Open
An open society provides its citizens with a mechanism for changing government; a closed society doesn't, forcing its citizens to rely on extra-legal revolution. Popper analyzes the open-closed society debate using three exemplars of closed-society advocacy: Plato, Hegel (and wow, does Popper hate on Hegel), and Marx. The main analytical viewpoints are historicist (backward-looking, utopian) motivations for closed societies and rational (forward-looking, empirical) motivations for open societies.
Where Open keeps showing up
Four of our editors' lists feature this novel.
What you might want to know about Open
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Andre Agassi's memoir, told with a co-writer, traces a Vegas childhood under a punishing father, life inside the tennis academy, and a long pro career he spent winning a sport he says he hated.
Multiple books share this title. The most commonly searched is Open: An Autobiography by Andre Agassi (2009), one of the most acclaimed sports memoirs of recent decades. Karl Popper wrote a different book, The Open Society and Its Enemies.
Yes. Open is Agassi's autobiography, written with J.R. Moehringer. It is widely cited as one of the most honest sports memoirs ever published, including Agassi's revelation that he hated tennis.
Open is 804 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Open takes most readers 12 to 17 hours to finish.
Open is a standalone novel by Karl Popper, not part of a series.
Open is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
