What’s On My Mind (and My Reading List) — October 2025
Finding Your Bearings in the Current Social Climate
I find it very hard to believe that 2025 is almost over. It feels like it was just yesterday when I felt the panic and anxiety in my inner circle that prompted me to release my list of books for the cultural climate of the time1. I was filling up the shelves of my personal library and was finishing more books than I can even remember having read. It is that reading journey that prompted the beginning of this series.
Our reading lists say a lot about who we are in the present moment. They cover not only our present influences but also serve as a snapshot of who we are at this particular stage of our literary journey. Our notes in the margins portray our evolving thoughts and personality traits. We grow into newer and more fully-formed individuals with every passage, chapter, and book read.
So what does this month’s reading list have to say about me? Where am I in my literary journey?
In the following month, it will have been one year since I ceased research on a long-spanning education book project that had preoccupied my attention since late 2022. My note cards have been filed away. My research books are stacked neatly (or haphazardly) back on my library shelves.
I felt my thesis crumble at the onset of a new political culture that made the solutions my project wished to provide impossible to implement. Despair, more than apathy, kept me from revising and starting over. In the words of Steven Pressfield, I let Resistance win. So where does that leave me now?
I have been in what can affectionately be called a “reading slump” since last July. I have been reading less and found my interest in doing so waning. Still, I do find some time here and there to read. I will still be working on a few of my selections from the previous reading list.
And while I have finished a number of books, a very meager selection of those completed reads felt worthy of inclusion in our series, Fresh Off the Shelf. My hope is that this dynamic may shift soon, and I will soon be sharing more books that I feel are worth your time.
Nevertheless, this month’s list has been constructed to tackle the themes and questions that have weighed most heavily on my mind lately. Is it possible to restore faith in democratic institutions, and what changes will we be willing to make to get there? Can partisan and racial divisions be bridged in a way that allows us to recognize the complete humanity of our fellow citizens? Is it possible to have an open dialogue that heals the wounds of a scarred nation propped up by an equally wounded populous?
That is where I plan to take us these next two months2, and I hope that you will join me in this.
Restoring Faith in Democracy
To tackle the subject of democracy, at its best and worst, I’ve returned to a select few of my favorite writers and political commentators. Given the recent heaviness of this subject, I’ve also supplemented this section with some of the more positive and patriotic writings by writer and novelist, E. B. White3.
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
On Democracy by E. B. White, edited by Martha White
Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism by Cornel West
Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division by Robert P. George and Cornel West
The Washington Book: How to Read Politics and Politicians by Carlos Lozada
Bridging the Racial Divide
This is where the material gets a bit heavier, both in premise and page length. From historical accounts of racial injustice across the 20th and 21st centuries to the letters of one of the Civil Rights Movement’s greatest organizers, this section tackles how race is deeply entangled in the root of the American psyche and how we imperil ourselves by forgetting that fact.
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
The Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin
Faces at the Bottom of the Well: The Permanence of Racism by Derrick Bell
I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, edited by Michael G. Long
White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo
White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson
Finding Inner Peace Through Hardship
I don’t often include my self-help reads here, or at least I try not to. This isn’t even everything that I’ve dabbled with off and on for the last few months. But finding the strength to persevere and push forward is part of my current life goals. It only makes sense to share the books I’m reading along the way to that goal. This is also a fine opportunity to catch up on the Stoic Virtue series, as author Ryan Holiday plans to release the final book in that series, Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat., later on this month.
Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole by Susan Cain
Courage is Calling: Fortune Favors the Brave by Ryan Holiday
Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds. by Ryan Holiday
Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat. by Ryan Holiday
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
Happy Reading!
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A list that is more than overdue for a potential third addition.
And likely for the remainder of the year.
Leave it to the author of Charlotte’s Web to be the one to lift my mood at this present moment!