One of the quiet pleasures of middle age is scanning your own bookshelf, not for something new, but for the ghosts of what shaped you. The books are a map of who you’ve been, and sometimes, who you still hope to be.
The other morning, I noticed a gap. My copy of Daniel Boorstin’s The Creators was gone. A friend had borrowed it and never returned it. Normally, that would leave me mildly irritated, but this book is different. It may be my favorite work of history, and it came into my hands as a gift from my first editor: a reminder that ideas are meant to be passed forward.
So instead of asking for it back, I ordered another copy and told my friend to keep the original. It felt like the right thing, because books aren’t meant to be hoarded. They’re meant to be given, lived with, argued over. They are bridges.
That gesture has been rattling around in my mind as an act of resistance. Buying a book for a friend, I mean. At a moment when society increasingly rewards the fast take, the viral clip, the loyalty pledge, buying a book is almost an act of rebellion. It says: I still believe in reflection. I still believe in deep time.
This thought landed more sharply when I read the news that the Trump administration has asked nine of the nation’s leading universities to sign a “compact” aligning with the president’s agenda in exchange for funding preference. The demands range from tuition freezes to strict definitions of gender to limits on international enrollment. A loyalty oath by another name.
Against that backdrop, the simple decision of what book to pick up or pass along feels more radical. Because when you buy a book (not the one assigned, not the one demanded, but the one that stirs your own curiosity), you’re declaring independence of mind.
And if you really want to lean into the rebellion, go to a bookstore. Walk in, browse the shelves, talk to someone who knows books. Nothing against Amazon, but keeping a local bookstore open is its own quiet form of resistance. These are the places where communities still gather around ideas, where a stranger might recommend something you’d never have found on your own. They’re endangered spaces, and worth protecting.
The last book I picked up was Robert Reich’s Coming Up Short. Within the first few pages, I stumbled across a reminder that history is never neat: Bill Clinton’s real name was William Jefferson Blythe III. That’s the kind of detail a book gives you. Something small, surprising, human. A reminder that public figures are never as simple as the slogans attached to them.
So here’s my small proposal. Buy a book. Buy one for yourself, or better yet, for someone else. Let it travel, let it be lost, let it shape someone the way it shaped you. Not every act of resistance needs to be loud. Sometimes it looks like handing someone a story.
