- Preface
- Introduction
- Sexual Orientation
- Race
- Gender
- Religion
- Nationality
- Poverty and wealth
- Secularization
- Autonomy
- Conclusions
You Would Choose Now
Measuring America's Progress Toward Fairness and Tolerance
This book is 20% completeLast updated on 2026-09-01
If you could choose any time to be born — not knowing who you would be — would you choose now? Using decades of survey data, Allen Downey tests whether America has become fairer and more tolerant, and examines how changes in attitudes and beliefs relate to law and public policy.
Minimum price
$10.00
$16.00
You pay
Author earns
PDF
EPUB
About
About the Book
If you could choose any moment in history to be born, and you did not know ahead of time who you would be — what nationality, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or economic class — when would you choose? Barack Obama posed this question in 2016, and it motivates this book.
Allen Downey, data scientist and author of Probably Overthinking It, uses decades of data from national surveys to see whether America has become fairer and more tolerant. He puts changing attitudes alongside the historical record of civil rights and legal protections — and asks, "Would you choose now?"
This is an early access edition. The introduction and first chapter are available now (about 50 pages), with additional chapters planned monthly and a complete draft expected in early 2027.
Three editions are available in PDF and EPUB:
* Free Sample — introduction only
* Community Edition — introduction and first chapter (with email signup)
* Early Access Edition — all currently available chapters, plus updates through the final edition
This is a work in progress. Comments and suggestions are welcome.
Author
About the Author
Allen B. Downey
Allen Downey is the author of several books about programming, statistics, and data science, including Think Python, Think Stats, and Probably Overthinking It. He is Professor Emeritus at Olin College and Principal Data Scientist at PyMC Labs.
His work explores how data and statistical methods can help us understand the world, with a particular emphasis on Bayesian methods, social science, and communicating quantitative ideas to a broad audience. He also writes the Probably Overthinking It blog.
Contents
Table of Contents
Get the free Community Edition
You can get the free Community Edition in PDF or EPUB just by sharing your name and email address with the author, or you can just click this link to read a shorter sample online...
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $15 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.