Free and Equal: A Manifesto for a Just Society

"(This book is also a vailable on the Bookstory website here .) This is probably the only work of political philosophy that has got me really fired up. Daniel Chandler spends the first half of this book explaining, in a relatively accessible way, the political philosophy of John Rawls, who he quite convincingly claims is the most significant political philosopher of the 20th century. He’s expanding on and explaining a type of liberalism that is quite alien to the Neoliberalism that has become common around the world and was popularised by Reagan in America. This is a different sort of political liberalism. Chandler explains, quite brilliantly, why this is the foundation of a fair society and something that, Rawls argued, we would all hypothetically agree to if we were given the chance to do so. But I think what’s more interesting is Chandler takes on this challenge: there’s often a rebuke to philosopher’s that, well, this is all well and good, but how does it relate to the real world? How will this actually work in practice? So, in the second half of this book, he applies his general political principles to modern day politics, and asks: what would a fair society actually look like? In the arena of climate change, for example, or the universal basic income. You don’t need, necessarily, to come away agreeing with Rawls on everything to think that it is an incredibly bold and interesting book. It’s probably the best example of all the books on this list of treating the reader as a grown-up and allowing us into the tutorial room, if you like, to participate in these fascinating discussions around what a good society is, or what a better society would be. It fired me up, but it also made me slightly sad that this wasn’t the foundation of our election debates. How much better would it be if we had spent the last six weeks talking about policy and how we could improve society rather than scoring points off each other? For people who want to take a break from that kind of media coverage, this is the ultimate antidote. Yes, and we were very lucky to have Daniel Chandler join us for our nonfiction book club recently. One thing I love to do at Backstory is to create space for people to explore the story behind the book, and to raise your questions directly with the author. We meet monthly on Zoom. The great thing about that is that not only can people can join the discussion from anywhere in the world, but the author themselves will join from their home or office. So it has quite an intimate feel; you might see the author’s dog wandering in the background, something like that. It’s really lovely, like we’re being invited into their home to share a discussion with them about their work. And we’ve been so lucky in terms of guests. We’ve had people like Patrick Radden Keefe , Christina Lamb —people who are setting the bar really high: world class writers of nonfiction. And it’s a lovely community. We post the books out five or six weeks before each session, so people can read them, then come and discuss them. I like that, because although book events are great, very often only some people in the room have read the book. Most haven’t. What makes ours unique is that they are for people who have already invested a lot of time into reading and thinking about the work of that particular writer, who then have the chance to delve even deeper. So I really encourage anyone who fancies that to have a look at our website and come along."