For our third rundown of BSR staff recommendations, it's a list of books and online newsletters. Let’s get right to it.
From executive director Neil Bardhan:
Books
Between exciting work activity and a very active now-one-year-old kid, I've been a bit scattered with books this year. A few stood out as worth discussing! KC Davis wrote How To Keep House While Drowning for people with any of a number of barriers and it's a wonderful meditation on how social pressure to stay on top of household chores has limits and also sinister roots sometimes. This book revolutionized how I look at dishes in my sink and how my wife & I tidy up after baby bedtime. Listening to it on audiobook was a godsend. I'd be remiss not to mention Philly writer Mike Madaio's A History of Philadelphia Sandwiches: Steaks, Hoagies, Iconic Eateries & More which I reviewed for BSR's 2025 Book Week. A joy for eaters. I also want to nod All Fours by Miranda July which was imperfect but incredibly provocative. An audiobook in the author's voice helped here enormously too! My final shout-out is Doggies, a brief work by Philly's own Sandra Boynton. I'd been familiar with her illustrations before this past year and fell in love with her texts, playful and structure-shaking. (My favorite dog is the third. I don't know why.)
Newsletters
I subscribe to, conservatively, 200 services I think of as newsletters. I'll keep it quick, unless you want to engage with me about the best weekly meal planning newsletters! On the topic of creative life and for music recommendations, I appreciate Austin Kleon's 10-item lists. I have a premium subscription to The Action Cookbook Newsletter by Scott Hines which covers sports, architecture, family life, cocktails, cooking stunts, and cute dogs. Highly recommend. Kendra Adachi's The Lazy Genius inspires me to revisit systems I have and also read way more. My last pick comes from a friend and former colleague, Caitie Hilverman, who's taken up a keen interest in grief after the death of family members, All My Dead and Living Things.
From editor-in-chief Alaina Johns:
Books
This is a hard one for me! Thanks to a constant mix of paper, Kindle, and audio formats, I read one or two books a week, and I’m dying to recommend most of them. But I’ll keep it to just a few top picks.
Black Genius: Essays on an American Legacy, by Tre Johnson. This is an important book. I read it slowly and think about it often. Tre, who’s a friend of our team and did an event with us for BSR Book Week 2025, unpacks his own professional and family history, along with his favorite cultural touchstones, to explore the myriad ways Black people navigate life in America with genius, grit, and joy. The book is also a love letter to Philly. Put it on your list for 2026.
Sociopath: A Memoir, by Patric Gagne. This 2025 memoir was one of the most interesting books I read this year. Dr. Gagne is a certified therapist, a happy wife, and a mom. She’s also a sociopath. Her story cracks open our assumptions about the mind, arguing that sociopathy is just one natural variation of the human brain, like other less stigmatized neurodivergent qualities. Her reflections on the manipulations she has faced from so-called “normal” friends and colleagues trying to avoid the pangs of their own conscience are particularly arresting. She urges understanding and therapy, not ostracism.
Shakespeare was a Woman and Other Heresies: How Doubting the Bard Became the Biggest Taboo in Literature, by Elizabeth Winkler. I came to this book through novelist Jodi Picoult’s By Any Other Name. I don’t recommend Picoult’s book, but I’m glad I read it, because it brought me to Winkler. I’ve been aware of the movement questioning Shakespeare’s authorship for awhile, but didn’t dig into it til this year. Now I’m pretty much convinced: I seriously doubt William Shakespeare wrote those plays. There are still a few more books on the controversy on my list, though.
Women and Other Monsters: Building a New Mythology, by Jess Zimmerman. Another Philly author in the BSR network. I savored each essay in this challenging, sometimes enraging collection. Zimmerman mines her own past relationships, braiding them with compelling and original analyses of monstrous women of legend, like the Harpies, the Furies, Medusa, the Sphynx, and many more. Her perspectives bite deep.
Giving Up is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping Democracy, by Joyce Vance. This book is a bracing reminder that giving up on our American project is the only way to guarantee the fascists will prevail. Vance has given us a manual for staying inspired and engaged when the going gets tough, without sparing the truth about our country’s origins. She also walks us through the fundamental levers of power in the US in an interesting, accessible way. Her explanation of how the Supreme Court took on itself the power to review the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress is particularly timely and important to understand. It’s a short book, and super easy to understand.
If you want more books in the vein of protecting democracy and our diverse American culture, revisit our Reading as Resistance roundup from Book Week 2025. It’s full of clarifying books that will fire you up and give you the tools to keep up the good fight.
Newsletters
If you have trouble keeping up with the news and not losing your damn mind, and you want journalists and/or commentators with real expertise, a steadying outlook, solid ethics, and some optimism on our American project, even under the Trump regime, subscribe now to these daily Substack newsletters:
Marc Elias’s Democracy Docket
Jessica Yellin’s News Not Noise (“We give you information. Not a panic attack.”)
Robert Hubbell’s Today’s Edition
And of course, the essential political historian Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American. If I were to stan anyone in this world, it’s probably HCR. Bonus: she posts frequent videos to her YouTube channel in which she speaks calmly about the week’s political landscape, always putting today’s brouhaha in an illuminating historical context. She lowers my blood pressure like no-one else.
To keep up-to-date on policy, rhetoric, court cases, and activism affecting our trans community, I subscribe to journalist Erin Reed’s Erin in the Morning. I also appreciate Charlotte Clymer’s Charlotte’s Web Thoughts. She is a proudly Christian, progressive trans woman from Texas who is also a military veteran, which makes for an interesting perspective.
Jessica Valenti’s Abortion, Every Day is an essential primer on the topic of reproductive justice in America today. She often scoops legacy media in her reporting, and she spots important trends in anti-choice activism, rhetoric, and legislation before anyone else.
Kevin Gotkin’s Crip News is my go-to at the intersection of arts and disability justice (therefore essential to our work at BSR). Gotkin’s missives include major projects by disabled artists, important reads, a guide to art openings in the disability community, advocacy items, memorials, opportunities and calls for new work, and more.
And sign up now for Aubrey Nagel’s Art Class Philly newsletter. It’s just what it sounds like: a weekly list of local art classes, from writing to pottery to sewing to painting and everything in between.
