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Best books, studies and reports
Every work cited on a belief page, by kind. Best, so far, means the works that moved these pages the most: a work earns its place by what it changes. Whether it deserved to is its quality, argued on its own page and shown beside it, because a widely read work that is wrong and an unread work that is right are different problems. What best ought to mean (most important, most accurate, most entertaining) is a yardstick anyone can propose and argue, like every other criterion here.
What this list means
How it is worked out. Best, so far, means impact: how much of these pages the work moved, which is its contribution to every belief that cites it, counted through the row it sits on. A work is listed by what it changes. Whether it deserved to is a separate number, quality, argued on the work's own page: is it accurate, well reasoned, well made, built on primary sources? The two are kept apart because a widely read work that is wrong and an unread work that is right are different problems. Other yardsticks for best (most important, most accurate, most entertaining, most cited) are each a criterion anyone can propose on a work's page and argue; a yardstick nobody has argued is not used to rank anything.
Why it is tracked. Because a work reaches people in a way an argument never does: one film teaches its ethics to more people than every analysis of those ethics put together. Knowing which works moved the beliefs here, and whether they earned it, is how a reader finds the best thing to read on a question, and how a work that moved a lot of people with a claim that does not hold up gets noticed.
What it shows. Every book, study, report, article and film cited on a belief page, by kind, each kind ranked. Under each work: what it is, and the belief it bears on most.
Best books9 works
| # | Work | Quality | Impact | Bears on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Presidential Pardon Power, Jeffrey P. Crouch, 2009 What it shows: Crouch argues that since Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, presidents have increasingly used clemency to protect themselves, their aides and their supporters, citing the Iran-Contra pardons, the Marc Rich pardon and the Scooter Libby commutation, and he weighs proposed constitutional amendments to limit the power. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Letting Congress overturn a presidential pa… |
| 2 | Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father's Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success, by Russ Buettner and Susanne Craig (2024) What it shows: The book uses tax and financial records to show how far an officeholder's real finances can differ from the picture the public was given, which supports the claim that returns reveal what other documents hide. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Requiring the president and members of Cong… |
| 3 | More Than You Wanted to Know: The Failure of Mandated Disclosure, by Omri Ben-Shahar and Carl E. Schneider (2014) What it shows: The authors argue that across many fields, laws requiring disclosure rarely change outcomes because the people meant to use the information do not read or act on it, which challenges the idea that publishing tax returns would change what officials do. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Requiring the president and members of Cong… |
| 4 | Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise of Transparency, by Archon Fung, Mary Graham and David Weil (2007) What it shows: The authors find that disclosure policies work only when the information fits into decisions that users already make and when the disclosers respond to those users, conditions that raw tax returns may not meet. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Requiring the president and members of Cong… |
| 5 | Kushner, Inc.: Greed. Ambition. Corruption. The Extraordinary Story of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, by Vicky Ward (2019) What it shows: The book reports that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump pursued international dealings while serving as White House advisers, some of them without the knowledge of the State Department or the National Security Council. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Barring the president and members of Congre… |
| 6 | In Praise of Nepotism: A Natural History, by Adam Bellow (2003) What it shows: The book argues that favoring relatives is an old and often useful practice in American public and business life, and that family ties can bring trust rather than only corruption. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Barring the president and members of Congre… |
| 7 | On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports, Christine Brennan, 2025 What it shows: Brennan, a veteran USA Today sports columnist, reports the 2024 season from the inside and argues that Clark's arrival, more than any other single event, turned the WNBA into a mainstream television product. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Caitlin Clark is the main reason WNBA atten…; weakens Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
| 8 | On Her Game: Caitlin Clark and the Revolution in Women's Sports (Christine Brennan, 2025) What it shows: Brennan's reporting traces Clark's audience to her college scoring records, her long three-pointers and the televised 2023 and 2024 NCAA tournaments, and argues the WNBA mishandled the player who brought it that audience. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Caitlin Clark's popularity owes more to her… |
| 9 | Dear Black Girls: How to Be True to You (A'ja Wilson, 2024) What it shows: Wilson's account of how Black women's achievements go unrecognized in America is the frame she applied in May 2024 when she told the Associated Press that race was a huge part of why Clark was marketed as she was. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark's popularity owes more to her… |
Best studies3 works
| # | Work | Quality | Impact | Bears on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ziobrowski, Cheng, Boyd and Ziobrowski, Abnormal Returns from the Common Stock Investments of the U.S. Senate (2004) What it shows: Senators earned abnormal returns on their stock purchases in the 1990s. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Barring members of Congress and the preside… |
| 2 | Eggers and Hainmueller, Capitol Losses: The Mediocre Performance of Congressional Stock Portfolios (2013) What it shows: Congressional portfolios did not beat the market. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Barring members of Congress and the preside… |
| 3 | Clarkonomics Comes to the WNBA (Frank Stephenson, 2026) What it shows: Regressions on 2022 to 2024 WNBA attendance attribute about half of the league's 2023 to 2024 growth to games involving Clark and find a small positive effect from Angel Reese, so the Clark and Reese rivalry, which many people read through race, was part of the surge. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark's popularity owes more to her… |
Best reports5 works
| # | Work | Quality | Impact | Bears on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Insider, Conflicted Congress (2021 to 2023) What it shows: Members of Congress violate the existing disclosure rule routinely and without consequence. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Barring members of Congress and the preside… |
| 2 | Justice Undone: Clemency Decisions in the Clinton White House, House Committee on Government Reform, H. Rept. 107-454, 2002 What it shows: The committee examined President Clinton's last-day pardons, including Marc Rich's, and concluded that some people received clemency they would not otherwise have gotten because they hired people close to the president, including relatives of the president and first lady, to lobby for them. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Letting Congress overturn a presidential pa… |
| 3 | Nepotism and Conflicts of Interest: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (2017) What it shows: The report argues that the White House appointments of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump defeated the purpose of the federal anti-nepotism law, and it documents business holdings and trademark approvals from China that the two kept while serving as official advisers. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Barring the president and members of Congre… |
| 4 | Application of the Anti-Nepotism Statute to a Presidential Appointment in the White House Office, by Daniel L. Koffsky (2017) What it shows: The opinion concludes that the anti-nepotism law does not reach the White House Office, and reasons that a president who appoints a relative, rather than consulting the relative informally, subjects that relative to federal conflict-of-interest laws. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Barring the president and members of Congre… |
| 5 | Nielsen: 46 Billion Minutes of Women's Sports were Consumed in 2025, Nielsen, 2026 What it shows: Nielsen's year-end report shows women's sports growing across tennis, college basketball and soccer as well as the WNBA, whose 2025 season reached 220 million hours of viewing (up 16 percent) with Clark sidelined for most of it. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark is the main reason WNBA atten… |
Best articles15 works
| # | Work | Quality | Impact | Bears on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Federalist No. 74, Alexander Hamilton, 1788 What it shows: Hamilton argues that the pardon power belongs to one person rather than a body of men, because a single officer feels responsible for the choice while a legislature invites faction and can be swayed by the public mood. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Letting Congress overturn a presidential pa… |
| 2 | The Ascent of the Administrative State and the Demise of Mercy, Rachel E. Barkow, Harvard Law Review, vol. 121, 2008 What it shows: Barkow argues that executive clemency has withered because modern American law distrusts any official choice not bound by rules and outside review, which suggests that adding a congressional vote on pardons would make presidents even less willing to grant deserved mercy. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Letting Congress overturn a presidential pa… |
| 3 | Long-Concealed Records Show Trump's Chronic Losses and Years of Tax Avoidance, by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig and Mike McIntire (2020) What it shows: Tax records obtained by reporters showed business losses, foreign income and large personal debts that a sitting president's public financial disclosure forms had not made clear, which is the kind of information a publication requirement would put in the open. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Requiring the president and members of Cong… |
| 4 | WNBA viewership hits high largely without Clark, but with caveats, Jon Lewis, Sports Media Watch, September 2025 What it shows: Lewis reports that the 2025 regular season averaged 969,000 viewers across ABC, ESPN, CBS and ION, the highest since 1998, in a year Clark played only 13 of the Fever's 45 games, while warning that Nielsen's switch to Big Data + Panel measurement could account for the 3 percent year-over-year rise. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark is the main reason WNBA atten… |
| 5 | WNBA 2025 season in numbers: Did Caitlin Clark's absence impact engagement?, Josh Sim, SportsPro, October 16, 2025 What it shows: Sim's season review finds that total attendance reached 3.15 million (up 34 percent), the Golden State Valkyries averaged a record 18,064 fans, Disney networks grew 6 percent and CBS 17 percent, all in a season Clark mostly missed, with ION the one network that fell. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark is the main reason WNBA atten… |
| 6 | Analysis of Flagrant Fouls in the 2024 WNBA season, Vaughn Hajra, 2024 What it shows: The piece counts all 35 flagrant fouls called in the 2024 WNBA season, finds that Caitlin Clark drew six of them (double the next player) and puts the odds of that happening by chance at about one in 100,000. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Opposing players have targeted Caitlin Clar… |
| 7 | Fever's Stephanie White says physicality allowed against Caitlin Clark is a 'factor' in her injury issues, CBS Sports, 2025 What it shows: The article records Fever coach Stephanie White saying in July 2025 that the grabbing, bumping and holding Clark absorbs for 40 minutes changes how she loads and accelerates, and that the physicality teams are allowed to use against her is a factor in her soft-tissue injuries. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Opposing players have targeted Caitlin Clar… |
| 8 | Christine Brennan's Caitlin Clark Book Is More About Gripes Than Greatness, Maitreyi Anantharaman, 2025 What it shows: The review argues that Brennan's book builds the targeting story through insinuation, piling incidents into a chapter on controversy and treating player pushback as jealousy rather than testing the claim against how other stars are guarded. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Opposing players have targeted Caitlin Clar… |
| 9 | Clark the main draw, but rest of WNBA picking up with viewers (Jon Lewis, Sports Media Watch, July 2024) What it shows: Nielsen figures show the ten largest WNBA audiences since 2002 all came in 2024 games involving Clark, while games without her, such as a 1.02 million viewer Mercury-Sun broadcast, were also up sharply. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Caitlin Clark's popularity owes more to her… |
| 10 | In TIME Athlete of the Year interview, Caitlin Clark acknowledged her privilege, and exposed her supposed defenders (Swish Appeal, December 11, 2024) What it shows: The piece collects Clark's own statement that as a white person there is privilege in her position and that the league was built on Black players, then documents the backlash from commentators who had cast her as a victim. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Caitlin Clark's popularity owes more to her… |
| 11 | Breaking down Caitlin Clark's Olympic omission -- and more roster takeaways, Michael Voepel, Alexa Philippou and Kevin Pelton, 2024 What it shows: The piece lays out how the committee built the 12-player roster around players who had already won gold with the senior team, why Clark's missed camps and position crowd counted against her, and why she was named an alternate rather than cut outright. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
| 12 | USA Basketball defends decision to leave Caitlin Clark off the 2024 Paris Olympics team, CBS News, 2024 What it shows: The report carries committee chair Jen Rizzotti's full explanation that the choice came down to criteria, position and fit with Cheryl Reeve's system, and that other players were harder to cut because they checked more boxes. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
| 13 | Combined Olympics average finishes over 30 million, Sports Media Watch, 2024 What it shows: The ratings roundup shows the women's gold medal game drew 7.8 million viewers in a 9:30 a.m. Eastern window, almost exactly the 7.9 million for Tokyo's primetime final, so the audience did not fall away without Clark on the roster. | 0.50 | 0.50 | supports Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
| 14 | Leaving Caitlin Clark off USA women's basketball Olympic team is a huge missed opportunity, Christine Brennan, 2024 What it shows: The column argues that USA Basketball had the power to give women's basketball its largest global stage ever and chose not to use it, calling the decision an airball on opportunity. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
| 15 | The media jumps all in on another Caitlin Clark controversy, Tom Jones, 2024 What it shows: Jones, writing about the coverage itself, grants that Clark may not have been one of the 12 best players and still concludes the omission was short-sighted because the Olympics were the sport's best chance to grow its audience. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Leaving Caitlin Clark off the 2024 United S… |
Best podcasts2 works
| # | Work | Quality | Impact | Bears on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A Touch More, Sue Bird and Megan Rapinoe, episode of October 2, 2024 What it shows: Bird, a former No. 1 pick, says the idea that players deliberately target Clark is about the biggest insult you can throw at a league of athletes, and that full-court pressure on a rookie star is smart defense, not a vendetta. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Opposing players have targeted Caitlin Clar… |
| 2 | The Pivot, episode with Natasha Cloud, March 14, 2025 What it shows: Connecticut Sun guard Natasha Cloud says the game has always been physical, that there was no targeting of Clark or Angel Reese in 2024, and that the veterans-versus-rookies story was spun up by people outside the league. | 0.50 | 0.50 | weakens Opposing players have targeted Caitlin Clar… |
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