26* Books for 2026

Readers,

I didn’t write a wrap-up of 2025, because we were all there, and no one needs The Clockwork Orange experience of revisiting it.

I also didn’t write a preview of 2026, because the months to come are both completely predictable and entirely not. What value would that be to you?

Instead, our team and some trusted friends put together a list of “26* Books for 2026” — a selection of texts we think might help prepare you for what’s to come.

Does this list live within my Seriously? essay cinematic universe? I think so — the intention, at least, really fits in the “250,000 years of fucking around and finding out” prism.

There are some through-lines here:

In short — like the folks who got us here, we can just do things. We can make better decisions, we can be right and also effective, we can refuse to negotiate on principles, negotiate a little more on positions, and be flexible as to the actual policies that get us to — for example — no more TB.

We’ve made a list of all of the recommended books on Bookshop, and that link is below, plus a Bookshop link to each choice. Don’t miss Libby, though — every one one of these is available (for free!) at your public library.

Thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who sent in such incredible recommendations and insisted their suggestions make the cut, even if they didn’t.

Let’s do this.

— Quinn

“There’s a million lines in this book that I think about every day, but one in particular is something like ‘You’ve either seen the evidence, or looked the other way.’

We are living through, complicit in, and paying for a genocide — aiding and abetting the war crime of our time.

But if we can’t talk honestly about chattel slavery, about the maternal birth rates for Black women vs white women, about redlined city blocks, about our inequitable schools and mortgages, how will we reckon with a human rights crime we’ve enabled, thousands of miles away, even when it’s happening live on TV?” — Quinn

“Shaped by her own experience in the fire, and by way of a hundred interviews, my friend, 4-time pod guest, fellow Millennial, and Run for Something co-founder Amanda Litman offers pretty pretty pretty sound and practical advice for leaders our age and younger who:

1) Can’t believe I Want It That Way came out 26 years ago and
2) Are navigating workplaces molded for Boomers but who want to reshape them into something sustainable — for themselves, their co-workers, and the progressive moment.“ — Quinn

“If poverty is a choice, and on the other hand, universal school lunches and electric school buses are choices, then having a cure for TB since the 1950’s and TB remaining the world’s deadliest infectious disease is absolutely a choice.

Romanticized (!) once, we (the Global North/West) made TB invisible because we basically decided to call it quits after curing ourselves, and not anyone else, including the 1.5 million Global South people who are killed by TB every single year.

A wonderful, radicalizing book about choice.“ — Quinn

“If human nature will never change, and The Long Defeat endures, then the question ‘How do you find purpose when the world feels irrevocably broken?’ will remain timely and timeless forever.

I’ve recommended this book more than any other, and the lessons are invaluable for your own morality, finding purpose, and even parenting pre-teens.

Big scary things are going to happen, specifically sometimes to us but also, more often, to people thousands of miles across our shared planet. We just get to choose how we’re going to react to them.” — Quinn

“Goddammit, this is immediately relevant all over again.” — Quinn

“Like everything else in pop culture, I was late to The Good Place, but adored it.

Years later, I’m so thankful to creator Michael Schur for putting everything he learned making the show to use in this book that is so funny and accessible that my 10 year old just inhaled it. That is…not the way philosophy books usually go.

I can’t imagine a better primer for the months and years to come: when is compromise moral? What do I owe strangers and other people’s children?“ — Quinn

“For the first 10-15 minutes of my wife’s new movie, Wicked: For Good, the Emerald City is still covered in glory and exuberance: banners and confetti and dancing, ever-present soldiers celebrate the Wizard and Glinda the Good, the new Yellow Brick Road being paved right through farmland to connect the kingdom. And everyone, save for one person alone, doing everything possible to distract you and divert your attention from the cracks in the facade.

The Giver is a novel that feels like it’s a hundred years old but wasn’t required reading for students until the late 90’s (it’s remarkable how many Gen X readers have never tangled with it).

It similarly paints a world held together through open fascism and the elimination of choice, of memory, of difference. It’s one of the most frequently banned novels, because Lois Lowry took that world and showed the cracks in it, and urges her protagonist — and us — do not be afraid, to look through, and crack them open wider.” — Quinn

“We’re pragmatic idealists here, so AOC’s quote after the 2024 elections rings true: we can’t just be right, we have to be effective.

And to be truly effective — genuinely, generationally effective, we have to win elections, and then keep more winning elections.

We can continue to burn out organizers and voters by calling every election the existential one, this time, or we can admit most of what we threatened would happen has already happened. That our norms and institutions are ashes, now, and that we have to commit to an infinite project — a framework for building something that will outlast all of us.

Finite games are played to win. Infinite games are played to keep playing.“ — Quinn

“Cat remains one of my all-time favorite podcast guests and her book is one I recommend all the time. Not only does she casually and comprehensively rewrite the entirety of evolutionary science, but forces us to confront crazy questions like, hey, how does a woman’s body actually work, and are some things different for some women than others, oh and also should we continue to assume drugs and therapies designed for men just…apply to women?

5 stars.“ - Quinn

“If you’ve seen the meme above and genuinely not been sure what it’s referencing, or that there’s maybeeeeee more to the American story than you were taught, go ahead and read this 800 page book that dissects, employs, and traces our wildly contradictory founding people and principles over the last 250 years.

It’s a page-turner and — like the 2002 Oakland A’s in reverse — this one volume successfully replaces an aggregate of other books.” - Quinn

“What if we simply agreed that no life was worth more — or less — than another? What kind and scope of hands-on health care would be required, what would it cost, and to whom, and who would possibly dedicate themselves so wholly to providing it?

Pair this one with, well, most of the others on the list, but especially with Everything is Tuberculosis.“ - Quinn

“Imagine a new health condition that would inevitably affect about 50% of the global population, forever, for most of their adult lives. You would assume (lol) we’d invest vast resources to understand it, yes?

Because we decided not to do that (again, everything is a choice), and instead to make menstruation (and menopause) the subject of enormous cultural shame, Jen Gunter, the author of the also-required The Vagina Bible, provides a near-complete history and overview of what, how, and why we talk about (and live with) menstruation, and with zero fucks given.“ - Quinn

“If you’ve ever had a beloved neighbor move out, only to be replaced by a chain-smoking monster, who steals your parking space, who blocks the stairs, who leaves bags of trash outside your door, you’ll understand the rule that proximity to precious resources amplifies the odds of violence.

You can look at the history of the world and warfare and lament, “Organized religion, man”, and be correct, but also don’t miss the role access (and lack thereof) to mountains, rivers, coastlines, and farmable land have played, and will inevitably play as climate migration really becomes a thing.” - Quinn

“I was incredibly lucky to have Clint, one of my favorite poets, teachers, and authors on the TMIQ pod recently to celebrate the new Young Reader edition of his National Book Critics Circle Award winning book, How the Word Is Passed.

I like to think of Clint as a record keeper of our record keepers. A reporter, a Black man, and father who time after time reveals our stubborn refusal to face our past, to tell our full history, much less to reckon with it.

His work before and since How The Word Is Passed (especially re: Germany) is essential to understand that how we tell our history — with something called “facts” — means everything to how we shape our choices.” - Quinn

“Weird choice? Maybe! My take-away is really that problems are soluble, and progress is possible — we have made choices, and we can make different ones.

Like Churchill (see The Splendid & The Vile), Deutsch seems to understand that it’s important to tell it like it is, with facts, but that despair won’t get us anywhere. We have no right to give up the fight, and especially when we have already come so far.” - Quinn

“Written in 1985 about TV, even more applicable today, Postman feared we’d be undone by distraction, of all things. An excerpt:

‘Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.’” - Nate

“This is the first of Philip Pullman's His Dark Material trilogy about growing up, truth, and figuring out where you stand while powerful forces fight one another.“ — Molly

From Quinn: “This is another one that’s frequently banned, because it’s NOT SUBTLE about critiquing religious authoritarianism and what happens to people and ecosystems when institutions prioritize power over humanity.”

“Read this if you want a refresher on deep empathy and beautiful language.“ — Molly

From Quinn: “I still can’t believe this was Toni Morrison’s first novel. WTF. For so viscerally showing how we have normalized violating Black bodies, please read another winner from the banned books list, and keep reading and telling important fiction.”

“A book that both informs and commiserates, this an examination of pregnancy loss in wanted pregnancies, primarily miscarriages and stillbirths, but also medically necessary abortions and other reproductive health care.

It is no secret that the country has moved backwards on many of these fronts, and Little & Long break down some of the 'how we got here.' Primarily, though, they confront one of the big adult taboos, and the societal pressures to keep these losses hidden and un-discussed.

Any book that yields understanding and empathy is a winner, and this one hits both with clarity.“ — Geoff

From Quinn: “In a post-Dobbs world, where miscarriage care and abortion care are often criminalized, the authors do a hell of a job combining personal narratives with rigorous reporting to expose these horrible choices we’ve made. Let’s make better ones.“

“I'm a notorious hard-hearted stoneface, infamous amongst friends and family for never crying at sad movies or showing any emotions where they are expected. So it was a large surprise indeed, when I choked up reading this book out loud to my wife.

Backman is a genius at sneaking up on you with profound insights in the midst of banal surroundings (see also: A Man Called Ove and Beartown), but the magic trick he pulls off here in making you care deeply for both deeply-flawed prisoners and captors in a bizarre hostage standoff is absolute sorcery.“ — Geoff

From Quinn: “We are all capable of loneliness, and overwhelming, if surprising, generosity.”

“In the 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan expanded rapidly, not just in the south, but across the midwest, where the state of Indiana was in many ways governed by the Grand Dragon, D. C. Stephenson, a petty tyrant who routinely spouted virulent racist theories, flew into red-faced tantrums when confronted, and demeaned, groped, and assaulted women.

So for no real particular reason this book feels horribly contemporary and relevant.“ — Geoff

From Quinn: “A healthy reminder that race and fascism aren’t bugs in the American programming, but features.”

“This novel is American Shakespeare, and Augustus McRae is one of the finest literary creations in our canon. In high school, my hardass AP English teacher scoffed when I chose it for my Pulitzer Prize winner we had to read each marking period. At the end of the year she admitted that she'd read it after my introduction and that it was, 'pretty darn good.'

From Mrs. Case, that was praise bordering on sanctification.“ — Geoff

From Quinn: “The theme of “how we got here by refusing to tell our fullest history but definitely romanticizing violence” continues. You don’t get many chances to engage with the mythology of the American West, and you don’t ever get a better chance than this. What’s lost when an era ends?”

“This book influenced me well before our government’s most prized institutions were burned to fucking ashes. Of course I still believe the government can be an innovator, in fact, once we — people who give a shit about other people — take it back, I think we can do a drastically better job of putting public investment to use.

Look at Operation Warp Drive — and everything that came after. We deliberately chose not only to ignore the lessons and science from such a historic achievement, and to not extend those to myriad other opportunities, but to reverse course entirely on 100 years of public health measures of every kind.

But my biggest take-away has actually always been how instrumental setting clear, measurable outcomes can be for a project, and reverse-engineering every decision, team, and process from there.“ — Quinn

“Larson is one of those non-fiction writers that makes it feel like you’re reading a novel, and while I’m not sure how he does it, I’m glad he does. It’s one thing to constantly say democracy is under threat, and to fail to protect it. It’s another to so vividly be reminded of what was required to protect it when it often seemed like the end was inevitable.

Winston Churchill was a complicated and flawed family man and leader, who failed to measure up before and again after the Blitz, but for one shining moment, his ability to help Britons understand exactly what the stakes were, to help them endure their justifiable fears, together, and to imagine how fucking good striking back might feel like, given a chance to regroup, is a big reason why Europe held (if on the rocks, yet again).

Despite Tom Hanks best efforts to immortalize the entirety of World War II, I do believe one reason we’re in a time of monsters is that my generation was the last to know, intimately, the folks who lived through and fought in that war, and who saw what fascism could do from the inside out.“ — Quinn

“We may feel impotent today to address our myriad systemic challenges, but it was a pleasure to have Elizabeth on the show last year and to geek out on the potential of multisolving and co-benefits.

No matter the future, we’re going to have to make do with far less — from institutions to dedicated civil servants of every kind — so any single investment that feeds two birds (or more) with one crumb will be essential to identify and pursue alongside coalitions who may not have otherwise found solidarity.“ — Quinn

“Predictable from me? For sure, and you’re welcome.

But hold the phone: I included Fellowship here not necessarily because of my obsession with The Long Defeat or my routine “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us“ cheerleading, but because — almost, at least in part, for its painful lack of female characters — there simply aren’t very many stories at all, much less heroic ones, with men of differing races, ages, shapes and sizes so earnestly supporting one another, all more aware than any of us their place in history, and how they got to be this reluctant but proud and devoted fellowship.

For a variety of reasons — loss, getting older, too tired for insecurities — my close guy friends and I have spent far more effort in recent years simply telling each other “I love you.” And asking, “How can I help?” But we’re old guys now, the last generation who remember seeing LOTR in the theaters and sitting with grandfathers who fucking hated Nazis, while the men younger than us have been absolutely fucking poisoned by woman-hating worm-tongues and cowards alike.

We have no right to give up the fight, and we cannot be effective without an enormous voting block like young men are, so we might as well commit to passing down the stories and examples of earnest support for one another — non-fiction and fiction alike — no matter how bleak and vast the forces rallied against us, no matter how exhausted we are from yet another existential midterm election. We’re going to take men back and stories like this will go a long way.” — Quinn

The problem with advertising something catchy like “26 Books for 2026” is you have to stick to it.

Good news: we don’t really have rules or bosses here, so I do what I want, and you get what you get (in this case, extra books) and you don’t get upset.

“This book made the list not only because it is essential reading, anytime, full stop, but because when we are so distracted, when are invading new countries, when we have so many fires to put out and so much to rebuild, at home and abroad, when representation in the media and in museums and schools is being — to borrow a phrase — put in the shredder, it’s absolutely critical we do not forget or minimize the structural racism that got us here and which continues to require our fullest reckoning.

They do not want the story of Black America told the same way they sign their names on bombs to murder Palestinian journalists and storytellers.“ — Quinn

“I actually tried to adapt this for a movie but no one wanted to make it. Weird!

Anyways — Congressmen (of course it was only men) used to cane, stab, and draw pistols at one another on the House floor, and that was before the Civil War. Political violence is what we do. How we protect what’s left of the experiment, against a new epidemic of violence, when there are now three times as many guns as people, is anybody’s guess.“ — Quinn

“We can’t build a big tent and win elections again if we’re constantly shitting on anyone that isn’t perfect, or doesn’t hold every one of our same values in the same order as we do.

There are certain fundamental human values that are non-negotiable, but we have absolutely gotta figure out how to give and receive real — and hopefully constructive! — feedback from co-activists, from constituents, friends, family, readers and strangers, if we’re ever gonna make it out of here.” — Quinn

“Surprise - it’s a podcast, not a book! And one of the very, very best.

There are absolutely too many episodes to simply recommend a few, so hit the feed yourself, and download a bunch of random episodes that appeal to you. The goal here is to simply engage with more ideas, perspectives, and history, to get excited about learning for learning’s sake. The more varied and weird the conversations are in their proximity, the better (truly you can go from panels on ancient flying crocodiles to Carthage in a matter of minutes).” — Quinn

“As a proud and out introvert, you’d think The Art of Gathering wouldn’t be for me, but I’m also the same guy who told me wife years ago that I’d host and feed anybody she wants on Sunday night as long as I don’t have to go anywhere myself. So apparently there’s a spectrum of socialization I’m comfortable with.

Either way, turns out that’s not really what this book is about. It’s about — like everything great — purpose. Whether you’re planning (or attending) a book club, a fundraiser, doing community organizing, a dinner party, or whatever — a deep understanding of why we do terrible in isolation and how we’re best suited to thrive off one other is an essential skill in today’s world.“ — Quinn

“To bring it home — a classic by the man who told us to measure anything we actually care about, including how we spend our days.

I like to say The Most Important Question is “What can I do?”, but in truth we really have to ask ourselves first a more philosophical one:

What’s it — our time, our vote, our resources, our job — for?

How do we make sure our days answer to our most bedrock, non-negotiable principles and highest intentions?

I hope if you spend time with any of the books on this list, and then this one, you’ll come away more resilient, more rationally optimistic, and more activated to fight off The Long Defeat in 2026.“ — Quinn

A reminder: You can check out the whole list (and all of the rest of our amazing book lists) at Bookshop, where every single purchase supports independent bookstores.

That’s it for today. This is a free column, so please share widely.

Thanks for giving a shit,

Quinn