OUTRAGED! The Big Day is Here

You can now get a copy wherever books are sold

Outraged is out now, wherever books are sold. It's been excerpted in the New York Times, reviewed in the New Yorker, and is a Next Big Ideas Club "Must Read." Woot!

Before we get to the book: Thank you for being a subscriber and for helping us to test-run so many ideas about moral understanding. It's a better book because of your support and thoughtful feedback on these posts!

Want to continue to support the work? Please buy a copy of the book! (And leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads). You can get the intro for free here.

Some reasons you might want to read Outraged:

1. You like this substack. Outraged really digs into why we're divided and how to understand those who disagree with you. The long form nature of the book means that the analysis goes much deeper than we can in any given substack post.

2. You're excited to learn a new theory of human nature. Before Christmas, I published an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that we’ve misunderstood human nature for the past century and wow, did I get a lot of emails about who we are and how we evolved. Many folks wanted more info on how we really know humans evolved more as prey than as predators. The book has the full argument.

3. You like some academic drama. The reigning wisdom for how to understand our moral minds is "moral foundations theory," Jonathan Haidt's idea that our mind is divided up into little rooms for different moral values. Haidt also argues that liberals have an impoverished morality and care mostly about only 2 of 5 values (harm and fairness), whereas conservatives have a more well-rounded moral palette of all 5 values. I think this idea is mostly wrong and argue why in the book.

4. You want to better bridge divides in your life. The book has lots of insights about how to connect across our differences, whether that's talking politics better at holiday dinners, or having better/kinder disagreements with your spouse.

After you order the book, make sure you go to OutragedBook.com. There, you can send in your receipt to get access to an amazing reader bundle, including a cool AI assistant that helps you have better conversations, a handbook for having more civil disagreements, a personalized online assessment of your political perceptions, and key summaries of the chapters.

Also, I'm always happy to hear about how the lessons from the book might be personally relevant to you—shoot me an email if you'd like: kurt@outragedbook.com.