2026, you are already too much. There aren’t words that can fully express the rapid slide into totalitarianism in the US and across the world and the ongoing wars, famines, disasters, and genocides that marked 2025. We cannot recap the damage nor can we do justice to all the critical ways people have shown up for each other.

So what can we do in the new year that helps us stay sane, connected, and resilient while building the resistance? In the coming weeks, we will focus our newsletter on highlighting continued threats to science and democracy and on concrete actions we can take in our communities to build connection and resilience. For now, we are kicking off the new year with a list of our book recommendations from 2025 in the hope that we can tap into this collective wisdom and find just what we need in this tenuous moment.

Welcome to 2026.

Book nook

We’ve complied a list of books we recommended throughout 2025. Diving into any of these books is a great way to kick off the new year. We split them into fiction and non-fiction. Happy reading!

Fiction
- The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders (sci-fi, reluctant revolutionaries, and there are crocodiles, but hear us out, its a good book for our current times)
- When the moon hits your eye by John Scalzi
- August Lane by Regina Black is a scorcher of a romance, just the thing we need to take a much needed short break from the doom of authoritarianism
- The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai is a story of two young people whose lives intersect across years and span continents
Non-fiction
- Feminism in the Wild: How Human Biases Shape Our Understanding of Animal Behavior by Ambika Kamath and Melina Packer
- Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford (and check out the amazing graphical work of Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler)
- The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Greene
- The Mechanic and the Luddite: A ruthless criticism of technology and capitalism by Jothan Sadowski
- Wonder Struck by Helen De Cruz is an exploration of wonder and awe in an uncertain world
- Set Boundaries, Find Peace: A Guide to Reclaiming Yourself by Nedra Glover Tawwab
- Cyberlibertarianism: The right-wing politics of digital technology by George Justice is a scorcher of a book and showcases the intentional dismantling of the press by technofacsists turned billionaires.
- Human Nature by Dr. Kate Marvel explores human emotions as a lens to better understand climate change.
- Cassandra Speaks by Elizabeth Lesser
- It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei, with Justin Eisinger, Steven Scott and Harmony Becker - Takei shares his story of navigating life as a closeted gay man to speaking his truth at the age of 68 in this memoir graphic novel.
- Portable Feminist Reader, Roxanne Gay. “A dynamic and strikingly relevant look at a feminist canon as expansive rather than definitive”
- One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by El Akkad “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.”
- Imagination: A manifesto by Ruha Benjamin is a proclamation of the power of our imagination and an invitation to build new mental models that are free of the tyranny of today’s dominant narratives.
- Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Edge of Space-Time
- Read This When Things Fall Apart edited by Kelly Hayes is a “A bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times”
- How to be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
- INSISTENT: The Powerful Bond That Fueled a Global Fight for Inclusion by Joey Ramp-Adams
- Virginia Giuffre’s memoir, Nobody’s Girl, recounting her abuse at the hands of Epstein
- When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy by Beronda L. Montgomery
- Disasterology: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Climate Crisis by Samantha Montano
- New book Witness to the Hellfire of Genocide by Gazan student Wasim Said is an attempt to bring the suffering and and voices from Gaza heard
- Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke is a witty and academic exploration of the lives of female animals and the women who study them
- Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado-Perez is a book about what happens when our data - and our world - treat men as the default
- Fire in Every Direction by Tareq Baconi. A memoir of political and queer awakening in Palestine