Helen Lewis

And he decides that for every slight that's been done to him, he gets now to enact one on society.

So, you know, someone brushes past him and then he gets to do something bad.

And I think it really captures some of that sense of just an uncaring world and that kind of alienation.

So that's my first book recommendation.

My second recommendation is very exotic and I'm very sorry.

I can't think of a less Ezra Klein book, but I'm going to try and sell you on it anyway.

Nancy Mitford's biography of Madame de Pompadour, Mistress of Louis XV of France.

No, I'm not arguing, I'm listening.

How do you like French royal history?

I've never heard you down as someone who's massively into it, but try it.

Nancy Mitford, she was a brilliant historical biographer.

She wrote biographies of Frederick the Great, of Louis XIV, the Sun King.

But I think this one is extraordinary.

So Louis XV is the king before...

The Revolution, right?

That was Louis XVI.

And this is a portrait of Versailles during that period, which is where all the French nobles were cooped up.

They didn't go and visit their lands, and they had no idea of what it was like to live in the rest of the country.

And it is this sort of sparkling anthropological study of an elite that have no idea that the shadow of the guillotine is creeping up on them.

And then my final choice, when I was researching my book on genius, one of the most insane stories that I found is about the genius sperm bank.