2026
What I read in 2026
53 books, 18,259 pages across 9 months. Most recent read first.
September 2026
6 books · 1,920 pages
Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and the Washington Post
Martin Baron · 2023 · read Sep 2026Baron's eight years as executive editor of the Washington Post were a squeeze from two sides.
Your Face Belongs to Us: A Secretive Startup's Quest to End Privacy as We Know It
Kashmir Hill · 2023 · read Sep 2026Google and Facebook developed similar technology and held it back.
The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism
Joe Conason · 2024 · read Sep 2026Conason's case is that Trump isn't where conservative grift began, only its largest example.
Den of Thieves
James B. Stewart · 1991 · read Sep 2026If you've ever wondered how the 1980s takeover boom made so many people so rich so fast, the answer is stolen information.
Gemini: Stepping Stone to the Moon, The Untold Story
Jeffrey Kluger · 2025 · read Sep 2026Mercury put Americans in space and Apollo put them on the Moon, but the program in between is where NASA learned how.
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Michael Dobbs · 2008 · read Sep 2026What nearly started a nuclear war in October 1962?
August 2026
6 books · 1,648 pages
DisneyWar
James B. Stewart · 2005 · read Aug 2026Michael Eisner saved Disney, then spent years making sure no one could replace him.
Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person's Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds
John Fugelsang · 2025 · read Aug 2026Fugelsang's argument is that the fight isn't religion versus secularism.
America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System
Steven Brill · 2015 · read Aug 2026The Affordable Care Act changed who gets covered and left what you get charged almost untouched.
Dear Chairman: Boardroom Battles and the Rise of Shareholder Activism
Jeff Gramm · 2016 · read Aug 2026The fight between the people who own a company and the people who run it is a century old.
The History of Money: A Story of Humanity
David McWilliams · 2024 · read Aug 2026Money is a relationship as much as it's a tool.
Shameless: Republicans' Deliberate Dysfunction and the Battle to Preserve Democracy
Brian Tyler Cohen · 2024 · read Aug 2026Cohen's argument is that the gap between the Republican brand and Republican behavior isn't an accident.
July 2026
7 books · 2,728 pages
Biological War: A Scenario
Annie Jacobsen · 2026 · read Jul 2026Take the minute-by-minute format of Nuclear War: A Scenario and swap the bomb for a recombinant, antibiotic-resistant plague with…
The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War
Craig Whitlock · 2021 · read Jul 2026Three administrations told you the war in Afghanistan was going well while saying privately that it was being lost.
The Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters
Gregory Zuckerman · 2013 · read Jul 2026Who turned shale rock into an American energy boom?
The Day After: How to Wield Power in a Post-Trump World
Brian Tyler Cohen · 2026 · read Jul 2026The norms you're waiting to see restored after Trump aren't coming back, and Congress already runs like a parliamentary system…
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution
Gregory Zuckerman · 2019 · read Jul 2026Most of what you learn about investing says to understand the business.
Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan · 2026 · read Jul 2026Picture a classified defense meeting derailed by someone arriving with stone samples for the Rose Garden.
The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
Bethany McLean, Peter Elkind · 2003 · read Jul 2026Enron's business was largely an illusion, and a lot of smart people were paid well not to look closely.
June 2026
7 books · 2,776 pages
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
Jeffrey Toobin · 2007 · read Jun 2026For decades the conservative campaign to remake the Supreme Court kept running into moderates, above all Sandra Day O'Connor.
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
John Green · 2025 · read Jun 2026Tuberculosis is curable, preventable, and still the deadliest infectious disease in the world.
Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History
Yasmeen Abutaleb, Damian Paletta · 2021 · read Jun 2026Trump's idea of quarantining infected Americans at Guantanamo Bay, a scrapped plan to mail masks to households, white powder sent…
The Oath: The Obama White House and The Supreme Court
Jeffrey Toobin · 2012 · read Jun 2026Two Harvard Law Review alumni, and two opposite ideas of what the Court is for.
The Run of His Life: The People v. O.J. Simpson
Jeffrey Toobin · 1996 · read Jun 2026When Simpson's defense decided to put detective Mark Fuhrman on trial, Toobin reported the plan in The New Yorker in July 1994.
True Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Investigation of Donald Trump
Jeffrey Toobin · 2020 · read Jun 2026Mueller's evidence didn't establish a criminal conspiracy with Russia.
Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World
Tom Wright, Bradley Hope · 2018 · read Jun 2026How do you take roughly $4.5 billion out of a sovereign wealth fund in plain sight?
May 2026
2 books · 423 pages
Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President
Michael S. Schmidt · 2020 · read May 2026When Trump wanted Mueller fired, White House counsel Don McGahn refused, then spent more than 30 hours with Mueller's prosecutors.
The Lords of Easy Money: How the Federal Reserve Broke the American Economy
Christopher Leonard · 2022 · read May 2026When the Fed creates money, you'd assume it reaches the economy you live in.
April 2026
4 books · 1,095 pages
A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness
Michael Pollan · 2026 · read Apr 2026After writing about how psychedelics change consciousness, Pollan goes after the question they raise: what consciousness actually…
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America
Christopher Leonard · 2019 · read Apr 2026The Koch name is best known for its politics.
End of Days: Ruby Ridge, the Apocalypse, and the Unmaking of America
Chris Jennings · 2026 · read Apr 2026Ruby Ridge usually gets told as a botched federal raid.
Hated by All the Right People: Tucker Carlson and the Unraveling of the Conservative Mind
Jason Zengerle · 2026 · read Apr 2026What turned a talented, contrarian 1990s magazine writer into the most influential voice on the far right?
March 2026
3 books · 993 pages
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou · 2018 · read Mar 2026Theranos raised more than $700 million on a blood test that never worked, and the company knew it.
Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America's Heartland
Salena Zito · 2025 · read Mar 2026Place explains how Americans vote better than the national press does, and small communities like Butler, not big cities, decided…
Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America
Robert B. Reich · 2025 · read Mar 2026Reich is still proud of family and medical leave and the expanded tax credits of the Clinton years.
February 2026
8 books · 3,177 pages
Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America's Justice Department
Carol Leonnig · 2025 · read Feb 2026The Justice Department's independence was never written into law.
The Fall
Michael Wolff · 2023 · read Feb 2026Fox paid Dominion $787.5 million in April 2023, after Rupert Murdoch had privately predicted the lawsuit would cost about $50…
Siege: Trump Under Fire
Michael Wolff · 2019 · read Feb 2026How much of what you're reading is Steve Bannon's version?
All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America
Michael Wolff · 2025 · read Feb 2026Wolff's case is that the indictments didn't sink Trump, they fed him, as each courtroom fight brought in more endorsements and…
Too Famous
Michael Wolff · 2021 · read Feb 2026Wolff says up front that "almost everyone in this book is a determined social climber," and his case is that chasing attention…
Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story
Julie K. Brown · 2021 · read Feb 2026About 13 months in county jail, under a plea deal his victims never heard about: that was Jeffrey Epstein's first reckoning.
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism
Sarah Wynn-Williams · 2025 · read Feb 2026Facebook's senior leadership was warned about Myanmar again and again and declined to act, according to someone inside the room.
Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction
David Enrich · 2020 · read Feb 2026Deutsche Bank is best known as the bank that kept lending to Donald Trump.
January 2026
10 books · 3,499 pages
Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful
David Enrich · 2025 · read Jan 2026If you run a small newsroom, a libel suit doesn't need to win to kill a story, since defending even a meritless one can ruin you.
When the Night Comes Falling: The Definitive True Crime Investigation into the Idaho Student Murders
Howard Blum · 2024 · read Jan 2026Blum's account of the 2022 University of Idaho murders is about how investigators actually got to Bryan Kohberger, missteps…
State of Denial
Bob Woodward · 2006 · read Jan 2026Who pushed Bush to replace Donald Rumsfeld?
The Project: How Project 2025 Is Reshaping America
David A. Graham · 2025 · read Jan 2026Strip away the 900-plus pages and Project 2025 is a coordinated, ideological plan to expand presidential power and remake…
The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party, and a World on the Brink
Thom Hartmann · 2025 · read Jan 2026Hartmann's argument is that Trump is a symptom of a system that was already decaying, not its cause.
The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It
Scott Patterson · 2010 · read Jan 2026When every fund's model points to the same trade, you don't have diversification anymore, you have a crowd.
Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future
Dan Wang · 2025 · read Jan 2026China is an engineering state that builds relentlessly, and the United States is a lawyerly society that's good at stopping…
The Haves and Have-Yachts: Dispatches on the Ultrarich
Evan Osnos · 2025 · read Jan 2026Superyachts, luxury bunkers, trusts and political donations: Osnos follows what extreme wealth buys, how it gets protected and…
Abundance
Ezra Klein · 2025 · read Jan 2026If you've ever wondered why housing and clean energy take so long to build in America, Klein and Thompson's answer is rules.
Plan of Attack: The Definitive Account of the Decision to Invade Iraq
Bob Woodward · 2004 · read Jan 2026Seventy-two days after 9/11, George W.