If you're bored with hackneyed debates, decades-old right-wing and left-wing clichés, you may enjoy the bold thinking, fresh ideas, lively prose, and evidence-based arguments in Utopia for Realists

Steven Pinker, author of 'The Language Instinct'

In this surprising, accessible and often counterintuitive book Bregman explores some brilliant but simple ideas for making a better world

Brian Eno

If you're fed up with moaning, you owe it to yourself to read this book

Evening Standard

Where is the vision, the ambition, the belief? Into this bleak picture drops a book and an author bristling with hope, optimism and answers. Utopia for Realists has taken Holland by storm and could yet revitalise progressive thought around the globe.

Better than that, though, it is not a dry, statistical analysis – although he doesn't shy from solid data – but a book written with verve, wit and imagination. The effect is charmingly persuasive...

Bregman has a vision. And it's a pretty clear one.

The result is a hybrid that's reminiscent of the New Yorker's Malcolm Gladwell: lots of compelling anecdotes, backed up with information from an array of surveys and research papers delivered in a tremendously readable style.

But there's also an extra layer of idealism with Bregman, a belief that people are essentially good and that all it requires is a rational analysis of the facts and good governance to make the most profound and lasting changes.

Yes, he is a utopian, but a practical one. He knows there are many problems to overcome, but the first and toughest is the belief that things can change. In that he has made a major contribution. Listen out for Rutger Bregman. He has a big future shaping the future

Andrew Anthony, Observer

You may not dream the same dreams as Bregman – but he invites you to take dreaming seriously. For that alone, this book is worth a read

Will Hutton, Observer

This is a book stuffed full of ideas, presented persuasively and pithily, but it is also just a part of the new zeitgeist – which is why it is one for today's dreamers and tomorrow's realists

Danny Dorling, Times Higher Educational Supplement