> Skip to content
  • Published: 15 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525436379
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.99

The Common Good



From the bestselling author of Saving Capitalism and The Work of Nations, a passionate, clear-eyed manifesto for recentering our economics and politics on the idea of the common good.

Robert B. Reich makes a powerful case for the expansion of America’s moral imagination. Rooting his argument in common sense and everyday reality, he demonstrates that a common good constitutes the very essence of any society or nation. Societies, he says, undergo virtuous cycles that reinforce the common good as well as vicious cycles that undermine it, one of which America has been experiencing for the past five decades. This process can and must be reversed. But first we need to weigh the moral obligations of citizenship and carefully consider how we relate to honor, shame, patriotism, truth, and the meaning of leadership.

Powerful, urgent, and utterly vital, this is a heartfelt missive from one of our foremost political thinkers.

  • Published: 15 January 2019
  • ISBN: 9780525436379
  • Imprint: Knopf US
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 208
  • RRP: $36.99

About the author

Robert B. Reich

Robert B. Reich is University Professor at Brandeis University and Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis’s Heller Graduate School. He is also a visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He served as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. This is his tenth book. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Also by Robert B. Reich

See all

Praise for The Common Good

"A good starting point for a new progressive political project." --The New York Times Book Review
"Very timely. . . . Reich's work is an important call for reform that should appeal to a wide audience." --Library Journal (starred review)
"Clear-voiced and accessible." --Publishers Weekly
"Reich's lucidly defining and empowering call for revitalized civic awareness . . . is an ideal catalyst for book-group conversations." --Booklist