Get Smart: Our Summer Reading Roundup

You don’t need us here at the Washington Monthly to tell you to read Regime Change, the juicy blockbuster by Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan that’s on track to be the runaway nonfiction bestseller of 2026. 

But how about a deeply illuminating biography of Preston Brooks, the South Carolina slaver who caned Charles Sumner on the Senate floor in the run-up to the Civil War? Or an analysis of the coming revolt by over-educated, disillusioned baristas? If you want context on our current moment, faith in political innovation, or just the plain joy of reading a well-turned sentence, the Monthly’s editors and reviewers have thoughts for you: 

• The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution, by Jesse Wegman (Celadon Books)

“Wegman introduces Wilson to modern readers, delivering him from obscurity and returning him to his rightful place among the framers, the figures America perpetually turns to in pondering the republic and its future: Washington, Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton.” —George Thomas

• The Man Behind the Cane: Preston Brooks, Political Violence, and the Road to the Civil War, by Paul Quigley (Oxford University Press)

“The import of this book is not the story of a maladjusted, ill-tempered, violent young Congressman, who drank too much, and despite claiming to be a devout Christian, likely had sex (committed adultery) with his slaves, a situation where consent was not possible. The ‘man’ behind the cane may have been uniquely damaged and desperate for personal recognition but nevertheless embodied the values of the slave South and acted on them.” —Paul Finkelman

• Returning: A Search for Home Across Three Centuries, by Nicholas Lemann (Liveright)

“Returning is the Lemann family story of assimilation and material success in America, and the author’s engagement in middle age with rich Jewish observance. It is told with historical rigor but also novelistic detail. Don’t think of this as a Jewish book, but as an American story with relevance beyond the 2 percent who call themselves Jewish. It is a case study in how, in a free country, Americans choose to wear their religious and ethnic identities, and how the majority culture also influences, even bludgeons, those decisions.”—Matthew Cooper

• Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class, by Noam Scheiber (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux)

“[Scheiber] paints vivid portraits of over-educated workers toiling for iconic, even ‘cool,’ brands like Apple or Starbucks. Yet unlike the Harvard and Princeton grads flocking to these companies’ corporate offices, these college graduates are working retail, selling AirPods, and serving Frappuccinos. These salespeople and baristas bristle at management, low pay, and a general malaise in their lives—a sense that it wasn’t supposed to be this way.” —Kenneth S. Baer

• Country of Lords: Neo-Aristocrats, Social Darwinists, Tech Utopians, and the Long Fight Against Equality in America, by Kim Phillips-Fein (Norton)

“Any remaining doubts about the sinister effects of anti-egalitarianism are dispelled in Phillips-Fein’s apocalyptic last chapter. Ostensibly about Trump enabler and JD Vance patron Peter Thiel, it demonstrates how the techno-reactionaries of Silicon Valley have been dreaming up a nation of AI-enhanced drones, compliant servants of a market that is itself a mega-machine. At least three of the self-made kings atop the new tyranny of tech—Thiel, Elon Musk, and David Sachs, Trump’s chief science advisor—were shaped by their upbringing in apartheid South Africa. For them, democracy, as a tool for resolving human conflicts, has no appeal.” —Christoph Irmscher

• The Science of Second Chances: A Revolution in Criminal Justice, by Jennifer Doleac (Henry Holt and Co.)

“[The book] is a well-organized, well-reasoned, thought-provoking volume that merits close attention from researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in the criminal justice field. It embraces the best features of the factivist tradition, namely rigorous methods, humility about what is known, and disregard for ideological comfort food. There are more than enough good ideas here to significantly improve the lives of those who come into contact with the criminal justice system, as well as the broader public that wants to be safe.” —Keith Humphreys

• Killers of Roe: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Abortion Rights, by Amy Littlefield (Legacy Lit)

“For anyone who is enraged over the loss of Roe and who assumed that the primary people to blame are our current president and Senator Mitch McConnell for placing three anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court, this book is required reading. Littlefield sets the record straight. The movement to end abortion rights has been a long time coming and has many godfathers. Conservative activists and politicians waged a decades-long campaign, first attacking the connection between reproductive rights and social welfare, then politically outmaneuvering the divided pro-choice movement, and finally moving against Roe itself.” —Clara Bingham

• Nothing Left. By Evan Barker (Threshold Editions).

“It’s meant to be part exposé of the political money machine she helped operate, part chronicle of progressive campaign culture at its post-2020 ‘woke’ peak, and part explanation of how a young woman with a congenital medical condition whose life was saved by Obamacare came to support the Republican Party that has spent 15 years trying to repeal it. Her critique of Democrats is often persuasive. The defense of her political pirouettes is not, and her book fails to reconcile the two.” —Nate Weisberg

Plus…

• The Progressive Policy Institute’s Bruno Manno argues that the traditional four-year degree could be on its way to obsolescence as students and employers demand faster, cheaper avenues to higher education, and colleges adopt strategies like “dual enrollment” for high school students seeking college credit. “The bachelor’s degree is becoming modular, assembled from pieces that can be front-loaded in high school, compressed at a four-year institution, or completed at a community college, rather than delivered as one fixed, four-year product,” Bruno writes. 
• Politics Editor Bill Scher takes on the DSA’s policy platform as destructive to democracy. “To call the DSA platform antithetical to the U.S Constitution is not hyperbole, or an insult to the platform’s authors. The DSA preamble states plainly that the end goal is to ‘draft a new constitution’ to ‘create a democratic socialist republic.’” For one thing, it calls for the abolition of the Senate. Yowza. But more Dems may be okay with that. In his second column of the week, Bill explores data indicating that “the shift among Democrats to an uncompromising leftism is real.”
• And where does all that leave embattled Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin? Right where he is now, argues Monthly contributing writer and DNC member David Atkins. “Martin is doing exactly what my fellow DNC members and I elected him to do: raise record funds, invest in state and local organizing to win elections, and displace Washington, D.C.-based consultants running an ineffective but lucrative business model at the expense of electoral results,” he writes. 
• The arc of the moral universe may seem longer these days, but it still bends toward justice, thanks to the courage of those who still stand strong. David Masciotra spoke with MacArthur Fellow Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy and one of the nation’s leading advocates for criminal justice reform. It is “important to stay rooted to what we believe,” Steven tells David. 
• Trump’s anger management problem is getting old, writes James Zirin. “He hates everyone and everything unless they fit neatly into his version of reality.”
• Kourosh Ziabari profiles the late historian Richard Nelson Frye, an Iranophile whose story has become newly relevant as the US-Iran war risks escalation. Ziabari calls Frye a “bridge-builder” whose overtures for reconciliation went unrequited. 
• Dale Berning Sawa visits the Lincoln Memorial Undercroft, a gem of a new museum that encapsulates American ideals better than Trump’s “Freedom 250” debacle ever could. 
• Eric Snoey offers a solution for America’s worsening shortage of doctors: Expand residencies. 

Coda… 

As a Korean-American born in Philly and raised in Missouri, people’s perceptions of “Asian-ness” have always baffled me. Why aren’t Asian people just people? Why isn’t Asian food just food? Why isn’t Asian music just music? So it was great to see BTS protest the creation of an “Asian pop” category in the Grammys by declining to participate. “We hope music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided into region or language,” they said in a statement. 

No doubt the Grammys meant well with its effort to recognize the global stature of K-pop, but the potential impact of this new category is to shut Asian artists out of the top awards and shunt them aside into their own (lesser) tier of recognition. Yes, we absolutely should celebrate diverse innovations in music, and K-pop has its own traditions that differ from American pop. (Where’s the “American pop” category then, btw?) But does that mean K-pop musicians can’t be judged by the same standards applied to Western artists? Absolutely not.  “Asian” is okay a descriptor, but it should never function as a qualifier.

This Sunday roundup is going on hiatus for the next couple of weeks for summer break (lots of August reading to catch up on!). 

Don’t hesitate to reach out in the meantime at [email protected].

See you later in August! 

Anne Kim, Senior Editor

The post Get Smart: Our Summer Reading Roundup appeared first on Washington Monthly.