The Social and Political Books That Shaped How I Thought This Year

I didn’t read this year to escape the world. I read to understand it, argue with it, and occasionally laugh at it so I wouldn’t scream.

The books that stayed with me weren’t all new, and they weren’t all written by people who agree with each other. Some made me angry. Some made me uncomfortable. Some reminded me that democracy, freedom, and moral clarity are not self-sustaining. They require attention, language, and memory.

Here are the social and political books I read this year that most shaped how I think.

America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction by Jon Stewart

This book is satire, but it’s also diagnosis.

Jon Stewart skewers American democracy not as an abstract system but as a lived farce, where everyone knows something is wrong and no one with power seems particularly motivated to fix it. What makes this book endure is not the jokes, but the clarity underneath them. The humor disarms you long enough to realize you recognize every institutional failure being mocked.

It’s a reminder that satire has always been a political tool, especially when traditional accountability fails. Laughter here is not dismissal. It’s evidence.

Brain Droppings by George Carlin

George Carlin never wanted you to be comfortable. This book made sure of it.

Carlin’s essays are sharp, profane, and unapologetically skeptical of power, language, and American mythmaking. Reading it now, decades after much of it was written, is unsettling in the best way. His critiques of nationalism, consumerism, and performative morality feel eerily current.

Carlin understood something we still struggle with: language is political, and whoever controls it controls what people are allowed to question.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell

This was one of the most clarifying books I read this year.

Montell explores how cult-like language operates not just in fringe groups, but in wellness culture, politics, startups, and online movements. What makes this book powerful is that it doesn’t ask, “Why are people so gullible?” It asks, “Why are humans so vulnerable to belonging?”

In a time when political identity is increasingly wrapped in moral purity and insider language, Cultish offers a toolkit for listening more carefully to what words are doing beneath the surface.

The G Ring: How the IUD Escaped the Nazis by Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow

This book stopped me cold.

It’s a history of reproductive health, medical ethics, and survival under fascism, told through the story of the IUD’s origins. What struck me most was how women’s bodies have so often been treated as testing grounds for ideology, control, and cruelty.

Reading this in a post–Roe America gives the book an added weight. Reproductive freedom is never just about medicine. It is about power, memory, and who gets to decide whose suffering matters.

Harriet Tubman: A Life from Beginning to End by Hourly History

Short does not mean shallow.

This concise biography strips away the sanitized version of Harriet Tubman many of us were taught and replaces it with a portrait of relentless courage, strategy, and moral clarity. Tubman was not just brave. She was politically dangerous to an unjust system.

Books like this matter because they remind us that freedom movements are built by people who act long before history decides they were right.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage

This book surprised me.

By tracing world history through beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola, Standage shows how politics, economics, labor, and empire shape even the most ordinary parts of our lives. What we drink, who profits from it, and who labors for it are never neutral.

It’s an accessible reminder that politics isn’t confined to elections or laws. It’s embedded in daily life, often in ways we stop noticing.

How Should I Think? by R.C. Sproul

I don’t read only to confirm what I already believe.

This book is a philosophical and theological exploration of logic, reason, and intellectual discipline. While I don’t agree with all of Sproul’s conclusions, I appreciated the insistence that thinking well is a moral responsibility.

In an era of algorithm-fed outrage and reflexive certainty, slowing down to ask how we think feels quietly radical.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass

This should be required reading. Always.

Douglass’s narrative is not just a historical document. It is a masterclass in moral argument, political clarity, and the power of literacy as liberation. His understanding of how systems dehumanize, and how language can expose that dehumanization, remains unmatched.

Reading Douglass alongside modern political discourse makes one thing painfully clear: we have not outgrown the need for truth-tellers who refuse to soften reality for comfort.

Why These Books Matter Together

What connects these books is not ideology, genre, or era. It’s their insistence that democracy, freedom, and human dignity are not passive states. They are practices.

They require skepticism, memory, empathy, humor, and the willingness to sit with discomfort. They require us to examine language, power, and our own assumptions.

If this year taught me anything, it’s that reading widely is not a luxury. It’s part of being a responsible citizen.

If you’ve read any of these, I’d love to hear what stayed with you. And if you have recommendations for what I should read next, consider this my open invitation.