Tl;dr — A worthwhile read on how the erosion of political norms, specifically those of tolerance and forbearance, are putting our democracy in a highly vulnerable place. Showcases the impact of the radicalization of the Republican party in their political strategy and behaviors on the current state of play.

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I continue to be surprised in a sense when I read books about the red flags of Trump that were published so shortly after his first inauguration to the White House. I was deep in grad school and simply was not paying attention to national politics (because they had previously not needed much paying attention to.) Now I’m playing catch up.

I recently read How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt for a local book club. This is one of many books that I’ve read since Trump returned to the White House, and while all have overlaps, they each do offer something unique in their analysis and approach to understanding what’s going on.

This book focused on how the breakdown of the fundamental norms of tolerance and forbearance break democracies. In the modern era, authoritarians don’t come to power through military coups, but rather through elections (as has also been observed in most books of this genre). Once in power, norms which were once well guarded are eroded. Democracies aren’t sustained by only a constitution; they need politicians who also “respect the game” so to speak. Trump, of course, does not. Trump, of course, isn’t the only president to flout established norms so flagrantly; but he’s the only one to do so to this degree and violate so many.

How Democracies Die also explains how changes in our primary system has also allowed extremist characters into the presidential race. In the early US political parties and elites chose the party’s candidates; today, primaries are open and binding, selecting for extremists and opening the race to people like Trump. It’s not that these kinds of people have not tried to infiltrate politics in the past, but they previously had no viable path to be the finalists. Sometimes, elitism has benefits for the greater good.

My big area of contention with this book comes at the end, when Levitsky and Ziblatt explain the modern radicalization of the GOP, which has contributed significantly to the rise and resilience of Trump the last decade. While their claim rings true at first blush, I’m not convinced by what they are claiming due to what I see as an obvious blind spot in their analysis: the radicalization of the left-wing of the Democratic party.

shows some of this data in this fascinating talk (you can see clearly the extreme shift of Democrats at 4:50 — the whole talk is great if you have some time). This same pattern is also shown in a study this year, concluding “US left was 31.5% more socially liberal in 2024 compared to 1988, while the US right was only 2.8% more conservative.” So, while it’s clear from GOP actions that the right has become more radicalized in political behavior, particularly in playing constitutional hardball and pushing legal limits like a toddler, Democrats have become way more progressive in their political views in recent decades. To simply say that the GOP’s behavioral radicalization is the only source of the political problems today is naive at best and dishonest at worst. This fundamental lack of self-awareness among Democrats is part of the reason they can’t figure out why they keep losing.

Overall though, this was a fantastic book with an original analysis that was highly informative for understanding why the Trump era has been so detrimental to our country. It’s clear why it is a New York Times bestseller. Definitely worth a read if you haven’t yet read it.

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Published: January 2018

Publisher: Crown

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of a New Elite (2023) by Musa al-Gharbi | Read my review

• Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping A Democracy (2025) by | Read my review

August came and went but the books continue to pile up on my TBR list. This month we have a post-war artist’s summer, how politics broke higher ed, fish intelligence, the warped reality of social media, freedom of choice, the future of genomics, backyard nature, and everything we know about why we don’t know.

Happy reading!

A Vast Horizon: Artists and Lovers, Freedom and War

by Anna Thomasson

Published July 2026 from Pegasus Books

I recently saw this reviewed in the New York Times and it sounded interesting. Something like a post-war artist orgy-like summer. Count me curious.

What Happened to College?: How Politics Broke Higher Education and What We Can Do to Fix It

by

Published August 2026 from Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster

I’m always on the lookout for higher education books, and this one sounds like a great read on the political problems in higher ed. I’m happy to share I’ll be speaking with him next month for — stay tuned for details!

Smart as a Fish: The Unseen Intelligence Beneath the Water

by Tyrone Lucon-Xiccato

Publishing May 2027 from

I came across this book on Substack and I love the cover and you know I am always interested in deep dive books on animals, so this was a quick add.

The Story of Your Life: How Social Media Shapes the Way We Experience Everything

by Kathryn Jezer-Morton

Published August 2026 from Viking

I have a mixed relationship with social media, and I’ve become acutely aware of how it impacts my life, especially since getting off instagram. This book looks interesting. Though, I’ll be honest — I almost never get around to reading social media books, so we’ll see if I get to this one.

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The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life

by Sophia Rosenfeld

Published February 2025 from Princeton University Press

This looks like a really original book, looking at freedom of choice in a variety of domains in the modern world. Looks interesting.

What We Inherit: How New Technologies and Old Myths Are Shaping Our Genomic Future

by Sam Trejo and Daphne O. Martschenko

Published February 2026 from Princeton University Press

I’m always interested in genetics, so when I see a popular science book on the topic come around, I always add it. Somehow I missed this one earlier this year!

Close to Home: The Wonders of Nature Just Outside Your Door

by Thor Hanson

Published March 2025 from Basic Books

I just found this one earlier this week and boy does this look good! Wonders of nature are everywhere if you know what to look for!

Ignorance: What We Do Not Know, Cannot Know, Must Not Know, and Refuse to Know

by George G. Szpiro

Published April 2026 from Columbia University Press

I don’t recall how I came across this but it’s a great title and it really drew me in. Ignorance is a fascinating topic, and I’m curious to see how this book approaches it.

I studied Darwin’s theory of evolution extensively in graduate school. That education primarily began with Darwin and then moved forward. But the more I learn, the more interesting history becomes. And that includes the history of evolutionary thinking. Darwin may have made evolutionary theory a household concept, but he certainly wasn’t the first or only person thinking about this idea. This month’s book guide gives you a tour of evolutionary thinking, beginning with a deep history of the idea of species change, biographies of three major players — Larmarck, Wallace and, of course, Darwin — followed by two additional books that explore radical shifts in evolutionary thinking related to taxonomy and major branches of life.

Happy reading!

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On The Origin of Evolution

By John Gribbin and Mary Gribbin | Published 2022 (Prometheus Books) | Read my full review

This book proves that fresh takes on old things can still make it to publication. On The Origin of Evolution, like many books on evolutionary theory, does tell the story of how Darwin developed his theory (in brevity) but it’s situated in the context of deep global history. The take in this book is that the idea of evolution — that species change — was not first proposed in the 1800s, but actually dates back hundreds of years in countries outside of Europe. This book sets the stage for the later big players in Europe and provides a broad picture of how the theory of evolution as we know it today came to be.

The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

By Jessica Riskin | Published 2026 (Riverhead Books) | Read my full review

The Power of Life gave Lamarck and his influence on Darwin his due — it certainly changed my mind about him! The core of his theory was the idea that organisms actively shape their world rather than just passively responding to it. It’s a great example of how powerful interdisciplinary, big-picture thinking can be — and was the norm for naturalists of the day. The book does lose me a bit at the end when Riskin plummets into an uncharitable rant against modern Darwinism, but that one weak section doesn’t ruin an otherwise excellent book, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants a fuller picture of the thinkers who contributed to evolutionary theory before Darwin discovered natural selection.

Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace

By James T. Costa | Published 2025 ( s) | Read my full review

Radical by Nature finally gives Alfred Russel Wallace his due outside of Darwin’s shadow, and it’s a hell of a read. Costa traces Wallace’s whole career through his extraordinary field work, made even more extraordinary by the fact that he lacked the money or connections that propped up most Victorian naturalists. It also shows how incredibly gracious Wallace was about giving Darwin the prize of being first — no bitterness, just genuine excitement that his ideas were even in the conversation, and real deference to Darwin as the senior scholar. Like Lamarck’s book above, this one gives a brilliant naturalist the space to showcase his influential work.

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The Reluctant Mr. Darwin

By | Published 2006 (W. W. Norton)

In your choice of Darwin biographies, you have many to choose from. But this one was recommended to me by , who has probably read all of them. It’s written by the brilliant author, David Quammen, and is a comprehensive history of Darwin’s work across his life that led to his theory of evolution and the publication of Origin. It’s also a great compliment to Wallace’s biography to see both sides of the late-breaking discoveries prior to the publication of Origin. It’s a fantastic and quick read.

Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science

By Carol Yoon | Published 2009 (W. W. Norton & Company)

How do we know what animals are related? Are fish real? How do we even know the answers to these questions? Naming Nature takes you on a fantastically interesting journey of how the field of taxonomy — how we organize animals — came to be. Before the genetic era, visual similarities were primarily how family trees of animals were created. But once genetics came on the scene, taxonomy was upended. Genetics shed a bright light on convergent evolution; odd species were found to be cousins, similar looking species found to be distant relatives, and other curious findings. (And, no, “fish” aren’t real.)

The Tangled Tree

By David Quammen | Published 2018 (Simon & Schuster)

The Tangled Tree, by the brilliant Quammen, tells the story of how we came to know the modern branches of life. Using modern genetics, the main scientist in this story, Carl Woese, discovered a new branch of life in the 1970s. Also during this time was the discovery of horizontal gene transfer — a once wild idea — but one that prompted unique challenges to ideas of inheritance and evolution. A gripping history of science story that shows the modern evolution of evolution.

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Tl;dr — A good, popular history book of the great civilizations and how openness and tolerance were the basic ingredients for success. Yet, it leans more on history than applicable lessons for the modern challenges we’re facing in our own society.

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I started a book club at my local library (if you’re in the Bay Area and want to attend, check out the details here) and one of the great things about bringing people together with an interest in understanding the challenges facing society is that you get new book recommendations. And for a recent meeting, we wanted to take a more historical approach to understand what made great societies, rather than only what makes great societies fall — which has been a hot topic of books during the Trump era..

That book we read was Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages by Johan Norberg. In his book he covers all the great civilizations, from Athens and Rome to the Dutch Republic and the Anglosphere. Across all the societies he spotlights, he makes the case for a clear connection among them: openness.

This openness to new ideas brings along with it tolerance to diverse and innovative ideas. Without this key feature, societies can flourish and build in the way a closed society can’t. He showed through example after example that these societies that all came to be looked at as great let in new people, took a wide view of the world, and importantly, did not impose viewpoints.

I feel as though Norberg missed an opportunity here to hit on another commonality that came with the downfall of each of these societies and should be an important lesson. As each of these societies went past their peak, they all became more closed. This we know from other historical books on the fall of great societies and especially those that morph into authoritarian regimes. But in these stories I see a specific form of closeness: the imposition of state religion.

It’s not clear to me why this was not addressed. It doesn’t seem from my searching that Norberg is particularly religious, as I originally assumed was the case for why he didn’t hit on this (to me) obvious point. Religion is a restrictive ideologically when imposed by the state; it’s a key mechanism by which leaders impose censorship, rules, and closed societies that lead them to inevitably fall from the top and cease to be inspirations.

I very much enjoyed this book. It’s a great read and an excellent overview of great civilizations. If you’ve done extensive reading on places like Athens, Rome, the Dutch Republic, etc you may not find this all that in depth — it’s a great popular book on the topic. I do feel like the book kind of missed the mark promised in its subhead though: the lessons didn’t really come together as much as I expected, and the conclusion was quite brief for the size of the book. It left me wondering what we can learn and apply right now, as we see many of the warning flags flying in our own great society.

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Published: May 2025

Publisher: Penguin Press

Format: Hardcover

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• The Idea Machine: How Books Build Our World and Shape Our Future (2025) by Joel J. Miller | Read my review

• Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present (2024) by Fareed Zakaria | Read my review

Tl;dr — A genuinely fascinating book, and wonderfully researched and sourced. Hao meticulously documents the past decade of OpenAI’s history, and the tensions that arise (and boil over) among its nonprofit vision, corporate reality, and drama of maturity. A great read, yet fundamentally the same story as every other mega tech company in the modern era.

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Like many people, AI has become technologically intertwined with my life, despite not actively seeking it out. It seems that every app I use has some new AI thing integrated, including the Google Docs I’m writing this on which has an annoying AI pop up every time my cursor hovers over the bottom of the screen (please if you know how to turn this off, let me know). Employers push AI workflows. Forecasters say us white collar workers will be out of jobs in two years. Perhaps, as some predict, we all may just be dead in five years because the AI will kill us all.

I’m a “late adopter” of tech. I use technology, and I do use AI to some extent, but I don’t orient my life around it or seek the latest new thing. I’m not particularly jazzed about new products. I don’t get wrapped up in the hype. But it’s undeniably a massive societal shift worth paying attention to to a degree given its impact on us all. I’ve been meaning to read Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao, and I finally got around to it last week.

The book is specifically focused on OpenAI and the tumultuous history of the company over the past decade (the book ends at the end of 2024 and was released in 2025), but it also demonstrates just how much was going on research and tech-wise prior to November 2022 when AI became a global phenomenon with OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT to the public. Since then, the past four years have unleashed increasingly powerful AI; its controversy growing in tandem with its promise.

Empire of AI is a long read — a healthy 400+ pages of reading, meticulously researched and sourced. It’s an impressive book. Hao organizes the book into four parts: the early history of the nonprofit version of OpenAI; the rapid rise and its turn to profit; the tension between safety and capitalism; and the drama of CEO Sam Altman’s brief ouster and return. The book is not necessarily in chronological order — its chapters and parts organized more thematically than chronologically — but it’s relatively easy to follow as it’s punctuated by clear numbered milestones between GPT releases, pre- and post-ChatGPT release, and Altman’s ouster.

What the book reveals is simultaneously interesting, and yet, completely expected. An idealistic nonprofit becomes destabilized and steeped in drama as tensions between mission, profit, and safety. Is it really a surprise that a quixotic dream that turned out to be perhaps the most powerful and impactful technology yet unleashed on Earth got sucked into the machine of capitalism? Not really. But it sure makes for a good story.

One particularly fascinating aspect of all this is the scale of the AI operation. It’s hard to really wrap your head around just how much data, energy, and hardware are needed to produce these models that we interface with so casually on our computers. I am not an expert in this area but it seems to be that something must soon fundamentally shift with regard to how these models scale, so as to become more efficient, or they might actually hit a wall of what we have available. It reminds me of high-energy physics where we need more and more energy and bigger and bigger facilities to keep making progress. Will that happen with AI? I’m sure the AI will fix it (along with everything else, right?).

This was a genuinely fascinating book and wonderfully done. Yet it feels like what happened with OpenAI is fundamentally the same as most other Silicon Valley tech history books I’ve read. Early dreams are discarded as profit and product take precedence; founding leadership is not the same leadership needed for a mature company, and thus drama ensues as the company works to transition; there’s the overlooked human and resource damages of the company’s ambitions. The story of OpenAI is the same one as every other massive tech company; the only difference is that it is making a product that can unleash utopia or destruction — then again, don’t they all?

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Published: May 2025

Publisher: Penguin Press

Format: Hardcover

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism (2025) by Sarah Wynn-Williams | Read my review

• Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube’s Chaotic Rise to World Domination (2022) by Mark Bergen | Read my review

After a lull of reading the last monthish, I feel like I’m back in the groove of reading and adding books to my TBR. This month, I have deep dives into the ocean — and the word of parasites; the history of the internet, newspapers, and reading; and even a response book to the youth mental health crisis.

Happy reading!

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The Laws of Thought: The Quest for a Mathematical Theory of the Mind

by Tom Griffiths

Published February 2026 from Henry Holt and Co.

As much as we know about the brain, we also know very little about how it really works to produce what we experience. I’m always interested in big think books about the mind and the history of theoretical approaches in the field. Excited to get into this one.

Hidden Creatures: Luscious Leeches, Bashful Botflies, and the Wondrous, History-Shaping World of Parasites

by Dino Martins

Published July 2026 from Knopf

First, look at this cover. Second, look at the topic. This was such a quick add to my list. The wondrous world of evolution produces endless fascinating books.

Darwin: A Biography

by Janet Browne

Published June 2026 from Princeton University Press

I’ve read many biographies and history books of early naturalists, and while I’ve read a biography of Darwin, this one looks like a wonderful and comprehensive biography worth reading.

This Is for Everyone: The Unfinished Story of the World Wide Web

by Tim Berners-Lee

Published September 2025 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

History of tech is a favorite genre of mine, and who better to write a history of the internet than the inventor. Looking forward to this one.

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Empire of Ink: The Printers, Rogues, and Radicals Who Invented the American Newspaper

by Alex Wright

Published June 2026 from Basic Books

I’m a big fan of newspapers and hope they make a comeback in the digital age. Excited to learn more about their history.

Restoring Childhood: How to Set Kids Free in the Age of Anxiety

by Peter Gray

Publishing September 2026 from Thesis

There’s some beef happening online between Peter Gray who is advocating against Jon Haidt’s technology/social media restrictions for kids, with Gray arguing that kids should have freedom online too. Curious to read the other side.

The Dark Frontier: Unlocking the Secrets of the Deep Sea

by Jeffrey Marlow

Published April 2026 from Random House

The ocean is a fascinating place that we know quite little about relative to other unworldly places. After reading Science on a Mission, I can’t wait to learn more.

Reading Matters: A History for the Digital Age

by Joel Halldorf

Published June 2026 from NYU Press

I recently read The Idea Machine and loved it, so I was excited to come across another history book on the topic to see what more there is to learn and get another creative perspective.

Tl;dr — A great read on the life and evolutionary thinking of Lamarck, going far beyond the caricature of his work that is often presented post-Darwin. The book’s last section focused on the evolution of evolutionary theory after Lamarck I found uncharitable; but nonetheless a book I highly recommend on the history of evolutionary thinking.

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I recently read a biography of Alfred Russel Wallace and learned much more about his evolutionary thinking than I had previously been exposed to. When you learn evolutionary theory today, you learn about Darwin and the thinkers that came after him to refine his theory of natural selection. But it’s often on you to read the history to find out what came before (next month’s book guide will almost certainly be one on the history of evolutionary thinking — stay tuned!).

When I came across The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck by Jessica Riskin, it was an instant addition to my reading list. History of science is one of my favorite genres of books because you gain so much insight into current science knowing the deep history of thinkers before. Although not formally a biography of Lamarck, or at least not marketed as one, it mostly is but with additional context of the burgeoning field of biology — a term Lamarck coined.

Lamarck, like most early naturalists, had the privilege of being a polymath in a way that is almost impossible today. His career spanned botany, zoology, and meteorology, publishing vast and influential works, including his own evolutionary theory the year Darwin was born. What all of these naturalists — Lamarck, Wallace, and Darwin alike — all have the benefit of interdisciplinary curiosity and practice in a way that is extremely difficult in today’s modern scientific environment, at least in one’s early career. Today many who do bridge disciplines do so only post-tenure. But the benefit of interdisciplinary thinking is bigger thinking; the kind that affords grand theories and lasting insights like Lamarck’s.

His theory of evolution was centered on the concept that species’ traits change as a result of their wills, their agency. The use and disuse of characteristics can be passed on, therefore allowing species to change. The grand idea was that animals shape the world around them. They are not passive recipients of the environment. He actually never used the term “acquired traits” and the famous giraffe example appears passingly in one text of his — despite these things being perhaps what he is most famous for.

That’s unfortunate because, as with nearly everything in science, the right answer doesn’t come in a vacuum. Many ideas in Lamarck’s theory can be seen in Darwin’s and later refinements of modern evolutionary biology.

Yet, you wouldn’t necessarily get that impression from the last part of the book.

Before I criticize the last section of the book, I want to say that this is a great book that I learned a lot from. It’s a good history of Lamarck’s theory and life, giving far more details that I had previously been exposed to. I see his work much more positively than I did before; before I knew almost nothing but the caricature of him and his work. Riskin does a fabulous job here.

But the last section of the book — what happened after his death and through the modern synthesis — is anything but a charitable read of modern evolutionary theory in my view. She chastises Darwinists and “neo-Darwinists” for perpetuating a “reductive account of an essentially passive living world.” She asserts that core principles of modern synthesis, which forms the strong foundation of modern evolutionary theory, are “genetic determinism, the passivity of living organisms, and human inequality.”

There are of course people who perpetuate genetic determinism, which is both wholly true and wholly untrue given everything is, in fact, underpinned by genetics in some manner. As for passivity, I never once learned throughout my thoroughly Darwinian evolutionary graduate training that animals were passive. She completely misses the entirety of the “extended phenotype” concept popularized by Dawkins, and of which I find Lamarck’s theory remarkably prescient (and was waiting for that connection which never came). And finally, human inequality is in a sense just genetic variation. It becomes moralized when you moralize traits. No one is mad about human height inequality because we choose not to moralize. It’s only a problem when it talks about traits we value in our current culture.

I was quite disappointed by this last section because it presented an opportunity to show the thread of evolutionary thinking far before Darwin and Wallace, and how core concepts continued into modern biology. But the only thing that seems to be carried forward from Lamarck is epigenetics, which I don’t find convincing evidence for in humans. What a shame it is that a great thinker is reduced to a single contentious post-hoc, “see, see, epigenetics!!” rather than credited for truly advanced thinking on species change that can be seen throughout the whole of modern evolutionary theory just because some people see post-Darwinian thinkers as bad people. It’s odd.

Despite that, you should definitely read the book if you want to learn about great thinkers who helped develop evolutionary theory over hundreds of years. I found the book insightful. Fundamental disagreement with a small part of a book doesn’t mean it’s a bad book.

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Published: March 2026

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (2023) by James T. Cota | READ MY REVIEW

• The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (2006) by David Quammen

I’ve been on a big kick of reading more history and civics-related books since Trump’s second inauguration and his assault on our institutions, norms, and constitution. I’ll be honest: I simply wasn’t paying close attention during his first term when I was deep in grad school. But I’m catching up and reading widely. This month, in the spirit of 250 years (plus a few weeks) of the U.S., I bring you a reading list of some of my favorite books I’ve read on the topic of democracy. I welcome additional recommendations in the comments.

Happy reading!

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Peak Human: What We Can Learn From History’s Greatest Civilizations

By Johan Norberg | Published 2025 from Atlantic Books

This is an enjoyable read that spans the great civilizations from Athens to the present “anglosphere.” The goal of this book is not so much the decline of civilizations — which it does cover — but what allowed great civilizations to thrive. The primary thread across these civilizations’ accent is the openness and tolerance of ideas. Also unsurprising that the common thread in their decline is religious imposition by the state and a closing to new ideas. A really engaging read that is a nice compliment to the next book on my list.

Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present

By Fareed Zakaria | Published 2024 from W. W. Norton & Company | Read my review

This is a really great read covering the last few hundred years of revolutions that set the context to understand the modern shifts and populist revolutions we’re now witnessing across the world. I don’t think the arguments of Zakaria are necessarily highly original per se, but I think the book is a wonderful collection of these arguments set in an enlightening historical context. It’s highly detailed and informative. One part I did find particularly insightful was his analysis of the US in a downfall state as the global power. The rapid rise of China, the return of Russia, all pose major shifts in the global order.

How Democracies Die

By Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt | Published 2018 from Crown

I continue to be surprised in a sense when I read books about the red flags of Trump that were published so shortly after his first inauguration to the White House. I was deep in grad school and simply was not paying attention to national politics (because they had previously not needed much paying attention to.) Now I’m playing catch up. This book was fantastic, focusing on how the breakdown of the fundamental norms of tolerance and forbearance break democracies; democracies aren’t sustained by only a constitution. A fantastic book with an original analysis.

On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century

By Timothy Snyder | Published 2017 from Crown | Read my review

This book has had a second life since Trump’s second accent to the presidency and you’ve surely seen this book around. Snyder uses history — our greatest teacher — to outline 20 ways in which one should act to resist an authoritarian, fascist takeover of our government. It’s crucial to remember that modern authoritarians come into power by democratic means. Democracies die when power is concentrated, conformity is demanded, terror is weaponized for an agenda to slowly strip freedoms, and reality is constantly distorted.

Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping Democracy

By Joyce Vance | Published 2025 from Dutton | Read my review

Vance’s book explains the current constitutional crisis at hand, why it is in fact a crisis, and what we should be paying attention to. She also, importantly, explains what we can do as individuals. They come down to quite basic things (similar to Timothy Snyder’s recommendations in his book): community engagement, patriotism and the belief in our government, vote, etc. I found this to be an incredibly clear, concise, and informative book. As a former US attorney, she has deep experience and knowledge about how our government was set up to work, and what Trump is doing to undermine our democracy and its institutions. She calls on the nation to revive civics education so younger generations recognize what is happening — and what is possible — given that they have only known dysfunction in the current century.

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Tl;dr — A wonderful, engaging read on why you should read the classics. Simultaneously counters leftist critiques of the “great books” while reclaiming them from right-coded arguments. Original, interesting, and a great read.

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If you’re subscribed to my Substack, it’s likely because you have an interest in non-fiction books — it’s the whole brand, after all. But, lately I’ve been a bit… fiction curious. I’ve read only two fiction books in the past decade, and it’s for two reasons: first, there’s an opportunity cost for learning factual information, and two, I don’t know what I want to even read.

On the latter point, there is a reasonable place to start: the so-called “great books.” The great books have been experiencing a bit of a resurgence as civic education and classical education are becoming popular reform philosophies. Last year, I saw that was publishing What’s So Great About the Great Books?: Why You Should Read Classic Literature (Even Though It Might Destroy You) by , and I was very excited. I’m happy to share that it lived up to my expectations.

It’s unfortunate that education is becoming so politicized. Classical education and the great books in today’s educational climate are coded right. I was nervous that a book defending the great books would be just another ‘owning the libs’ take, but I was delighted by the approach of this book for a number of reasons.

Kanakia approaches her defense of the great books in a straightforward way, with each chapter answering a specific question. These range from “what do you mean by “The Great Books,” to “Aren’t the great books kinda problematic?” She addresses not only the basics about the great books but also the questions that often come from the left about the politics and authors of these books.

What I appreciate about her defense on the politics front is that, sure we can find books with perfect politics written by the right kind of author who checks the correct identity and political boxes, but those books wouldn’t be great. What makes humans (and human characters) interesting, good, worth reading about, and worthy of learning something from are their imperfections. People don’t have perfect politics. They are moral contradictions. They are interesting. That’s what makes a book great.

Kanakia also makes the case that you can just… read the great books. You don’t have to be in college, or have some curriculum, or do “close reading,” or any of these complicated approaches. She advocates just reading the damn book. Read it. Enjoy it. Or not. But it takes the pressure off. Reading doesn’t need to be overly complicated, even if you’re reading great books.

I also enjoyed her perspective. She’s not an academic with some interest in education reform or even educational approaches that may or may not include the great books. Since the book was published with an academic press, I assumed she was a professor of English or something similar. But she is a writer who made it her personal mission to read as many of the great books as she could to become a great writer.

Kanakia offers a clear-eyed, reasonable defense for reading the great books. It was also just an enjoyable read. And if her mission was to convince you, the reader, to actually read the great books, I’d say she did that too. I haven’t actually read one yet, but I bought two since I read it! It’s a step.

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Published: May 2026

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Format: Hardcover

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Picasso’s War: How Modern Art Came to America (2022) by Eakin Hugh | READ MY REVIEW

• The Cradle of Citizenship: How Schools Can Help Save Our Democracy (2026) by James Traub | READ MY REVIEW

Tl;dr — A must read memoir for your TBR. Beautifully written and offers profound insights on the human condition.

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Regular readers know how much I love a good memoir. It’s an incredibly vulnerable act to share difficult and intimate parts of yourself with the world. It also seems as though it would be incredibly challenging to figure out how to put your experiences into a linear format for readers, or find some broadly applicable lesson learned that you can share.

It doesn’t have to be that way though. Things in Nature Merely Grow is not a typical memoir in the narrative sense. Yes, it has a focus on a particular experience, something thematic to hold it all together. But it’s atypical in approach, at least from the many memoirs I’ve read. A deviation from the norm.

Yiyun Li’s memoir is centered on the suicide of her sons; her experience of them and her perspectives on them. But what the memoir doesn’t do is pack up her tragedy in a tidy story of perseverance, silver linings, and triumphant overcoming. It’s more of a self-observation of moving through life after a mother’s children both decide to no longer continue living. Her tragedy is immense, and perhaps nearly impossible to understand. She does not attempt to give you anything but her experience.

I cannot relate to her exact experience (I’m sure few can), yet her memoir was profound in its offerings. I’ve never before marked up a memoir so much. I usually read through as a story, perhaps highlighting a handful of sentences throughout. But Li writes so beautifully and has such deep insights into the human condition I found myself highlighting throughout every chapter. I’ve never related to the feelings in a memoir so much before.

If you’re a fan of memoirs, I cannot recommend this one enough. It’s obvious why this won the Pulitzer Prize. What I cannot understand is why it took me a year to come across it so that I could read it. Certainly this book is making it on my top ten book list for 2026. Easily.

Published: May 2025

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage (2026) by Belle Burden | READ MY REVIEW

• Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness (2020) by Catherine Cho | READ MY REVIEW

Welcome to the many new subscribers that have accumulated during my impromptu summer break in June. While I managed to read just one little book in May (a fantastic one), I got a few in this past month, and added several to my TBR list. Over the past month I added books on AI, hormones, death, the university, and more.

Happy reading!

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1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World

By Liaquat Ahamed

Published June 2026 from Penguin Press

There’s something enchanting about the 19th century. It may be in part because most of the books I read documenting this era focus on high society and intellectual development, it may also be because so much was changing in this century. 1873 looks like a fascinating read, and hopefully an enjoyable one given its prize-winning status.

The God Test: Artificial Intelligence and Our Coming Cosmic Reckoning

By Robert Wright

Published June 2026 from Simon & Schuster

I literally heard about this book on Robert Wright’s podcast as he was complaining about how listening to podcasts about a book makes someone less likely to buy it. No me apparently! I’m not all that interested in books about AI, but give it an evolutionary spin and sign me up.

Signals: The Hidden Power and Secret Language of Hormones – A Scientific Guide to Understanding How the Body Talks to Itself

By Saira Hameed

Published May 2026 from Harper

I’ve been keen on learning more about the science of our health and I know surprisingly little about hormones outside of the reproductive cycle. I can’t recall where I came across this book, but it looks great.

Morbid: Debunking Modern Longevity Science

By Saul Justin Newman

Publishing August 2026 from MIT Press

I’m a bit of a skeptic when it comes to the goal of living longer — both in terms of whether we can and whether we should. This topic has been quite popular over the last couple of years in publishing, but I’ve been picky about which books to read. I came across this one and both the approach and thesis of the book are right up my alley (even if a bit of confirmation bias is driving this!).

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The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution

By Jesse Wegman

Published June 2026 from Celadon Books

I’ve been on a bit of a civics and history kick this year and, despite having several books on the founding and founders on my TBR pile, I’ll add this one to it.

The University: A History in Stone, Silk, and Blood

By William Whyte

Publishing August 2026 from Harvard University Press

I love a good book on the history of higher ed but this looks very very cool, taking a look at what makes the university a university through the details that have become symbols of the university itself. I genuinely can’t wait for this one to come out!

The Traveler: One Man’s Quest for Humanity from the South Seas to Revolutionary Paris

By Andrea Wulf

Published June 2026 from Knopf

I’ve become a sucker for early naturalist adventure biographies (currently reading The Power of Life) and I’ll certainly take another one for my collection!

All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir

By Emilee Hackney

Publishing July 2026 from Penguin Press

I’m always on the look out for a curl-up-and-read woman’s memoir and this is my add to my TBR list for this month. As always, drop your recs in the comments.

So I’ve finished a grand total of… drum roll… zero books this month. None. I’ve read some but just have not felt like reading all that much. I’ve been having a hard time getting into some books and just can’t find something that is hooking me in. But I’ve still come across a number of books that have been added to my list, including a few memoirs and history books, which look fantastic. Tell me in the comments: what is the best book you’ve read recently? I need some inspiration!

Happy reading!

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Keeper of My Kin: Memoir of an Immigrant Daughter

by Dr. Ada Ferrer

Published May 2026 from Scribner

I love a good memoir and this one is showing up everywhere. I’ve particularly enjoyed immigration memoirs and this one might be something I pick up soon to try and kickstart my summer reading.

How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University

by Theo Baker

Published May 2026 from Penguin

This book has really been everywhere in the higher education space yet I admit I have no idea what the event is that prompted this but I’m interested in finding out. I am a bit skeptical though — something about it feels like a media grab from the author, but I’ll have to read to find out.

The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

by Jessica Riskin

Published March 2026 from Riverhead Books

Oh how I love history of biology! Despite having read so much on this topic there is always something new to learn, a new perspective to take, that illuminates some aspect of the well-known narrative we all know. Honestly I’m not sure how I missed this earlier this year!

Beginnings: How Pregnancy, Birth, and Motherhood Shaped Our Species

by Tesla Monson

Publishing April 2027 from Flatiron Books

I came across this doing research for my own book and man do I not want to wait a year for this to come out! Give me all the evolution of primate books, please!

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Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better

by David Epstein

Published May 2026 from Riverhead Books

Ok, usually I don’t love these kinds of overly popular nonfiction books but I really enjoyed his recent NYT op-ed on this topic, and I fully endorse the idea of making the best decisions within the constraints you have, and not spending too much time making most decisions. There seems like there will be practical insights in this I’m interested in.

Things in Nature Merely Grow

by Yiyun Li

Published May 2025 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

This book has been making the rounds and it looks devastating. A mother’s memoir of losing both of her children to suicide as teens. I plan to pick this up asap.

Return of the Oystercatcher: Saving Birds to Save the Planet

by Scott Weidensaul

Published April 2026 from W. W. Norton & Company

As an adult in my mid 30s, I find myself increasingly interested in birds. I reckon this is a natural part of aging. I came across this book in the NYT book review if I recall correctly and it caught my eye!

Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future

by Dan Wang

Published August 2025 from W. W. Norton & Company

I don’t even remember where I came across this book but I’m always fascinated by what is happening in China given their different cultural and political context.

Today I have another mini reviews post wherein I write a one paragraph review of books that I’ve read and don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason. This post covers three books that I read last fall that all loosely fall within the theme of politics and truth.

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Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart (2025, Bloomsbury Publishing)

This was one of the books that I most looked forward to reading last year. One of the book clubs I participate in chose it and was excited to read and discuss. Unfortunately I didn’t love the book. I wanted to love it. The topic is of great interest to me but the reporting was anything but objective. Of course I expect a certain degree of perspective in books like these — the author clearly has a position — but It is framed more as reporting of a movement, yet was filled with hyperbolic language. Much of the book was reports of her visits to MAGA events but I felt that it never really came together as a cohesive story.

Authoritarians in the Academy: How the Internationalization of Higher Education and Borderless Censorship Threaten Free Speech by (2025, Johns Hopkins University Press)

It’s no secret that higher education is a business. It may be a non-profit, but US universities are focused on growth and operate in a very corporate manner focused on their interests that aren’t often driven by pure knowledge goals. Part of that business is admitting international students (who pay full price) and opening satellite campuses to “spread democracy” to other nations. The result is pressure on free speech and inquiry in the academy. McLaughlin, a senior scholar at , describes various speech cases that have shown the limits on a foundational freedom as a result of international relationships within the academy. A fascinating book. I spoke at length with her last year about her book, which you can read and watch below.

Free the Inquiry

When Authoritarianism Meets the Academy

In a recent Heterodox Academy webinar, I spoke with Sarah McLaughlin, Senior Scholar of Global Expression at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), about her new book, Authoritar…

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a year ago · 19 likes · Nicole Barbaro Simovski, Ph.D.

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth by (2021, Brookings Institution Press)

I was super late to the reading party for this book but it lived up to its expectations. I had fully intended to write a full review of it, but it just never got off the ground and now it’s been nearly a year since I finished it. We read this as part of the staff book club I run as a foundation for discussing the core truth seeking function of the academy we advocate for. Rauch’s book is broader, bridging both the academy and media, but the point is the same across both: without a shared truth we’re spinning our wheels. He calls for what the title of the book suggests: a constitution of knowledge to ground fundamental knowledge institutions in the same way our democracy is grounded in our constitution. It’s a great and timeless book.

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Tl;dr — A well-written, informative book on how immigrants assimilate in the U.S. using big data. But some obvious liberal bias to fit the conclusions into a neat narrative.

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I don’t read much on immigration policy, but do hold what I think are generally left-center views. Immigrants and immigration are a net good for our country; we need appropriate rule at the borders; and should make reasonable pathways to citizenship. No, I’m not a policy expert so I don’t have details, but this feels like a reasonable position.

So I was interested to read Streets of Gold: America’s Untold Story of Immigrant Success, by Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, when it came up for a book club I was participating in. This came out a few years ago but I had not previously heard of it. Abramitzky and Boustan make the case that immigrants assimilate into U.S. society, are upwardly mobile, and improve our economy with no downsides to U.S. born.

It’s a decidedly liberal book, especially in an era of anti-immigration rule and rhetoric, but they take it so far as to sometimes unfairly overlook what their own data say to fit the “myth-busting” story line they want to make in their book, rather than taking the data for what they are, where some findings may (gasp) support a more conservative position. Outcomes don’t always or often map wholly onto one side of the aisle, and pretending or forcing them makes me distrust the honesty of the entire book.

I won’t detail each instance of this bias but I’ll note a few areas that particularly stood out to me. In chapter five, they are discussing the upward mobility of children of immigrants and U.S. born of the same socioeconomic starting point in the U.S. So, for example, they compare U.S. born children of, say, parents who are in the 25th percentile of income with immigrants whose parents are also of the 25th percentile of income in the U.S. In the same breath they note that many contemporary immigrants are “under placed” in the U.S. – they may be college educated professionals in their home country yet cannot obtain the same status once they immigrate. The immigrant children out perform the U.S. born. Why? The authors argue that immigrants are more likely to geographically locate in big cities where there are more jobs and opportunities for their children. I agree. But the second reason is “transmission” rather than simply naming general intelligence which correlates with job outcomes. Underplaced immigrant children are not starting at the same line as rural U.S. children. The authors lack honesty about this.

Their analysis also attempts to skirt around the (conservative) claim that immigrants depress wages and opportunities for U.S. workers. Their own analysis showed that an influx of Cuban immigrants did in fact depress wages for local workers but, the authors convinced themselves, this doesn’t really matter because local workers just moved out of the city and wages rebounded later. Nothing to see here right? They did this same thing with highly educated workers, claiming that an influx of STEM academics from the former USSR did actually “take jobs” from U.S. academics but those new immigrant professors created new knowledge opportunities for existing academics. If your claim is busting the myth that immigrants take U.S. jobs, you can’t just wash over that with other benefits. Both can be true if you are doing a more honest analysis where conclusions don’t fit into a neat political box.

All that said, this was a really enjoyable book and these biased examples are just a handful out of a lot of rich data and insights they provide in their book. It was a very well-written book making it a quick and enjoyable read. I’d definitely recommend it for those interested in this topic. The book I want to read next is a Thomas Sowell like book on this topic for a counter perspective.

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Published: May 2022

Publisher: Public Affairs

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• We Have Never Been Woke: The Cultural Contradictions of A New Elite (2023) by Musa al-Gharbi | Read my review

• Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City (2021) by Andrea Elliott

• Beautiful Country: A Read with Jenna Pick: A Memoir (2021) by Qian Julie Wang

So, April flew by in about four days and I barely added enough books to make this post! Highly unusual I must say. But there are some really great new additions that I’m looking forward to reading soon. This month, I bring you books on math, plants, homes, evidence, space, education, and a little biography.

Happy reading!

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Open Space: From Earth to Eternity – the Global Race to Explore and Conquer the Cosmos

By David Ariosto

Published March 2026 from Knopf

I saw this in the New York Book Review and it piqued my interest. The review suggested it was overly positive and not critical enough but I do like meta books on the space industry like Ashlee Vance’s When the Heavens Went on Sale (which I’d highly recommend).

How Flowers Made Our World: The Story of Nature’s Revolutionaries

By

Published March 2026 from Viking

Flower evolution? Honestly I needed nothing else to convince me to put this on my list. The evolution and role of flowers is incredible and I’m pumped to have a full length book to read on this topic.

Dwelling on Earth: The Past and Future of the Places We Call Home

By Stefan Al

Published April 2026 from W. W. Norton & Company

I spend a lot of time at home so why not learn more about the concept. I like books that analyze banal concepts in interesting ways. Plus, it’s from one of my favorite non-fiction publishers, so I have high hopes.

Teaching America: Reflective Patriotism in Schools, College, and Culture

by Paul O. Carrese

Publishing May 2026 from Cambridge University Press

The author of this book was a speaker at ’s West Coast Conference last week and mentioned his book, so it was an instant addition to my TBR and will be a nice compliment I think to The Cradle of Citizenship I recently read.

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Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works

By Helen Pearson

Published April 2026 from

I haven’t read a book in a while on general statistics and logic to evaluate claims and understand research, so I was excited when I saw this to add as a refresher and learn something new. For those interested, I long ago did a book guide on this topic.

Huge Numbers: A Story of Counting Ambitiously, from 4 1/2 to Fish 7

By Richard Elwes

Published April 2026 from Basic Books

Popular math books are seriously underrated. There is so much history that surrounds mathematical developments, and I was pumped to see this — and it’s from Basic, so chances are sky high it will be great.

Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp

By

Publishing May 2026 by Island Press

I’ve been learning more about kelp since living in California because of the giant kelp forests, and it also came up in a book I cannot recall but that I read in the past few months. You all know I love deep dives on specific things so of course it’s on the TBR.

Spinoza, Atheist

By Steven Nadler

Published April 2026 from

I’ve been wanting to read more bios of historical figures and this seemed like a unique approach to understanding Spinoza; plus the title caught my eye when looking through Princeton’s catalogue recently!

Tl;dr - Great book covering a wide range of angles to understand wildfires out west, including frontline firefighting experience, indigenous fire management, modern fire management, and environmental policy.

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When you grow up east of the Mississippi, wild fires don’t take up much space in your day. It’s rainy, snowy and icy (if you’re north enough) — and wet. It rains. It’s humid. But then I moved to Salt Lake City where it’s literally a desert. A very dry desert. Out west, fires burn. Smoke fills the air. And wildfires are part of the weather. Smoke forecasts are looked at with the same regularity as the precipitation and temperature when making outdoor plans.

Despite living out west for the last six years, I’ve yet to read much about wildfires until now. So, I picked up When It All Burns: Fighting Fire in a Transformed World by Jordan Thomas who takes field research to the next level to better understand how people shape fires and how fires have shaped the land.

Thomas is a PhD student in anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and joined the Los Padres Hotshots for a six-month stint during a record-breaking fire season. Thomas ties together memoir, anthropology, and policy to explain how indigenous populations used fire to shape the land, how the relationship with fire changed in a post-colonial America, and how today’s climate changes and policies have served as a catalyst for the mega fires we’re experiencing out west today.

He organizes his book into four parts, covering training, firefighting, consequences, and next steps (but with more interesting names). As the book progresses, a mostly memoir gives way to mostly anthropology and policy about wildfires. The memoir aspects of the book were fascinating. I didn’t know there were “hotshots” — about 100 crews across the U.S., 25 of them in California. These are the front line firefighters, working two weeks straight at at time, as close to the fire’s edge as possible, sleeping on the dirt overnight, and doing the brutal and dangerous work of trying to contain wildfires.

I learned a lot from these parts of the book, understanding how wildfires are contained, what that even means, and some of the spectacle and politics involved. For example, fires aren’t extinguished. The planes that drop retardant and water are apparently doing very little on megafires — they are a very expensive show for the public so they feel like something is happening because they can see it. But with big fires, the flames are too big and too hot for it to do anything. What the hotshots do is dig a line — manually — removing fuel and then burning from the line inward to meet the wild fire. If there is no fuel, the fire stops and it burns out. Problem is, when you have 100+ foot flames, the fire can “jump” the lines. It’s why these mega fires can take weeks to burn out.

The fire management parts were fascinating but in a different way. He’s trying to do a lot with it: describe indigenous fire practices, explain how colonialism changed fire practices out west, explain how the logging industry has changed the landscape, how private companies profit from fire, and how all of those things, in combination with climate change, has resulted in the fire emergency we now see out west.

On the one hand, he treats indigenous fire practices and the state of the landscape during those periods as a natural and good way for the western landscape to have been or be. It’s clear to me that the way forests were managed under indigenous practices is better than the clear cutting from logging and fire suppression goals of the modern U.S. both for forest health and safety; but I also don’t understand why it’s assumed that management is needed at all. Forests managed themselves for hundreds of millions of years. Indigenous intervention is seen as an inherent good, while colonial intervention is seen as an inherent bad. Something that seems to get overlooked in these conversations.

That said, I do agree with Thomas that the current state of play is not good, especially in light of climate change. Much of that can be attributed to not only the climate realities we’re facing out west — drier land and hotter temperatures — but also the commercial logging industry that has decimated the health of forests. This is also argued persuasively in Suzanne Simard’s Finding the Mother Tree where she too explains how logging has exacerbated these problems in British Columbia, Canada.

Overall this is a highly enjoyable read. I learned a lot, both on the fire fighting side and on the anthropological and policy side. It does fit into the bigger genre of memoirs I’m noticing whereby a white collar worker finds some spark during the pandemic to do manual labor and then write about it, but even a cliche can make for a great book.

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Published: May 2025

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest (2021) by Suzanne Simard

• Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World―and Us (2021) by Patrick Roberts

Welcome to the first mini reviews post wherein I write a one paragraph review of books that I’ve read and don’t feel like writing a full review for whatever reason. Because of my inconsistency in posting the last two years, I have a couple dozen books that I’ve read yet never reviewed. Some of these are memoirs, like today’s post, that are wonderful but I don’t love writing full reviews of memoirs all the time; other times I read the book on audio (which I’ve recently stopped doing) and was too distracted so don’t have all that much to say; other times they just fell through the crack and now it’s been forever since I finished it.

So, to get caught up, I’ll be doing a post like this every so often, attempting to group them in some loose theme. This month: women’s memoirs.

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Raising Hare: A Memoir by Chloe Dalton (2025, Pantheon)

A woman stumbles upon an abandoned baby hare, takes it in, raises it, and finds the next several years of her life willfully at the mercy of co-habitation with these wild animals. This was a fascinating memoir for a variety of reasons. There’s this idyllic quality to living in the countryside with wild animals like she’s in a Disney movie. There’s also the co-learning of hare development and local ecology which was also fascinating. It’s well-written and enjoyable to read. Perfect for a plane ride (my chosen location to read this!)

The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir by Michele Harper (2020, Riverhead Books)

I came across this book on many memoir must-read lists in my current quest to read wonderful women’s memoirs, and this was a great read. The focus is on the author’s experiences working in ERs as a doctor, the challenges she faced as a black woman from an abusive home to get to where she is. The stories she tells as a doctor are arresting. Her home life is difficult, but not in the way you might expect. It’s a wonderful and intimate read.

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness by Susannah Cahalan (2012, Free Press)

This is an apparently very popular book indeed! I thought it was going to be like Unshrunk, which in a way it is, but it’s mostly not. The author tells her story of her succumbing to a rare brain disease that at the time of her lucky diagnosis was commonly treated as some sort of psychological illness requiring institutionalization. It’s scary to think that if she hadn’t been in the right location with the right doctors she may have suffered and died in an institution somewhere.

The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters by Sasha Bonét (2025, Knopf)

This book was everywhere this last year and I get why. It’s one of the more unique memoirs I’ve read, weaving together family history, broader cultural critique, and her own personal experience of motherhood. She shares the legacy of motherhood in her family and how it’s been shaped by racism, slavery, and personal family narratives — and how she is trying to break those narratives with her own life and daughter. It’s extraordinarily well-researched as well, making her family come alive through the generations.

Tl;dr - A solid book on the pedagogical problems in K12 schools, going beyond the banal political polarization, and making the case for classical education in history. The presentation of the book leaves something to be desired, but good content for those interested in this topic.

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I care a lot about education, and specifically effective pedagogy. It’s clear that something is not going right in our schools. Every teacher you talk to knows it, but no one can quite figure out how to stop the dysfunction. I don’t think there is a single cause to the issues we’re seeing, but one thing is certain: if you want to fix schools — K12 and university alike — you must focus on the actual teaching that is occurring in classrooms. Everything else is superfluous without effective classrooms.

In his effort to understand what has gone wrong with schools — and how we can fix them — traveled to schools across the country to report on pedagogical approaches in history education, culminating in The Cradle of Citizenship: How Schools Can Help Save Our Democracy. His central argument? Progressive pedagogy is undermining effective learning in our schools.

Now, this isn’t a conservative bashing of progressives. Rather it’s a liberal honestly critiquing the current state of pedagogical practice that has taken hold of public schools. The most interesting central theme of his book was that progressive pedagogy is not the same as progressive politics per se. Neither is classical education an inherently christian or conservative approach. Of course they overlap substantially, but if we are to make effective change in schools, we need to get beyond the political framing and instead focus on the core of the problems.

Traub’s book contrasts progressive and classical pedagogy. Progressive pedagogy is generally follows inquiry-based learning approaches, letting the children lead; classroom lessons focus on “driving questions” that can spur discussion; and learning skills are emphasized. Classical education, in contrast, generally focuses on content knowledge; direct instruction from a subject master expert teacher; and overall more structured learning. When the former is followed, students are simply not learning foundational knowledge that allows their learning and understanding to flourish. Reading comprehension “skills” are useless, for example, if you don’t know what the words mean.

He further argues that one reason progressive pedagogy has taken hold is because few K12 teachers are subject matter experts. Rather than having a degree in their knowledge field, they are being educated to teach skills in education schools and graduate with a shallow understanding of their subject matter. To fix our schools, he argues we need to train teachers differently (but never actually details how, which I found a conspicuous absence in his conclusion), make whole books central to history instruction, emphasize facts and knowledge, and use less technology in the classroom.

His argument is sound, and I feel persuaded by the evidence he presents. But overall as a book, I thought a lot of things missed the mark. In several chapters, I wasn’t sure what his argument was. This is clearly a book in which he is advocating for a point of view, yet I have numerous places in my notes where I question what the example he is describing is trying to represent about his argument. I also felt that the middle ~10 chapters or so meandered around a variety of topics and case studies (e.g., 1619 vs 1776 reports; Florida Stop Woke Act; Racism vs anti-racism), almost as if he wrote them separately and then just pasted them together. Then, his conclusion chapter — which was the opportunity to pull it all together — felt truncated and rushed.

There’s a lot to like about the book. He provides a useful and insightful framing of a timely issue that goes beyond the banal politics of school curriculum wars. But I think he missed the mark with the presentation of his argument, making it less persuasive for folks that would have less patience to push through this book. It’s a shame because the argument is strong, and his case studies are highly illustrative of the problems in today’s classrooms when it comes to history/social studies/and civics. But, if you’re particularly interested in K12 curriculum policy, I would highly recommend reading it.

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Published: January 2026

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Format: Hardcover

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual (2025) by and Jack Schneider | READ MY REVIEW

• Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities (2018) by

Tl;dr — A fascinating and wonderful mash up of science, philosophy, and memoir to create a can’t put down book. Harden uses religious and moral concepts to frame chapters, covering the behavioral genetics of a wide range of fraught issues in today’s discourse spanning blame, responsibility, and virtue.

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Five or so years ago, I was still active on (then) Twitter and enthusiastically followed ’s careful and precise work on behavioral genetics, where she also patiently and repeatedly communicated about fraught topics. She remains my go-to expert on issues of behavioral genetics, especially when outrageous claims are made about the field and its findings. It’s also where I heard about her first book, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (2021), which remains one of my most highly recommended books, appearing on not one but three lists on this blog over the years.

I was understandably ecstatic when I heard she was publishing a second book this year, Original Sin: On the Genetics of Vice, the Problem of Blame, and the Future of Forgiveness. It may surprise folks, but I rarely look into books much at all before I read them. I listened to some of her conversion with my friend Xavier Bonilla on his Converging Dialogues podcast and religion was a huge focus. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I picked this up this past weekend.

This is one of those books that surprised me in all the best ways. If you’ve read her first book, this is going to be quite the change in style. Part of this is evident by the publishers of the books. The first by : an academic press that is notorious for well-researched, academic, yet accessible books if you have a science background. Contrast that with Original Sin, published by : a much broader, general reader publisher. This book is appropriately much less technical than her first.

But more than the publisher-appropriate style differences, this book was a mash up of sorts between general science, memoir, and philosophy. It had far more flare and style, making for a book ready to be quickly devoured.

As the subtitle suggests, she covers behavioral genetics but rather than simply approaching topics like aggression, pathology, and the like by reciting the science, the book frames each chapter by a religious or moral concept. This is also where the memoir part comes in: her religious upbringing and personal experiences through marriage and motherhood serve as key anchors to the chapter’s science and philosophical content.

Some might say that I should have seen the religion coming given the title citing christian doctrine. But I simply did not. As I joked on Substack earlier this week while in the midst of reading the book:

It literally just went right over my head.

Harden tackles a variety of moral issues throughout including how genetics are perceived to augment blame and responsibility; ethics of designer babies; challenges of motherhood and questions of development; and more. It’s broad, philosophical, intimate, and rigorous, all at once.

I really loved this book. I’ve been on a huge kick of women’s stories and memoirs in recent months (you can see them on my library, though I haven’t been reviewing them since they are my worst performing reviews on here), so Harden really pulled me in with her honesty and vulnerability, bringing in a level of intimacy uncommon in science books.

Original Sin was a delightful surprise and I commend her for taking such a different approach with this book as compared to her first. A great, easy, yet informative read to curl up with at the end of a long day.

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Published: March 2026

Publisher: Random House

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• Sociopath: A Memoir (2024) by Patric Gagne | READ MY REVIEW

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Tl;dr - A great science read for your TBR. Focused on corals, it covers their basic science, geology, fossilization, extinction, and adaptation. Well-written, interesting, and filled with stories of the author’s time in the field doing research.

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In 2020, I went snorkeling for the first time off the island of St. Thomas in the virgin islands. Growing up in Michigan, and having just moved to Salt Lake at the time, coral reefs weren’t really accessible. I remember being excited to see Finding Nemo coral reefs teeming with life. What I saw were corals, but they were really disappointing. They seemed to be deprived of life. I realize now what I saw was a graveyard of bleached, dead coral.

Coral are living animals. We often don’t think of them as such, but they are alive and also provide an environment for other shallow water life to thrive. But as the oceans warm, corals are increasingly being bleached (from too warm of water), dying, and resulting in a something more like a graveyard than a thriving seaside community. In Reefs of Time: What Fossils Reveal about Coral Survival, Lisa S. Gardiner shows us what we can learn about the long-term survival of today’s corals by looking at the past and science of corals.

Reefs of Time is one of those science books I just love, mixing science, history, and personal anecdotes from the field to give a fascinating look into what corals are, how they form, how they live, and how they die.

Corals live in the shallows off islands and coastlines, right before the water depth drops off, and often where limestone mesas have built up on the ocean floor over long periods of time. Corals, if subject to hospitable water temperatures and the right amount of sunlight, can persist for hundreds or thousands of years. The reefs that form not only provide homes for other species, but also provide erosion buffers for the shoreline.

What’s fascinating about corals, is that because of the particular known types of “zones” that they live in, scientists can learn a lot about historical ocean conditions and island formation. There is also the general principle of uniformitarianism — the idea that geological processes work similarly over time. But, because of unnatural human causes of climate change, the principle may not apply for a period of time in the future. Of course, I should have been unsurprised when I learned in this book that Darwin long ago correctly identified how atolls formed in the ocean given these principles.

Gardiner’s book covers a variety of topics related to corals across the chapters, including the basic science of corals, how coral fossils form and what we can learn from them, what causes them to die, and what causes them to persist through acute environmental changes. Of course, every modern geological/animal book delves into the current challenges posed by climate change, and Reefs of Time is no different. Although corals can adapt and persist in the face of challenges — warm years, hurricanes, etc — the difference now, Gardiner argues, is that the challenges are more frequent and often simultaneous causing a lack of recovery time that affords coral persistence long term.

This was a really interesting book, and I love these kinds of deep dive science books. It’s well-written, informative, but highly-accessible coming from an academic press (which is the norm from the wonderful ). A good science read to add to your TBR.

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Published: June 2026

Publisher:

Format: Kindle

If you think this sounds interesting, bookmark these other great reads:

• The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans (2021) by | READ MY REVIEW

• Slither: How Nature’s Most Maligned Creatures Illuminate Our World (2025) by Stephen S. Hall | READ MY REVIEW

• Jungle: How Tropical Forests Shaped the World―and Us (2021) by Patrick Roberts | READ MY REVIEW