10 Books By Midlife Women To Understand This Moment

And tell us what you are reading

We are all feeling it. The news coming at us relentlessly is overwhelming, terrifying, confusing, and painful.

Most of us are not at the place yet where we can step back and try to look at the big picture in full historical and political context on our own. It’s too much and too fast and too paralyzing.

For me I am finding it helpful to think back to what I’ve read before last month’s Inauguration to help me make sense of what’s happening. All of this chaos and retribution didn’t come out of nowhere. While few predicted the exact set of circumstances we find our ourselves in, there are lots of writers, historians, activists, political scientists, journalists and others who were exploring aspects of our current moment before Election Day 2024.

My favorite voices writing about this moment are generally midlife women (on brand, right?). For me they strike the right tone of authoritative wisdom, personal reflection, humility about what can and cannot be known, and seriousness of purpose.

(Relatedly, it’s also interesting — and not surprising — that a disproportionately large number of the individuals who have shown the most public bravery and outspoken refusal to capitulate to the new order of this administration has been women: Marian Edgar Budd, the Episcopal bishop who spoke out for with President Trump himself in the audience; Danielle Sassoon, a US Attorney for the Southern District of NY who resigned rather than follow a directive by the Trump administration to drop charges against Mayor Eric Adams; Phyllis Fong, the inspector general for the Department of Agriculture who had to be escorted out of her building after her refusal to comply with her firing and on and on.)

I suspect — and hope — that in the coming months we’ll see a lot of new books from women who are doing the courageous thing by speaking out, by refusing to comply, and by sounding the alarm about what they’ve witnessed.

In the meantime I’d like to tell you about 10 books by women I found helpful in understanding this historical moment.

Many of these books were published in the last year but others are more than a few years old.

I see them as investigations of different questions that are part of our current landscape: what is an autocracy and are we becoming one? how did our schools become political battlegrounds? how is disinformation corrupting our information environment? who has the (white) feminist movement left behind? how does our voting system disenfranchise many Americans? how are billionaires corrupting our political system? how is the tech industry breaking our society?

I know there are pieces of the puzzle of the answer to the question of “how did we get here?” that are not addressed by these books, and I’d love to hear what you’re reading.

Autocracy, Inc.: The Dictators Who Want To Run the World by Anne Applebaum

Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and historian, writes here about today’s autocracies and how they operate together to undermine democracies throughout the world. These autocracies might not share a single ideological perspective but what they do have in common is a hunger for wealth and power.

You can also find Applebaum on Substack:

Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America by Heather Cox Richardson

I’m sure many of you are subscribers of Richardson’s vital Substack

Letters from an American

. I also recommend this book, which I read last year. It’s an accessible and inspiring journey through how American history led to the present political climate.

Our Time Is Now by Stacey Abrams

First published in 2021, this book also includes a new afterword. It’s about how the right to vote has been under attack, throughout history up to the present moment. In addition to being an expose on voter suppression, it also provides concrete steps and inspiration about what to do next to take voters’ power back.

Burn Book: A Tech Love Story by Kara Swisher

Tech journalist Kara Swisher has written about Silicon Valley for decades. Burn Book is a memoir of a fascinating life as well as a revealing look at tech leaders, billionaires, and the media itself. As an industry insider, Swisher knew all our current tech villains before they were household names, and she scorches the tech industry’s transformation into its current, dangerous mess.

Dark Money: The Hidden Histories of the Billionaires Behind the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

First published in 2016, Maher’s new edition includes a new preface (that I haven’t read yet) about Trump’s recent victory. Mayer is a prolific and incisive staff writer for the New Yorker, and this book received much acclaim for the depth of its reporting when it was first released. It’s about how families of “plutocrats” have systematically transformed our political system to benefit themselves.

The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual by Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider

School Moms: Parent Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Battle for Public Education by Laura Pappano

As a former teacher, education policy researcher, and a volunteer in my local school board campaigns (in which Moms for Liberty-type forces were threats to our districts), I wanted to understand the far-right attacks on public education that had politicized local education across the country and found both of these books to be helpful. Even if you don’t have kids in the public schools, these books might help you see the political context behind the present attacks on the Department of Education and on diversity in schools. Berkshire has a podcast that I listen to, as well as a new-ish Substack:

Hood Feminism: Notes From the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

This book is a harsh critique of mainstream white feminism, arguing that it overlooks the everyday, basic needs of most women. It’s a call to action and for genuine solidarity that seems especially prescient and relevant, given the last election results.

Doppleganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

It’s hard to describe what this book is about. On a surface level it’s about journalist Naomi Klein’s reflections on being confused with online feminist Naomi Wolf. (It’s embarrassing to admit that even after reading this book, I had to double check to make sure I got the right last name above.) They’re two midlife women, both writers, both feminists, around the same age. That’s about all they have in common because Naomi Wolf has evolved from feminist intellectual to a conspiracy theorist of the highest order. Klein searches for what’s going on in this dangerous underworld of influencers, anti-vaxxers, and extremists.

What have you read recently (or not so recently) that is helping you make sense of our current reality?