Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It by Cory Doctorow
It’s all in the title. If you only read one book about the lengths the tech industry will go to sell you their products and services by luring you in, locking you in, and then charging you rent to stay there, this is it. Technically speaking (in layman’s terms), this book clearly explains how, in the pursuit of progress and creative freedom, we have all become hamsters in their wheel.
Runners Up:
Separation of Church and Hate: A Sane Person’s Guide to Taking Back the Bible from Fundamentalists, Fascists, and Flock-Fleecing Frauds by John Fugelsang
No matter what you do or don’t believe in, this eloquently researched and presented bible reading for dummies will almost certainly enlighten you and your beliefs. Tired of hearing today’s holier than thou extremists and shock jockeys cherry picking passages from the bible to support their pandora’s box of ham-handed behavior, biases, claims, and isms, Fugelsang, who grew up the son of a former Catholic nun and Franciscan brother, goes all in George Washington by taking an axe to their cherry tree.
Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success by Russ Buettner, Susanne Craig
The title says it all, but the fact that America’s Litigator-in-Chief could not quash this book and castigate its authors in a court of law punctuates their claims with a gigantic exclamation mark. Only a sucker would pass this off as fake news (because, if it were, wouldn’t that be grounds for a successful defamation suit). Here is hoping that enough of the suckers who thought he was who he claimed to be wake up before they and their country go the way of his father’s fortune.
What the other guys liked: Top 200 Goodreads of 2025
Older Discovery from the Archive: How to Stand Up to a Dictator by Maria Ressa
This book is a Beware the Ides March warning for democracies around the world (that fell on deaf ears over the course of not one but two presidential elections in America). Maria Ressa is a Filipino journalist who won the Nobel Peace prize in 2021 for her ongoing efforts to speak truth to authoritarian power (and FaceBook) at a time when Philippine President Duterte was bending and/or gutting all branches of their government, judicial, news media and social institutions to suit his every whim.