She is best known for her non-fiction books including "The Future and Its Enemies" and "The Substance of Style". In the former she explains her philosophy, "dynamism", a forward-looking and change-seeking philosophy that generally favors unregulated organization through "spontaneous order". She contrasts it with "stasis", a philosophy that favors top-down control and regulation and is marked by desire to maintain the present state of affairs. In November 2013, she published a third book, "The Power of Glamour", which defined glamour as "nonverbal rhetoric" that “leads us to feel that the life we dream of exists, and to desire it even more.” And, in November 2020, she published her fourth book, "The Fabric of Civilization". This book looks at the "history of innovation, science, technology, trade, and human history in general" through the lens of the global development of textiles.