, and demographically representative... [A] powerful challenge to the conventional wisdom about democracy... [W]orth serious consideration."--Ilya Somin, Washington Post "Compelling... This is theory that skips, rather than plods."--Los Angeles Times "The book makes compelling reading for what is typically a dry area of discourse. This is theory that skips, rather than plods."--Molly Sauter, Los Angeles Times "Among the best works in political philosophy in recent memory."--Zachary Woodman, Students for Liberty "Challenging and insightful."--Alexander William Salter, Public Choice "Lucidly written in provocative, sometimes brash tones, it is especially useful for the undergraduate classroom."--Choice "Against Democracy seems scarily prescient today. Writing well before the twin shocks of the Brexit and the U.S. elections, the Georgetown political scientist makes a powerful case that popular democracy can be dangerous--and, provocatively, that irrational and incompetent voters should be excluded from democratic decision-making. The case for elitism in governance never read so well."--Zocalo Public Square "Meticulous [and] crisply written."--Tom Clark, Prospect "Mercilessly well-argued."--Niko Kolodny, Boston Review

"Jason Brennan is a marvel: a brilliant philosopher who scrupulously studies the facts before he moralizes. In Against Democracy, his elegant method leads to the contrarian conclusion that democratic participation prompts human beings to forget common sense and common decency. Voting does not ennoble us; it tests the virtue of the best, and brings out the worst in the rest."—Bryan Caplan, author of The Myth of the Rational Voter"Against Democracy makes a useful set of challenges to both conventional wisdom and dominant trends in political philosophy and political theory, particularly democratic theory. Engagingly written, it is a lively and entertaining read."—Alexander Guerrero, University of Pennsylvania