The Spirit Level

Wilkinson and Pickett assembled a genuinely ambitious argument — that inequality, not poverty, is the root of most of what ails rich societies — and they make it accessibly enough that a general reader can follow the logic across eleven social domains. The awards are real and the influence on policy discourse has been significant. Readers should also know the methodology has attracted serious, sustained criticism: the country selection and the role of outliers like the USA are contested, and temporal replication is disputed. Worth reading, but pair it with at least a glance at the counterarguments.