[4] The book gives special attention to housing policy, critiquing zoning requirements that limit urban density in American cities.

[6] Jacob Bacharach panned One Billion Americans in a review for The New Republic, arguing that the policies it recommends are only loosely connected to Yglesias's central proposal to vastly increase the population of the United States.

[8] Barton Swaim of The Wall Street Journal had faint praise for Yglesias's pro-natalism, while damning his perceived hypocrisy in supporting a "left-liberal orthodoxy" that devalues the family and promotes excessive access to abortion and birth control and questioning his overall sincerity.

[9] Nathan J. Robinson in Current Affairs called it "bizarre and deranged ... utterly insane" of Yglesias to treat greater American power relative to the People's Republic of China as a legitimate goal, saying it amounted to "a belief that United Statesians are superior to others and deserve more", and that Yglesias was unwilling to even consider that America was bad and should have less power because he was "infected with the brain disease of nationalism".

[10] Conversely, Razib Khan in National Review praised Yglesias's "liberal nationalist" conviction that a strong and powerful America is good for the whole world, calling it "firmly in the traditional mainstream" versus the anti-patriotic taboos of leftist cultural elites; he did feel that Yglesias could have been more convincing in places, and seemed to take the implications of his proposals rather lightly.