Former Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) says she is stepping away from electoral politics after two failed statewide campaigns, announcing that she is &#8220;done for now&#8221; with campaigning — and instead plans to focus on becoming a book influencer on social media.
&#8220;I’m done for now with politics and campaigning,&#8221; Porter said in a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Da1Lp0dxPFs/">video</a> posted to Instagram last week. &#8220;Stay tuned for book recommendations, book ideas and author content.&#8221;
The former California congresswoman has rebranded one of her Instagram accounts as &#8220;Katie Porter Turns the Page,&#8221; complete with the hashtag &#8220;#Bookstagram,&#8221; saying she plans to devote the page to book recommendations, author interviews, and literary discussions.
Porter later told the <a href="https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article316551216.html">Sacramento Bee</a> that she is &#8220;closing the door&#8221; on running for office. &#8220;I am closing the door on being a candidate,&#8221; Porter said. &#8220;I cannot foresee that path back.&#8221;
Porter first rose to national prominence after flipping a Republican-held Orange County congressional district in 2018. A former student and protégé of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), she became known on Capitol Hill for using a whiteboard during congressional hearings to grill executives from major banks, pharmaceutical companies, and other corporations.
Rather than seek re-election to the House in 2024, Porter launched a bid for the Senate seat previously held by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She finished a distant third in California&#8217;s all-party primary behind eventual winner Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey, failing to advance to the general election.
She then entered California&#8217;s gubernatorial race but fared even worse, finishing fifth in this year&#8217;s primary with less than 5% of the vote after initially polling as one of the leading Democratic contenders. Porter&#8217;s gubernatorial campaign was dogged by questions surrounding her temperament after reports highlighted allegations of abusive treatment toward staff members.
During the campaign, a video obtained by <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/08/katie-porter-tears-into-staffer-new-video-00598942">Politico</a> showed Porter screaming at an aide during a virtual event while serving in Congress. &#8220;Get out of my f*cking shot!&#8221; Porter <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-spins-her-profane-rant-against-staffer-into-campaign-ad">shouted</a> after a staffer briefly appeared on camera before attempting to correct one of her statements.
The incident followed earlier allegations that Porter had berated staff members, including reports that she blamed one employee for contracting COVID-19 in 2022, while she was still in the House.
Porter later apologized for the outburst shown in the leaked video but argued that criticism of her demeanor reflected a double standard applied to female candidates.
&#8220;I don&#8217;t know what I could have said or done other than be a man,&#8221; Porter told the Sacramento Bee. &#8220;We&#8217;ve also seen it is not hard to come up with female candidates for whom the term temperament has been used.&#8221;
Despite stepping away from campaigning, Porter said she still plans to remain involved in public policy debates and civic education while focusing much of her public attention on books. &#8220;It’s partly a reference to a new chapter in my life, to change, but also to something I do a lot, which is turn the page when I’m reading,&#8221; Porter said of her new social media venture.

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Katie Porter Puts Politics On Hold To Focus On ‘Bookstagram’

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My preteen daughter came home from day camp the other day complaining about some of the girls in her bunk. She used an interesting phrase I had never heard before, calling them &#8220;phone kids.&#8221; They were children who, even without their phones in hand, seemed wired differently.
It was a fascinating and surprisingly astute observation, and one I was reminded of while reading a chilling cover story in the August <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784674628621000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2vjDB3Nm2eMR35ATnnPit0">issue</a> of The Atlantic. In &#8220;The End of Reading Is Here,&#8221; staff writer Rose Horowitch chronicles not just how reading for pleasure and schoolwork has fallen off a cliff since the advent of smartphones and social media, but how those changes are rewiring our brains.
Horowitch writes, &#8220;Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information. Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, argues that people are losing the ability to think deeply about writing. That doesn&#8217;t mean they are forgetting how to decode individual words. Rather, they are losing the higher-order abilities of comprehension and synthesis. America, in other words, isn&#8217;t illiterate. It&#8217;s postliterate.&#8221;
It was that idea of rewiring that made me think back to my daughter&#8217;s remark about &#8220;phone kids&#8221; and wonder whether they really are different.
Over the course of nine years, I gave birth to six babies. What people say about &#8220;pregnancy brain&#8221; and &#8220;baby brain&#8221; is real, and for the better part of a decade, it felt as though my own brain had turned to mush. When <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Youth-Innocence-Indoctrinating-Generation/dp/B0BWNQYLHQ">my book</a> with The Daily Wire came out, I was two months postpartum, with a toddler and a sleepwalking preschooler at home. During one interview, I went spectacularly viral when my brain simply stopped working. Asked a basic question about the central premise of the very book I had written, I completely blanked.
Over the past year, as my youngest turned two, I decided it was finally time to pull myself out of that dreamlike fog and force myself to become a reader again. I recognized in myself many of the habits Horowitch described and didn&#8217;t want to become a phone zombie. As a homeschooling mother, I realized — to my embarrassment — that my children were better read than I had been for nearly a decade.
I made one obvious mistake at the outset. I tried to catch up with my preteens by diving straight into a difficult translation of Plutarch — a bit like deciding to run a marathon after spending 10 years on the couch.
No, what I needed was a couch-to-5K program, but for reading.
It turns out the experts agree. Horowitch writes, &#8220;Reading books is a workout for the attention span. The more you read, the easier it is to read, and the more you&#8217;re rewarded with new understanding. Eventually the process is more pleasurable than it is challenging. But as with physical exercise, the converse is true as well: The less you read, the more difficult it is to read, and the rockier the path to acquiring knowledge.&#8221;
The first place I turned was, somewhat counterintuitively, the internet. More specifically, my friend Brielle Persun, a lifestyle and bookish <a href="https://www.instagram.com/bybrielleann/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.instagram.com/bybrielleann/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784674628621000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1iT-8PW2fvOGzSVGMEDVyR">content</a> creator. Following her introduced me to an entire ecosystem of readers reviewing and discussing books. Before long, I found several creators whose tastes aligned with mine. If they loved &#8220;East of Eden&#8221; and &#8220;One Hundred Years of Solitude&#8221; as much as I did, I figured I could trust their recommendations on everything else.
&#8220;One of my favorite things about BookTok and online reading communities is how they&#8217;ve made reading feel social again and, honestly, made reading cool again,&#8221; Persun told me. &#8220;The internet has introduced millions of people to books they may have never discovered otherwise, while creating spaces where readers can connect, discuss, and genuinely celebrate stories together. As a creator, I&#8217;ve watched books spark conversations, friendships, and even help people through difficult seasons of life. It&#8217;s a reminder that reading has always connected people, and the internet has simply made that connection more accessible and exciting than ever.&#8221;
Social media doesn&#8217;t just spread book recommendations; it helps sell books, too. Josh Centers, publisher of <a href="https://chapter.house/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://chapter.house/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784674628621000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1FsRhX42KCb1CCqoGs02io">Chapter House</a>, which produces beautifully designed editions of classic works for the next generation, told me, &#8220;Despite its many evils, social media has been an essential channel for spreading the word about our books. We have been blessed with many thousands of followers, but we ultimately want our accounts to be off-ramps. If someone sees one of our posts and closes the app to go read to their children, that post did its job.&#8221;
It&#8217;s no surprise, though, that the biggest breakthrough in rebuilding my reading habit came from disconnecting entirely.
On the Jewish Sabbath, known as Shabbat or Shabbos, my phone is off. As my children have grown older, those quiet hours have increasingly become time I can spend reading for myself instead of rereading Dr. Seuss and &#8220;Go, Dog. Go!&#8221; to my children for the hundredth time.
The inspiration for spending the Sabbath reading came from my friend David Bashevkin, who <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-sabbath-is-a-chance-to-read-again-d64c3af2" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-sabbath-is-a-chance-to-read-again-d64c3af2&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784674628621000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0r8cDMVgyB0I2__09zLY-F">started</a> an online community called &#8220;Shabbos Reads,&#8221; where people share on social media what they read over the Sabbath. The goal, Bashevkin told me, is to advertise &#8220;both the beauty of Shabbos and the beauty of reading, that I think go hand-in-hand. In the Internet world, we&#8217;re always trying to maximize efficiency. But what Shabbos and reading are trying to train our minds and hearts to do is to sit with long-form ideas, thoughts, and experiences and let them unfold in our lives.&#8221;
During the week, I set aside screen-free moments as well. When I&#8217;m putting my younger two sons to bed, I leave my phone out of their bedroom. When I&#8217;m sitting in their room for 20 minutes waiting for them to fall asleep (and policing their horseplay), I sit with my hardest reading: a <a href="https://www.ou.org/nach-yomi-starts-again-in-february-2026/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.ou.org/nach-yomi-starts-again-in-february-2026/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784674628621000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1EYic44sufdPE5wuzeQ50e">daily</a> Bible study and my frenemy, Plutarch. These short bursts of harder reading help with my stamina for the material that is more uphill than a mere novel.
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Several months into this experiment, I&#8217;m happy to report that I&#8217;m well on my way to a 5K. Maybe I&#8217;m still riding a scooter toward the finish line, but after finding a more accessible translation of Plutarch, I may even be able to call myself a reader again.
***
Bethany Mandel (<a href="https://x.com/bethanyshondark" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@bethanyshondark</a>) is a homeschooling mother of six and a writer. She is the bestselling co-author, with Karol Markowicz, of “Stolen Youth: How Radicals Are Erasing Innocence and Indoctrinating a Generation.”
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The Habit Quietly Stealing A Generation’s Ability To Think

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Move over, Leonardo Da Vinci. There’s a new Renaissance humanist on the block — at least, <a href="https://x.com/eve_bouff/status/2075978772629835994">according</a> to the internet. You might know her as the global pop star Dua Lipa, and she wants you to read banned books.
This past week, the &#8220;Levitating&#8221; singer <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/DaX7tuJjAKN/?img_index=6">unveiled</a> her new “Manifesto Library” in Portugal, which features hundreds of books she claims were once banned or otherwise controversial. Posing with a copy of Margaret Atwood’s &#8220;The Handmaid’s Tale,&#8221; a book that has now <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/margaret-atwood-handsmaids-tale-new-memoir-60-minutes/">sold</a> more than 10 million copies worldwide, she tells her 650K+ “Book Club” followers that her initiative opens up “conversations around censorship, resistance and the importance of preserving voices that challenge power and refuse to be silenced.” 
There’s only one problem. None of the books in her library were ever “banned” or &#8220;censored&#8221; in the first place. 
Among the <a href="https://vogueadria.com/dua-lipa-banned-books-library/">other titles</a> in Dua Lipa’s library are George Orwell’s &#8220;1984,&#8221; a book that has <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/what-does-george-orwells-1984-mean-in-2024-180984468/">sold</a> over 30 million copies as of 2024, and J.D. Salinger’s &#8220;The Catcher in the Rye,&#8221; a novel that is read in virtually every single high school English class across the country. I don’t necessarily disagree with Dua Lipa that we all should read these great books, but calling &#8220;1984&#8243; and &#8220;The Catcher in the Rye&#8221; “banned” books is like calling &#8220;Game of Thrones,&#8221; one of the world’s most widely watched TV shows, a “banned” show.
As I <a href="https://x.com/pensandpoison/status/2076800465040195947">pointed out</a> the other day on X, you can call anything a “banned book” as long as it was removed from an elementary school library that one time in 1978. 
That hasn’t stopped the political Left from co-opting the term “banned books” to create an imaginary controversy around censorship. Slapping the label onto virtually any novel with a remotely political bent, the Left frequently pretends conservatives are responsible for instituting Nazi-era book bans and for silencing leftist voices. Walk into any indie bookstore in a blue state, for instance, and you’ll immediately be met with a “banned books” display featuring carefully curated titles promoting a certain political agenda. One such <a href="https://x.com/TheMuppetPastor/status/2077019394907996560/photo/1">display</a> making the rounds on X contains Frantz Fanon’s &#8220;Black Skin, White Masks&#8221; (a far-leftist call to violence against “colonizers”), Sally Rooney’s &#8220;Normal People&#8221; (a novel she herself has <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1S5bOdJq3U">called</a> “Marxist propaganda”), and Maia Kobabe’s &#8220;Gender Queer&#8221; (I will let that one speak for itself). 
Nor is the “banned books” trend a recent invention. Back in 2023, for example, the American Library Association referred to an effort to remove sexually explicit content from school libraries as a demand to “censor library books.” These books, meanwhile (the aforementioned &#8220;Gender Queer&#8221; among them), contained “graphic depictions of how children can masturbate,” as well as “cartoons of homosexual activity,” according to a Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/library-group-frames-removal-of-graphic-sexual-content-from-school-libraries-as-record-number-of-book-bans">report</a>. And while these titles were removed from certain school libraries, they remain widely available for purchase on Amazon or your local bookstore.  
One can only conclude that the “banned books” trend is nothing more than a convenient way for leftists to promote books with certain ideological messages over others. 
Because the same people crying so vehemently about “banned books” when the books promote leftist ideologies are the very people quietly banning conservative-leaning books from ever hitting our shelves in the first place. 
You can lament the removal of &#8220;Gender Queer&#8221; from an elementary school library all you want, but the fact is that the novel continues to enjoy mainstream institutional backing. The same goes for Sally Rooney’s Marxist BDSM fantasy &#8220;Normal People&#8221; and Caro Claire Burke’s &#8220;Yesteryear,&#8221; the internet&#8217;s latest literary fad <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-book-that-treats-traditional-wives-like-the-enemy">attacking</a> conservative Christian “tradwives.” Other recent celebrated titles include Pulitzer Prize finalist &#8220;Stag Dance,&#8221; which <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_Dance_(novel)">depicts</a> a “Vegas transfeminine gathering” and NPR’s best book of the year &#8220;Bellies,&#8221; a trans romance that everyone’s favorite celebrity Elliot Page has <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1335490884?lv=shuf&amp;channelId=500&amp;plpRedirect=mhFallback">called</a> “smart, hilarious, and deeply moving.”
I am not here to argue that these books shouldn’t be published in the first place. But it is undeniable that the publishing industry consciously prioritizes far-leftist stories, creating a homogenous reading culture in which contemporary fiction has become synonymous with far-leftist ideology. 
Don’t believe me? Publishing professions can tell you themselves. 
Before a book reaches the shelves of your local Barnes and Noble, it must first go through several stages of the editorial process, the first of which entails the procurement of representation from a literary agent. While several non-fiction literary agencies still (thankfully) devote themselves to conservative authors — someone has to publish Ben Shapiro, after all — the fiction world has become so ideologically captured by the “banned books” mob that it is now virtually impossible to get a book with a more “traditional” message published in the first place. I’m not even talking about books with overtly Christian themes or Zionist protagonists, though those are most certainly no-gos. Literary agents now explicitly <a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/claire-draper/">declare</a> that they will not even consider “dated ideals of partnership or relationship.”
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How come the &#8220;banned books&#8221; advocates are the same people making these lists that effectively ban certain books&#8230;? <a href="https://t.co/aW3JNcnxFP">pic.twitter.com/aW3JNcnxFP</a>
— Liza Libes (@pensandpoison) <a href="https://x.com/pensandpoison/status/2077410105797071155?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 15, 2026</a></blockquote>
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I don’t speak leftist very well, but I’m pretty sure that means that this agent won’t look at a book that positively depicts marriage between a man and a woman. 
One could argue that if these were just the preferences of a single agent, then we wouldn&#8217;t have a problem on our hands. But when an entire literary establishment begins declining certain morals and themes, then an entire publishing institution effectively institutes a soft ban on certain books. 
Indeed, other agents <a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/thais-afonso/">decline</a> to review “copaganda,” “protagonists who are <a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/rebecca-matte/">aligned</a> with American police or military,” or even “<a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/caitlin-white/">morality stories</a>.” Meanwhile, one independent press <a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/samiha-hoque/">warns</a> that book submissions “must have a Muslim protagonist,” while a children’s editor at Hachette <a href="https://manuscriptwishlist.com/mswl-post/erika-turner/">requests</a> books that “center marginalized voices, especially related to queer women and femmes.” Editors at Macmillan’s <a href="https://www.flatironbooks.com/staff">Flatiron</a> — the same imprint that publishes Elliot Page and Joe Biden — request “contemporary fiction that centers Black and queer voices” and “literary fiction that explores music and art, friendship, gender, and progressive politics.” 
A single editor’s “preference” for progressive fiction and antipathy towards traditional messages does not constitute a book ban, but when large swaths of literary agents and editors across an entire industry begin parroting the same message, then it becomes clear that conservative fiction — or simply books with traditional moral messages in the vein of &#8220;The Brothers Karamazov&#8221; or &#8220;Anna Karenina&#8221; — are no longer welcome on our shelves. 
The irony is impossible to ignore: the same people who have built an entire cultural identity around &#8220;banned books&#8221; are often the very people deciding which books never get the chance to exist in the first place.
No, conservative books aren’t being banned in public squares or ritually burned at the stake. They are simply being filtered out long before they ever get the chance to find an audience in the first place. 
Banned books are in. But they’re not the banned books that Dua Lipa wants you to read or the books that do not belong in elementary school libraries. They are the books with great moral messages that we once venerated as a society but whose contemporary iterations will be forever lost on us because they never made it to our shelves.
That’s the book ban that should worry us the most. 
***
Liza Libes is a writer and the founder of Pens and Poison. She holds degrees in English from Columbia University and writes about literature and culture at <a href="http://pensandpoison.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://pensandpoison.org&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1784347615882000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2GAA5qwHERjxoFhiQFN_lD">pensandpoison.org</a>. Follow her on X <a href="https://x.com/pensandpoison">@pensandpoison</a>.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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The Real Book Ban No One Talks About

A new bookstore has opened in my Oxford <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/06/inside-the-uks-first-romantasy-shop-bad-girl-books">neighborhood</a>. Given the academic reputation of this city of dreaming spires with its medieval colleges and historic libraries, one might think such a bookstore would cater to a highbrow and scholarly readership. But no, it exclusively stocks “romantasy,” a fusion of romance and fantasy literature, and the <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/28/style/romantic-books-fantasy-romantasy-booktok-cec">fastest-growing sector</a> of the global book trade.
The literary genres of romance and fantasy have been popular for centuries, but their fusion into romantasy is relatively new. Many argue that the 1983 novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, &#8220;The Mists of Avalon,&#8221; which upended traditional Arthurian mythology, started the trend. This was followed by Diana Gabaldon’s &#8220;Outlander&#8221; books, blending historical adventure, time-travel fantasy, and an emotionally central romance. These books established the template: fantasy as a stage for romantic destiny, psychological intimacy, and female-centered moral stakes. 
Since the turn of the millennium, the formula has been replicated at scale. Self-published authors began producing romance-fantasy hybrids that traditional publishers had overlooked. According to industry analyses, romantasy has become “the single biggest growth engine in global publishing,” with sales in the U.S. and more recently in the U.K. either tripling or quadrupling over the past five years. Prestige publishing houses remain cautious, but with such astonishing sales figures, one wonders for how long. 
The opening weekend of my local romantasy bookstore, Bad Girl Books, reflected that popularity. Even with pre-booked tickets, there was a line down the sidewalk of excited fans, among whom I waited in some trepidation. Once inside, I discovered there are many sub-genres of romantasy, ranging from “Cosy Romantasy,” where characters bake cookies and muffins to woo and enchant each other rather than fighting battles, to the “Reverse Harem” or “Why Choose?” stories, in which the girl ends up with all the guys. (Imagine a gender-swapped “Mormon Wives” and you get the idea.) As one of the more memorable sub-genres, “Monster Smut” (I won’t elaborate) suggests, sex is a big part of the attraction. The degree of explicit content in books is indicated through a “spice” rating, which was illustrated in the bookstore via the relative number of chili pepper icons on shelves, rather like one might find on the menu of a Mexican restaurant to denote how hot a particular dish is.
Fans of the genre are quick to challenge suggestions that the appeal of the books is their “fairy smut,” even if the available <a href="https://badgirlbooks.co.uk/products/read-smut-tote-bag?variant=53057230799180">merch</a> might suggest precisely that. These books are about self-actualization, their defenders claim, about seeking one’s destiny and achieving empowerment of a predominantly female variety. Yet the sex in modern romantasy stories is vastly different from the way sex was treated in the OG romantasy stories, the Arthurian romances that had a similarly popular appeal throughout medieval Europe. 
Arthurian literature is a storytelling tradition built around King Arthur, his knights, and the mythical kingdom of Camelot. It began as an oral Celtic legend in Wales and Brittany and circulated for centuries before being written down. By the late Middle Ages, authors such as Chrétien de Troyes and Sir Thomas Malory had turned these tales into great romances, establishing the themes we still recognize today: the noble quest, the testing of virtue, the tension between love and duty, and the tragic fall of a once-ideal kingdom.
Two of the most famous written versions anchor the tradition. &#8220;Sir Gawain and the Green Knight&#8221; explores chivalry, temptation, and moral testing through a single knight’s ordeal, while Malory’s &#8220;Le Morte d’Arthur&#8221; gathers the whole cycle into a sweeping narrative of Arthur’s rise and fall. 
In these Arthurian stories, adultery is not just about knights and queens swept up in forbidden passion. Rather, it becomes the place where personal desire collides with the hard work of building an ideal society. When those Arthurian lovers Lancelot and Guinevere or Tristan and Isolde give in to desire, they are not simply breaking a marriage vow but are shaking the foundations of loyalty and duty that hold Camelot together. Lancelot, formerly the most heroic knight of the Round Table, fails in his quest to find the Holy Grail and must slaughter his fellow knights and closest friends to save Guinevere from the punishment her adultery brought down upon her. In contrast to such a tragic story, Sir Gawain manages to reject the seductive advances of the wife of the Green Knight. His reward for staying loyal to his values is moral clarity, public honor, and the respect of his fellow knights.
In medieval struggles between right and wrong, the ultimate battleground is the invisible human soul, where a person wrestles with temptation, pride, and sin. But how do you make a silent, internal, spiritual struggle visible and dramatic for an audience? You externalize it through magic. Magic in Arthurian literature provides the moral framework within which temptation, deception, and testing can occur. Enchantments, shape-shifting, and illusions create the narrative conditions for characters to confront their moral vulnerabilities. Magic is used as the stage for an ethical trial: characters must discern truth from illusion, loyalty from seduction, virtue from glamour.
The modern term <a href="https://www.oed.com/discover/revision-glamour/?tl=true">glamour</a> comes directly from this medieval positioning of magic; the word originally meant an illusion or enchantment that makes something appear more beautiful or desirable than it truly is. In Arthurian romance, glamour is not decoration but moral danger, and the shimmering surface tests whether a knight’s inner virtue can withstand the world’s deceptions. By using this magical frame, medieval authors could show how sin rarely presents itself as ugly; it presents itself as enchanting, beautiful, and magically justified. The knight’s task was discernment: piercing through the magical illusion to see the objective moral reality underneath.
The celebrated author of the Narnia books, C.S. Lewis, who himself taught medieval literature at Oxford, positioned magic in precisely this way in &#8220;The Silver Chair.&#8221; The more beautiful and appealing a character was in that story, the more dangerous and dishonest they turned out to be. Undergoing a moral trial like that of the medieval Sir Gawain, the children in the story must resist the temptation to follow a beautiful illusion by choosing to do their duty, however unappealing it feels at the time.
Modern romantasy treats magic differently from the old Arthurian world. In the medieval stories, enchantment was a test. But in romantasy, magic becomes a superpower, a personal strength that expresses identity, desire, and emotional intensity. It is something a heroine “comes into,” something a couple “unlocks together,” something that grows as they grow. That shift matters. Once magic becomes a form of self-actualization rather than a moral hazard, the whole ethical framework of the story has changed. 
Alongside that reorientation, sexual consummation becomes the narrative&#8217;s highest aspiration, and the surrounding moral world must thin out to make room for it. Duty, sacrifice, and communal responsibility have no logical place now that personal fulfillment is the story’s guiding star. Honor becomes the first casualty of this new storyline; the quest is no longer to uphold a kingdom, but to complete the self.
The move away from the ideals of Arthurian altruism has been a slow and subtle constant across the 20th century, from T.H. White’s &#8220;The Once and Future King,&#8221; a retelling shaped by his own pacifism during World War II, to the later habit of casting the Kennedy political dynasty as a modern Camelot. Given the uniformly <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/02/books/review/maureen-callahan-ask-not.html">unchivalrous</a> treatment of women by the Kennedy men, the only point of connection with the Arthurian origins seems to have been physical hotness. The mushy 1995 movie &#8220;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq6DJ3JF3iI&amp;t=3s">First Knight</a>&#8221; even portrayed Sean Connery’s Arthur, on his deathbed, blessing Guinevere and Lancelot’s union. 
Romantasy is purely the latest manifestation of a broader cultural shift away from duty and toward self-fulfillment. But has this jettisoning of moral absolutes in favor of expressive individualism made us happier? More fulfilled? More free to be our true selves? The statistical evidence suggests not. Data from long-term scientific studies such as <a href="https://midus.wisc.edu/">MIDUS</a> and the <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165032725008687#ks0005">Dual-Continua Model</a> now show what earlier generations intuited: that when self-expression becomes the highest good, psychological resilience tends to collapse. One recent <a href="https://research.birmingham.ac.uk/en/publications/virtues-as-protective-factors-for-adolescent-mental-health/">research paper</a> from the U.K. even “explores the decline in adolescent mental health and the weakening of traditional moral frameworks, positing education in the virtues as protective of mental health due to the intrinsic link between moral/existential wellbeing and psychological health.” Well, yes. Quite.
Modern scientific data simply confirm what the compilers of the original Arthurian romances instinctively knew all along: that a strong sense of duty — committing oneself to a community, a code, or a purpose greater than the self — acts as a psychological buffer against mental health crises. A truism familiar to previous generations was “virtue is its own reward.” This is the neglected message of Arthurian romances and a moral truth that all the chili peppers in the world cannot replace.
***
Bridget Riley studied modern history at Oxford and completed a Ph.D. in medieval history at the University of Reading. She writes on history, culture, and the philosophy of religion.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

Outlander Season 2, ep 201

The Moral Shift Hiding Inside Today’s Hottest Books

romance

When I first saw the Atlantic <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/">headline</a> “The End of Reading Is Here,” I felt a familiar sense of dread. If Rose Horowitch&#8217;s viral essay is to be believed, America&#8217;s reading habit is in a death spiral, and the TikTok generation doesn&#8217;t seem particularly concerned. Many students now rely on AI to write papers and summarize novels instead of curling up in an armchair and cracking a dusty spine. 
The statistics Horowitch cites are sobering. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of American adults read a book in 2022. The American Time Use Survey found that the share of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to just 16% in 2023.
But after sitting with the article, I found myself less convinced by its underlying premise. Reading isn&#8217;t disappearing because books have become relics of another era. Instead, books are becoming yet another element of our culture that must be preserved through thought and effort. And like most things, that all starts and ends in the home, with families. 
Reading is a learned skill. More importantly, it&#8217;s a habit. Sustained attention doesn&#8217;t come naturally in a world full of notifications and endless scrolling, but it can be strengthened with practice. Like exercise, reading becomes easier and more enjoyable the more we do it. The love of reading typically begins in childhood, and parents have far more influence over that process than some people may realize.
That&#8217;s why parents start reading to children long before they can understand the words. Expectant parents read to pregnant bellies. Newborns are surrounded by board books. Baby shower invitations increasingly ask guests to bring a favorite children&#8217;s book instead of a greeting card. The implication is clear: the more books, the better.
Children also learn by imitation. No one is surprised when the son of an avid fisherman grows up loving the outdoors or when the daughter of a musician starts playing an instrument. Reading is no different. If children grow up seeing books treated as a normal and enjoyable part of daily life, they&#8217;re far more likely to develop that habit themselves.
At our house, the screens go off two hours before bedtime and everyone must read books. I have conceded to my children’s preference for graphic novels even though they’re not my favorite genre. To counteract this nonsense, we also read books together as a family, working our way through the &#8220;Little House on the Prairie&#8221; series, &#8220;The Chronicles of Narnia,&#8221; &#8220;Charlotte’s Web,&#8221; &#8220;The Secret Garden,&#8221; and most recently, &#8220;Stuart Little.&#8221;
We love going to the library, the bookstore, and local book-themed or reading events when they arise. We even have a membership to Epic – a digital reading platform – so that some of their allotted screen time is devoted to reading, too. 
I am not crunchy, nor am I anti-screen. My kids have tablets and gaming systems. Our goal is not to reject modern technology, but rather to manage it and retain the best parts of life, which include reading. Several of my kids are natural readers who love to get lost in the pages of a book. Others struggle to focus and would rather be doing other things. That’s OK. They keep reading even when it’s hard or they don’t feel like it because habits are often built long before they&#8217;re appreciated.
I&#8217;ve noticed benefits that extend beyond the page. My older children are articulate, curious, and comfortable discussing ideas well beyond what many people expect for their age. I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s a coincidence. Reading has almost certainly played a meaningful role in shaping how they think and communicate, just as it did for me growing up.
Research points in the same direction. One <a href="https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/reading-aloud-to-students-shouldnt-get-lost-in-shift-to-science-of-reading-teachers-say/2023/12">study</a> highlighted by Education Week describes the &#8220;million-word gap,&#8221; finding that children who are read to frequently from an early age are exposed to dramatically more language before they even enter kindergarten than children who are rarely or never read to.
And for anyone freaking out about the Atlantic article, it’s also not entirely true that reading culture has disappeared. It merely changed with the times.
Reading isn’t dying; it’s evolving. I know because my personal algorithm is chock-full of book-themed reels, ranging from bestseller recommendations to modern interpretations of classics. BookTok is real, and it’s huge. According to <a href="https://newsroom.tiktok.com/booktok-community-50-million-books?lang=en-150">2026 data</a>, BookTok-recommended titles sold more than 50 million copies across Europe in 2025, generating a little more than $900 million. The same phenomenon is happening in the United States and around the world.
Consumers are shelling out hundreds or even thousands of dollars for <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-luxury-book-boom-nobody-saw-coming">high-end luxury books</a>. Audiobooks, controversial as they may be, are having a real moment: a recent <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/audio-books/article/100588-u-s-audiobook-sales-up-9-in-2025-reaches-2-43-billion.html">report</a> found that audiobook sales grew 9% in 2025, to $2.43 billion.
Every generation decides which parts of civilization are worth preserving. Reading will live on because people, especially parents, pass it down to future generations. 
If we want our children to become readers, the solution isn&#8217;t especially complicated. Open a book. Read it. Let your kids see you enjoying it. Read out loud to your kids even when they’re teenagers. The future of reading will be determined by ordinary families who choose to keep the habit alive.
***
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/introducing-upstream-a-lifestyle-and-culture-section-of-the-daily-wire" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream,</a> The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

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This One Family Habit Could Save Reading

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The mass-market paperback is dead. Last year, <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/99293-last-call-for-mass-market-paperbacks.html">headlines decried</a> the end of the once-ubiquitous, affordable, and pocket-sized editions, which have been phased out in favor of hardcovers and standard paperbacks. But amid the fall of a beloved format and talks of an affordability crisis, many readers are choosing a far more expensive option, sometimes forking over hundreds of dollars for their favorite books. 
Mass-market paperback sales have been on the decline for years, and though millions of mass-market editions still sold in 2025, major book distributor Readerlink <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/industry-deals/article/97161-readerlink-will-stop-distributing-mass-market-paperbacks-at-the-end-of-2025.html">made the decision</a> to stop selling them amid a steep decline in sales over the last two decades and as the wholesaler market has consolidated. In their place, ebooks have become the go-to cheap format for many readers, but even as digital is on the rise, another medium has become a major contender for avid readers: premium editions. 
In 2022, science fiction and fantasy author Brandon Sanderson broke records to have the highest-earning Kickstarter. Readers backed his four-book campaign to the tune of <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/31/authors-record-breaking-kickstarter-campaign-closes-at-41point7-million.html">more than $40 million</a>. Though Sanderson’s project was unique in its bundles of ebooks, audiobooks, and physical books — as well as merchandise and optional add-ons — each “premium hardcover” book <a href="https://www.dragonsteelbooks.com/collections/the-year-of-sanderson/products/secret-projects-premium-hardcover-4-book-bundle">sells today for $55</a>. Featuring duotone printing for color accents and faux-leather covers, the copies are a step up from the typical hardcover experience. 
Another tier above these editions are leather-bound books. Authors such as <a href="https://www.dragonsteelbooks.com/collections/leatherbound-books">Sanderson</a> sell gorgeous, foiled hardcovers to grace the bookshelves of loyal, aesthete readers. While these books can easily cost over $100, readers who can afford the price tag keep the demand high enough that authors continue releasing these special editions for each new novel.
Books like these offer their readers not only the latest stories from their favorite writers — and these are often big-name writers who pull in big numbers even without premium editions — but also something real with which to experience the story. Custom endpapers, show-stopping illustrations, and embossed covers make the physical form of the story into an artwork. Many editions are also signed, offering readers a hand-done touch to add to their bookshelves. 
Even public domain titles have found a home among these high-end books, often for a non-luxury price. These stories are all available for free online or for a few dollars in a cheaply-made paperback version, but publishers such as Penguin Random House also offer them in <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Odyssey-Penguin-Clothbound-Classics/dp/0141192445/ref=sr_1_6?sr=8-6">clothbound versions</a> for around $20. <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/0141392460/ref=sspa_dk_detail_4?psc=1&amp;sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWw">Thousands</a> of Amazon purchases testify to just how much readers are willing to shell out a few extra bucks for a special copy. And on the high end, specialty booksellers such as the <a href="https://www.foliosociety.com/usa/fiction/classic">Folio Society</a> offer premium editions of public domain works with prices hovering at $100. 
Just as younger generations rediscover the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/people-are-ditching-convenience-for-something-they-can-actually-control">joys of physical media</a> like vinyl and CDs, the value of a book you can hold, own, and admire is higher in an age of the ephemeral.
Of course, paper will eventually decay, but the cloth-bound books from the early 1900s and late 1800s that sit on my own shelves are a testament to how long a carefully handled and well-crafted tome can last. Though my shelves also have mass-market paperbacks gathered from the 1990s and 2000s, their covers are tattered at the edges, spines are sporting creases, and pages are held together with packing tape. These are books that are, fundamentally, made to be replaced sooner rather than later. They are not the pages that I could hope to read to my grandchildren or expect to last for decades longer. 
But just as many adult readers are picking up high-quality editions for themselves, there is also a market to pass down this appreciation for beautiful books to the next generation. Passage Press, for example, recently announced the launch of <a href="https://chapter.house/">Chapter House Books</a>, a curriculum of curated classics for young and growing readers. While the content of these books is perhaps the biggest selling point, the books themselves are also beautiful objects. They are clothbound in linen, color-illustrated, and feature classic and new artwork. They are the sort of volumes you hope to see pass from one child to the next, reaching your grandchildren one day as a family heirloom and treasure-trove of reading memories. 
Parents are investing in these premium classic books to craft young minds delighted in and appreciative of art. In a world increasingly full of clicks and bytes rather than pages and real beauty, it’s a worthy investment.
Certainly, there are other repercussions of the fall of mass-market paperbacks (such as author royalty structures and ongoing book sales). And as sad as I am to see the beloved mass-market paperback decay to dust, especially with the memories the little volumes hold, I gladly spend the extra dollars on these luxury books. I want something beautiful on my shelves and in my home, and I hope that one day my children will pick up some of these volumes and discover the same beauty I have found — between the pages, and on the cover.
***
Jordan Jantz is the assistant editor at IW Features as well as a freelance writer, editor, and website designer.

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The Luxury Book Boom Nobody Saw Coming

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Between the lazy days of summer and our country’s upcoming 250th birthday, a well-curated booklist is essential for all families. There are always a bevy of new titles hitting the market, and while several usually emerge that will stand the test of time, I find that the classics are classics for a reason. Just as our nation has seen the inevitable sweep of time and stood strong, so have many of the selections I will be sharing with you.
They may not be the most modern or popular in 2026, but they are still recommended because they offer a beautiful tapestry of our national story. These aren’t simply books about the founding, although you’ll see an emphasis on that time period. They highlight early America and what it looked like day to day. There are, of course, thousands of books I could recommend, but this is a start. 
It’s my hope that you might encounter a piece of literature that is completely new to you and leave its final page with even more hope and admiration for America than when you read the first sentence.
Picture books &amp; read-alouds (ages 3–6)
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Landing of the Pilgrims by James Daugherty. This book is a simple first introduction to the courage it took to cross an ocean for the promise of a new home.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The First Thanksgiving by Jean Craighead George. This retelling gives life to the first feast between the Pawtuxet Indians and the Pilgrims.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ox-Cart Man by Donald Hall (with gorgeous drawings from my favorite illustrator, Barbara Cooney). This is a quiet portrait of the seasons and work that shaped early New England life — from weaving linens to sheering sheep. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Fourth of July Story by Alice Dalgliesh. The perfect read-aloud for the holiday itself, this book explains the Declaration in words even your youngest can understand. Head back to the Revolutionary period and see how the 13 colonies learned of their independence. (Everything by Dalgliesh is worth reading!)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Picture Book of George Washington by David A. Adler. This is the story of the father of our country, from surveyor to first president. It cover facts and his biography from his early life through becoming our first commander and chief.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Can&#8217;t You Make Them Behave, King George?, Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? by Jean Fritz. Fritz has a way of making American history incredibly witty and re-readable in each of these books. No wonder she’s a Newberry Award winner.</li>
</ul>
Ages 7–9
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Child&#8217;s First Book of American History by Earl Schenck Miers. This book is a very readable overview that ties the whole national story together in one volume — captivating illustrations, too! (This would provide a lovely spine for a whole year of study if you homeschool.)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Lion to Guard Us by Clyde Robert Bulla. Follow Amanda Freebold and her brother and sister as they brave the Atlantic to reach Jamestown and find their father after their mother’s death. It&#8217;s a tale of loyalty set in the colonial era.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">If You Sailed on the Mayflower in 1620 by Ann McGovern. This fun picture book answers everyday questions children have about Pilgrim life in question-and-answer format. It can also be read to little kids, who will love the intricacy of the illustrations.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Rascal by Sterling North. A boy and his raccoon in small-town Wisconsin capture the freedom and wonder of an early American boyhood. Don’t let the girls miss out on this one, though; my 11-year-old daughter loved it!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Pocahontas by Ingri &amp; Edgar Parin d&#8217;Aulaire. This is a beautifully illustrated retelling (as all d’Aulaire books are) of the life of a historical legend. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh. A young girl in 1707 keeps her father company on the Connecticut frontier, which tests her bravery. This is short chapter book and perfect for struggling readers. It can be read in an afternoon!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Matchlock Gun by Walter D. Edmonds. This is a true colonial tale of a boy who guards his family on the frontier, set in New York in 1756. Another short, engaging read!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ben and Me by Robert Lawson. As told by Benjamin Franklin&#8217;s mouse, this is a delightful, funny look at Franklin&#8217;s genius through the eyes of his littlest companion. If you have a creative child who loves to invent new things, this is perfect.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Amos Fortune, Free Man by Elizabeth Yates. The true life of At-mun, an enslaved African who was taken at the age of 15 by slave traders and you eventually purchased his freedom and lived out his days with quiet strength and wisdom. I would also recommend older children read this; it will be an easy read, but the story is profound.</li>
</ul>
Ages 10–12
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Captain&#8217;s Dog by Roland Smith. The great westward expedition is seen through the eyes of Seaman the dog as he travels alongside Lewis and Clark. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Of Plymouth Plantation (abridged) by William Bradford. This is a real Pilgrim governor&#8217;s firsthand account, bringing children straight to the source. It was written between 1630 and 1647 and covers historical events such as encounters with the Native Americans, surviving the harsh winters, landing in places along the way, and travel woes.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Calico Bush by Rachel Field. A French girl who comes to America as an indentured servant makes a new life on the Maine frontier during Colonial America, providing a tale outlining the importance of courage through hardship.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Yankee Doodle Boy by Joseph Plumb Martin. Another true account, this book tells of the Revolution through the eyes of the boys who actually fought. It&#8217;s an incredible primary source for children.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Toliver&#8217;s Secret by Esther Wood Brady. A timid 10-year-old girl carries a secret message through enemy lines during the Revolutionary War straight into the hands of George Washington. Perfect for your plucky daughter!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Bulletproof George Washington by David Barton. This is a retelling of Washington&#8217;s survival in multiple battles and the providence displayed throughout his life.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Story of My Life by Helen Keller. This is the triumphant memoir of an American who overcame many obstacles through perseverance. Keller wrote this candid work at the age of 22, but younger readers will benefit from hearing her own words as she chronicles her many struggles.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane. This is a classic Civil War tale that follows one young soldier&#8217;s hard journey from boyhood into manhood as he finds himself having to become part of the Union Army in a war he doesn’t want to fight in.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Boys&#8217; War by Jim Murphy. This is a sobering look at the very young soldiers who served on both sides. (A note: This book discusses children who fought in the Civil War. Depending on the age of your child, it might be best if you read it with them.)</li>
</ul>
Ages 13+
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare. A boy alone on the Maine frontier forms an unlikely friendship as he waits for him father to return to the cabin where he is staying. Adventure awaits!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes. The Revolution comes alive through a Boston apprentice swept into the cause of liberty after a tragic accident causes him to lose his beloved job and change course. This is a must-read: an electric coming-of-age tale for both boys and girls! </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Carry On, Mr. Bowditch by Jean Lee Latham. The true story of a self-taught American sailor whose grit still guides ships to this day. I would also recommend the audiobook, read by Jim Weiss.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Up From Slavery by Booker T. Washington. A powerful American testament from a former slave as he writes about four decades of his life. This should be required high school reading.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">George Washington&#8217;s World by Genevieve Foster. Set in the years 1732-1799, this is a panoramic look at everything happening across the globe during Washington&#8217;s lifetime. (I would also recommend Foster’s other American history books!)</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. This is a firsthand memoir, written in 1845, of one man&#8217;s road from bondage to freedom and his tireless work promoting abolition. Incredibly powerful.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. This great American novel is set on the Mississippi river and follows Huck and his friend and former slave, Jim, as they travel together, Jim imparting many lessons along the way. (Also recommend from Twain: “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur&#8217;s Court.”)</li>
</ul>
For the grown-ups
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story by Wilfred McClay. This is a single-volume history that reads like an invitation rather than a textbook and provides a very fair accounting of America from the beginning. It covers the founding of the country through the Cold War, and there is also a Young Readers edition!</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">A Patriot&#8217;s History of the United States by Larry Schweikart &amp; Michael Allen. This is a large and comprehensive look at our country and its triumphs and struggles. As it says in the title, it spans from Christopher Columbus to the Age of Entitlement. It’s big but a worthy read. This could also be read in chapters by teens for specific time period study.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">John Adams by David McCullough. An absolute must read for all, this is a magnificent biography of the indispensable founder. The HBO series is also an exceptional watch. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Miracle at Philadelphia by Catherine Drinker Bowen. This is the thrilling story of the Constitutional Convention as told by the author, who used primary source documents and records to create this historical account. </li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Abigail Adams: A Life by Woody Holton. A vivid portrait of one of the most remarkable women of the founding generation, this is a personal favorite. With heartbreak and drama, it includes stories of life during the revolution. Much of the book was drawn from actual Adams transcripts, so it is written with exceptional accuracy and specificity.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville. The famous Frenchman&#8217;s observations on what makes American self-government work were penned during a trip to the United States between 1831 and 1832. It’s easily accessible, and I would also recommend strongly for high schoolers.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">The Federalist Papers by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. These are the founding arguments for the Constitution.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">George Washington&#8217;s Rules of Civility &amp; Decent Behavior by George himself. Washington&#8217;s handwritten maxims for character and conduct are as worthy today as ever – short enough to read a few a day and share with the kids.</li>
</ul>
A dad shoutout: Hands down, the finest book on the Civil War is &#8220;Battle Cry of Freedom&#8221; by James M. McPherson. Readers of every kind tell me they treasure it as a complete, comprehensive look at the Civil War. 
Happy reading, and God bless our wonderful country!
***
Rachel Reeves is a wife and homeschool mother of four daughters. She works in political commentary at Here Are The Headlines, both on Instagram and Substack.

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The Books Every Parent Should Read Before America’s 250th Birthday

America 250

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The publishing industry may have an AI slop problem, and readers are not OK.
Book fans <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/barnes-noble-ceo-slammed-for-stance-on-selling-ai-generated-books">reacted with horror</a> when Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt said during an interview last month that as long as the “author” discloses that the book is AI-generated, it can be stocked on store shelves.
“I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t, and that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it,” Daunt said during a &#8220;Today&#8221; show interview.
“So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else, as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them,” he added.
This led to more than a few meltdowns online, with diehard readers pushing back against the relentless wave of AI in the publishing world. All hope is not lost, however, as at least one publishing veteran said Daunt is wrong about one essential fact. In his experience, customers are moving away from AI and embracing human content instead.
Keith Riegert, president of The Stable Book Group and CEO of Ulysses Press and VeloPress Books, has been watching the AI wars play out in real time. And while the Barnes &amp; Noble CEO&#8217;s recent comments about AI book selling sent shockwaves through literary circles and beyond, Riegert wasn&#8217;t surprised.
&#8220;I think that it makes sense. I think it is really disappointing, but it is the direction that everything is going,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire in an exclusive interview. &#8220;It is a very clear signal — and should be a clear signal to every industry — that this is a monumental threat to the way that people make a living and to just about every white-collar job.&#8221;
Riegert knows the industry well. His parents founded Ulysses Press in 1983, launching with “Hidden Hawaii” and going on to create one of the pioneering adventure travel imprints of its era. When the internet essentially killed off travel books in the early 2000s, the company pivoted to data-driven publishing. The Stable Book Group now encompasses four publishing companies and a distribution operation. 
During our conversation, Riegert said he thinks it&#8217;s worth paying attention to who&#8217;s pushing back on AI and what they’re saying. He said he keeps his finger on the pulse by regularly interacting with Gen Z.
When he surveys his students in NYU&#8217;s publishing master&#8217;s program on AI use, the results catch him off guard. Only about a third report using AI on a daily basis. The other two-thirds say they actively refuse to use it.
&#8220;This is a digital native generation that has grown up with iPads and cell phones and computers, and they are actively rebelling against a lot of that,&#8221; he said.
This pushback goes beyond the classroom. Riegert said he sees the same hunger for authenticity showing up in consumer behavior across the board. He mentioned the recent <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/people-are-ditching-convenience-for-something-they-can-actually-control">popularity of vinyl records</a> as evidence that analog objects are making a comeback.
“A book or a vinyl record is now a luxury object because it is a symbol that you have the time to not be on a screen,&#8221; he said.
One of his students recently told him that he brings a book to bars because scrolling his phone makes him feel “like an idiot,” but sitting with a novel is more likely to spark meaningful conversation, plus it makes him seem “approachable and cool.” Riegert said this is representative of how many of his students think and act in the world, which includes how they’re choosing to spend their money.
However, it&#8217;s not all retro sunshine and analog roses. The AI revolution is definitely real, and it’s affecting the publishing industry in a big way despite some very vocal critics. The publishing exec said that AI is to nonfiction what cheap knockoffs are to Amazon, but at a massive scale.
&#8220;There are plenty of books that are doing very well in nonfiction categories, especially, and now in fiction, that have fake authors with AI-generated images, and the books are targeting well-established niches — and they are selling,&#8221; Riegert said. &#8220;It does not seem like the consumer is put off by the fact that it is AI-generated, and it is going to have a very serious effect on the publishing industry and on human authors.&#8221;
The numbers bear it out. Publishers Weekly recently <a href="https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/99943-book-output-topped-4-million-in-2025.html">reported</a> that the total number of books entering the market jumped by one million titles year over year, a figure Riegert calls &#8220;mind-blowing.&#8221; Meanwhile, output from established Big Five publishers remained essentially flat. These books are mostly not coming from human beings. They’re coming from AI-generated content saturating the market.
But here&#8217;s the irony Riegert keeps coming back to: The saturation that AI is creating may be what saves human publishing. He&#8217;s already seeing it in his own marketing data. The slick, AI-generated book trailers and polished social content are no longer working as customers react more strongly to grassroots campaigns, or at least ones that feel that way.
&#8220;The marketing angles that are working for us now are taking us back to the original ways that we would market a book,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It is a shaky iPhone video of the author talking about their book. It is something that is very authentic. And if the video is too good, it is actually a detriment to the performance.&#8221;
Consumers are growing skeptical of reviews, rankings, and products that feel fake. Riegert sees it as a key driver behind the ongoing resurgence of Barnes &amp; Noble under James Daunt and the broader indie bookstore revival. A handwritten staff recommendation carries more weight than 10,000 five-star reviews on Amazon because it’s probably not the work of bots.
Self-publishing dismantled the publishing industry, removing the barriers that aspiring authors once faced while trying to be heard. Now, those gates are open way too far. Riegert believes the industry is reverting to the way it was, at least partially.
&#8220;I think that we&#8217;re starting to get to this pivot point where the role of the gatekeeper and the critic is going to come back,&#8221; he said. &#8220;At the end of the day, the most valuable thing that you have — and the thing that all of us media organizations are competing for — is your time. We&#8217;re all entertainment companies at the end of the day, and we&#8217;re fighting for your time. And if what we&#8217;re peddling is not worth your time, then it&#8217;s a big problem for us and for you.&#8221;
Now that AI is being heavily scrutinized, there’s a chance Daunt will not end up stocking the shelves of Barnes &amp; Noble with AI-generated books because the customers won’t want to buy them. We can only hope.

GettyImages-2170859865

Readers Are Waging War On AI Slop

Influencer Hannah Neeleman, better known by the handle Ballerina Farm, has responded to the idea that she was the inspiration behind the hit novel “Yesteryear.” 
The 35-year-old mom of nine shared her thoughts on the topic during a recently published <a href="https://www.vulture.com/article/ballerina-farm-interview-yesteryear-tradwife.html">interview</a> with Vulture. “I know what’s going on,” Neeleman told the outlet. “I’ve had an online presence for enough time to know that people like to be entertained. I’ve been the butt of jokes and Reels that I’ve seen. It didn’t really surprise me.”
She went on, “I think it just comes with the eyes. There’s so much discourse, like, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s such a big family, and there’s no way she can be doing this.’ So it was like all these ideas are bubbling up into this fictional, entertaining book about tradwives. I’m surprised it didn’t come sooner, honestly.”
“Yesteryear” by Caro Claire Burke is pitched as being about, “A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1805 — where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel.”
It was an instant hit and has already been picked up to be developed into a movie with Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway attached to it. The book’s unhinged protagonist was understood to be a thinly veiled parody of Neeleman and the thousands of copycats she’s inspired.
“Before tradwives, it was the mommy-blogger phase, right?” she told Vulture. “People have always been fascinated with mothers making money being at home with their children. With online discourse, women feed off that negative energy sometimes and that’s why things blow up. I honestly stay away from it as much as I can. So when the term tradwife comes up, or I’m seeing things about ‘Yesteryear,’ I don’t lean into them.”
The influencer went on, “I don’t think women who want to work are winning. I don’t think mothers are winning. In fact, I think it’s a step backward. If someone wants to be a mother, great. If someone wants to be a mother and sell sourdough-bread kits, great. We have to support and cheer each other on even if it doesn’t look like what our home life looks like.”
Neeleman added that “it wasn’t that long ago that women’s only role was the home.” 
“That was their extent. So for women who want to be more, seeing other women glamorize that aspect of womanhood is hard,” she said, insisting that “women love to compare.” 
“I think it is something about women, like, thinking that if we tear them down, we’ll feel better about ourselves. I think it is something that women do that’s kind of their nature, unfortunately,” she added.
“There’s no one saying that a man can’t do laundry and cook and have an amazing job on Wall Street and be a father. Why can’t women do that as well?” Neeleman said. “I understand where the debate is coming from, but I think women have the capability to lean into whatever talents or interests they have. Women are talented in the kitchen, they are talented mothers and nurturers, so they can lean into that, because they have the opportunity to do other things as well.”
“Yesteryear” is pitched as satire, but it’s also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-new-book-that-treats-traditional-wives-like-the-enemy">received criticism</a> for portraying conservative women as performative liars. One Goodreads reviewer called it “a mean-spirited revenge fantasy against a strawman the author made up.”
“In my experience, satire is supposed to say something, not just be an overt open mocking. I understand why this book will be popular, especially considering modern trends in literature, but all the positive reviews make me feel like someone’s trying to prank me a little bit,” the reviewer wrote.
Even mainstream media outlets admitted “Yesteryear” wasn’t that great. Harper’s Bazaar called it a “vaguely feminist fairy tale” that only works “when you don’t think too much about it.” Vox said it “offers a sadistic influencer comeuppance fantasy.”

Hannah Neeleman

Ballerina Farm Reacts To Being The Inspiration For Viral Novel ‘Yesteryear’

Tradwives

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
From elementary school into adulthood, boys and men read less, and less well, than girls and women. Fourth- and eighth-grade boys are roughly a year (<a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/girls-boys-and-reading/">10 points</a> on the NAEP reading test) <a href="https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reports/reading/2024/g4_8/performance-by-student-group/?grade=4">behind their female classmates</a> in reading.
Maybe the books being published and taught in schools simply aren’t appealing to men and boys. Editors who review manuscripts are naturally biased toward books that suit their own tastes, and <a href="https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0">only 29%</a> of people working in publishing are men.
The same applies to the teachers who pick reading materials for the classroom. Elementary- and secondary-school faculties have long been overwhelmingly female, and the proportion of male teachers just keeps dropping; it has <a href="https://aibm.org/research/missing-misters/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://aibm.org/research/missing-misters/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0i5qAbpYZhbDH33rB_IpXe">shrunk from 30 to 23% since 1988</a>. And while <a href="https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/humanities-higher-education-surveys/trends-demographics-humanities-faculty#31797" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amacad.org/humanities-indicators/humanities-higher-education-surveys/trends-demographics-humanities-faculty%2331797&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw39mtgAHOhtq35Wc2dpCdW5">English professors are 45% men</a>, they’re likely within a rounding error of 100% feminist. In fact, university departments of literature are a major source of the man-bashing narrative.
College teachers of literature seem more eager to paint the “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Masculinities-Christopher-Breu/dp/0816644349" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Hard-Boiled-Masculinities-Christopher-Breu/dp/0816644349&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2QQ3Xn14HFPgZAaHIeq918">hardboiled masculinities</a>” of Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner as unhealthy coping mechanisms than to value those authors for their natural appeal to male readers and their subtle treatment of “gendered” issues. Consider just three examples from these great American writers.
<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69683/pg69683-images.html#ch3" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/69683/pg69683-images.html%23ch3&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3Ph-45AfJjSa-BFQGVIT4j">“Hills Like White Elephants”</a> by the reputedly misogynist Hemingway is, among other things, an intricate and damning exposure of men’s responsibility for abortion. And in Faulkner’s &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Skh-8optb_HlfbKjBawLv">Go Down Moses</a>,&#8221; the life trajectory of Isaac McCaslin is, again among other things, an extended meditation on the complicated relationship between a man’s ambition, his moral choices, and his chances of sexual satisfaction. In other words, it’s a story that would be very relatable for incels. And Faulkner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-William-Faulkner/dp/0679764038" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Collected-Stories-William-Faulkner/dp/0679764038&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw082zHqZZPZjnDraGzXMmPG">“Barn Burning,”</a> is a master class in the limitations of a life of resentment.
But instead of classics that would have any appeal to men, the works taught in our colleges have been selected according to the principles of “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Pedagogy-Higher-Education-Critical/dp/1771121149" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Feminist-Pedagogy-Higher-Education-Critical/dp/1771121149&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3od-FEK3dEScJwQT0wS9xg">feminist pedagogy in higher education</a>.” Women’s wellbeing has been the focus, while men, their interests, their needs, and their potential have been treated with aggressive neglect, or even active enmity.
Ironically, the man-bashers seem to have conjured up the very thing they were afraid of. The instances of male hostility toward women that we now, unfortunately, do see in podcasts and on social media are pretty clearly in reaction against 50 years of hating on men as selfish, oppressive, and violent; portraying them as bumbling idiots in entertainment and advertising; making them the big losers in divorce; catering to girls’ interests and lavishing disproportionate attention on them in the education system, to the detriment of boys; and “fighting the patriarchy” and “breaking the glass ceiling” with affirmative action that locked many men out of jobs and, as Helen Andrews points out, has sentenced others to work in HR-ified offices <a href="https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-great-feminization/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1kmYuIpGIAVwEMwFknZYEe">reminiscent of Montessori kindergartens</a>.
The affirmative-action regime, together with the decades-long taboo against mentioning any unflattering facts about racial and ethnic minorities, is ginning up some other ugly things in tandem with misogyny. A not insignificant number of young white males are flirting not only with hostility to women but also with racism and antisemitism.
Which is why my heart sank when I first saw <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Korps-H-Crocker-III/dp/B0FWZXPQ17" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Krugers-Korps-H-Crocker-III/dp/B0FWZXPQ17&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2JQrw_3gBmaNFiTktmmEJq">Kruger’s Korps: A World War II Thriller</a>, the newest work of fiction by my old boss and long-time friend Harry Crocker (H. W. Crocker III to the reading public). Harry and I see eye to eye on most things, but I think he’s soft on the Confederacy. (In my humble opinion that’s a blind spot attributable to his having grown up in California, while I was born into the Jim Crow South, where it was pretty much impossible to miss the long shadow of my ancestors’ sins).
Oh boy, I thought, looking at the title and author’s name in Nazi blackletter font on the cover of Kruger’s Korps. An adventure story with Nazi heroes. That’s exactly what we don’t need, just when young men on the right are falling prey to conspiracy theories about the Jews.
But I was wronging Harry. I don’t want to spoil any part of the intricate plot of Kruger Korps. Suffice it to say, it’s clear to the reader by page seven that the Nazis of Afrika Korps are not going to be the heroes of the story. Quite the contrary. This is a quintessentially American adventure that transports the reader back to the can-do optimism of the World War II era — a time that feels like a different age of the world, though it’s actually within living memory. Here’s to hoping that lots of demoralized Nazi-curious young men who don’t remember America before we were losing an endless succession of “forever wars” get pulled in by the cover and find themselves swept up in this healthy American story.
Young white men today have plenty of excuse for resentment, but living on resentment and excuses is the road to misery. The eponymous hero of Kruger’s Korps models the opposite path: pursuing his patriotic ideals by tackling every impossible challenge with infinite resource and sagacity.
But the book doesn’t just teach; it also delights. The absurd obstacle course our hero dives and jumps his way through is a thrill a minute. The historical references are a hoot: What missionary priest do we meet in the interior of Africa? Rad trads will guess the answer. And the prose is also a lot of fun. Harry Crocker is always a clever writer, but he outdoes himself here:
<blockquote>
“So,” I said to Steiner, “that’s the cause of all this. At least Dr. Faustus traded his soul for his every ambition, but to trade your soul for what — that woman, opium?”
“People make bad choices all the time, lieutenant — trading paradise for a rotten apple, becoming a pillar of salt to satisfy curiosity, betraying the Son of Man for 30 pieces of silver. Have you not read that book?”
</blockquote>
Kruger’s Korps is exactly what we need more of — and apparently are going to get. Because Harry Crocker isn’t the only Regnery alumnus working to fill the gap left by the feminized publishing houses and the feminist professors. In fact all three of us who were senior editors at Regnery when I was there are now doing our bit for fiction that appeals to men and boys. That’s a switch from the kind of books we edited at the venerable conservative publisher, which since its foundation in 1947 has published almost exclusively conservative non-fiction. But we’re all working from the premise that “the social imaginary,” as Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan frequently points out, is shaped by the <a href="https://store.dailywire.com/collections/andrew-klavan/products/after-that-the-dark-cameron-winter-mysteries-book-5" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://store.dailywire.com/collections/andrew-klavan/products/after-that-the-dark-cameron-winter-mysteries-book-5&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3aOMxVURdSy-QFkkzzrCGr">stories we read</a> and watch.
The third senior editor from my time at Regnery, who before that was a veteran science-fiction editor, is Tony Daniel, who is now the founding publisher of the brand-new <a href="https://passage.press/collections/ark-press" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://passage.press/collections/ark-press&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw247BzOEHPICYHlns-7JMou">Ark Press</a>, an imprint of Passage Publishing devoted to putting out the kind of genre literature that appeals to male readers — but not to the <a href="https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://issuu.com/leeandlowbooks/docs/diversity_baseline_survey_3.0&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0KP9CUPB5KbCK8V7RCCZvo">East Coast women who dominate American publishing</a>. The <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-books-mainstream-publishing-wont-push-are-finding-an-audience-anyway">graphic-novel version of &#8220;American Paladin&#8221;</a> by bestselling urban fantasy author Larry Correia launched the imprint in December of last year; Ark will publish the hardcover on June 23. Other recent and upcoming titles from the new imprint include &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Mars-Travis-Corcoran/dp/B0FXFMFVVC" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Red-State-Mars-Travis-Corcoran/dp/B0FXFMFVVC&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1Ui7UWCcAaAGTvGufATz21">Red State Mars&#8221;</a> by Travis Corcoran; &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Timerman-Yukon-Confederacy-Theodore-Judson/dp/B0FYX2F68X" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Timerman-Yukon-Confederacy-Theodore-Judson/dp/B0FYX2F68X&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2ReOi4BJ_GNP-qaAFIpUHo">The Timerman</a>,&#8221; set in a 25th century Yukon Confederacy with no electricity or computers; and the comic spy novel &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Pickle-Factory-Tall-Tale-CIA/dp/B0FXFK4FKS" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Pickle-Factory-Tall-Tale-CIA/dp/B0FXFK4FKS&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0msB0oFv111wj0WvKKKVKv">The Pickle Factory: A Tall Tale of the CIA&#8221;</a> by first-time author Sam Oyken, about which I keep hearing raves from every editor who worked on it. Ark is committed to discovering and fostering new authors with <a href="https://ark.press/blogs/news/ark-prize" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://ark.press/blogs/news/ark-prize&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3lNS5TpqWj1N3HvLMJ-1pY">significant prize money</a>.
And I’m doing my part, working to get out the word about the classics of the old literary canon that have been despised and neglected precisely because they appeal to men — in <a href="https://libertyclassroom.com/course-grid/introduction-to-american-literature-our-best-short-stories/" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://libertyclassroom.com/course-grid/introduction-to-american-literature-our-best-short-stories/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0h5pVKM9bInn_Tzbrw3F9Y">lectures</a> featuring Stephen Crane’s <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45524/45524-h/45524-h.htm" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45524/45524-h/45524-h.htm&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw32tjcFc5Fdc0WTpIysCxiZ">“The Open Boat,”</a> Hemingway’s <a href="https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/big-two-hearted-river.pdf" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.libraryofshortstories.com/storiespdf/big-two-hearted-river.pdf&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1WrQ9Seu_1ul7E-IpFERbU">“Big Two-Hearted River,”</a> Faulkner’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Go-Down-Moses-William-Faulkner/dp/0679732179&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0Skh-8optb_HlfbKjBawLv">“The Bear,”</a> and J. D. Salinger’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769568/ref=asc_df_0316769568?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&amp;linkCode=df0&amp;hvadid=79852242640743&amp;hvnetw=s&amp;hvqmt=e&amp;hvbmt=be&amp;hvdev=c&amp;hvlocint=&amp;hvlocphy=91731&amp;hvtargid=pla-4583451720218006&amp;psc=1&amp;msclkid=83f62794aa881a9a28b64da4c6f0ece3" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Nine-Stories-J-D-Salinger/dp/0316769568/ref%3Dasc_df_0316769568?tag%3Dbngsmtphsnus-20%26linkCode%3Ddf0%26hvadid%3D79852242640743%26hvnetw%3Ds%26hvqmt%3De%26hvbmt%3Dbe%26hvdev%3Dc%26hvlocint%3D%26hvlocphy%3D91731%26hvtargid%3Dpla-4583451720218006%26psc%3D1%26msclkid%3D83f62794aa881a9a28b64da4c6f0ece3&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1781714139429000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3oRtnaQz71KOxTk_4HiLaq">“For Esmé, with Love and Squalor.”</a>
This Father’s Day, your gift — whether it’s a classic or a just-published book — can be an enthusiastic vote for the revival of a cultured, healthy, and successful masculinity.
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Elizabeth Kantor is a freelance book editor and the author of &#8220;The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature.&#8221;

Relaxed mature man smoking a pipe while reading a novel in the living room.

These Books Are Challenging The War On Masculinity

Untitled design – 2026-06-15T134541.807

25 Books On The Founding Fathers To Read For America 250

Abraham Lincoln

Alexander Hamilton

American History

American Revolution

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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The past decade or so’s changes in publishing have hit young adult books and two conservative favorites, science fiction and fantasy, hardest. This is why right-leaning indie authors lean heavy on genre stuff. This is great, except for the fact that indie genre authors also love to write long. Do you want to stand out from the pack as a right-aligned indie novelist? Write mysteries or crime thrillers that are reasonably short. There are not a lot of such books. (If you’ve got one, drop a comment and I might review it.) For lovers of fantasy, though, let’s look at the long and the short of it.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Travel-Star-Paul-Scott-Grill/dp/B0F7Z4VWNP">&#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; by Paul Scott Grill</a>
&#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; offers some of the best and the less appealing of the indie genre scene. A road-tripping fantasy novel grounded in the author’s Christian faith and an atypical Western setting, it’s not like the kind of stuff you’ll see major publishers putting out. The fall of a legendary city has doomed a frontier land to grinding struggle; now a young woman of angelic lineage named Nichole Littlestar has to convince reluctant horse whisperer Travel to brave dangers manmade and mystical, and guide her to the city’s site, in an effort to rekindle the lost hope of man. Along the way, they brave the dangers of a poisoned land, not least Drannach of Shrian, known as the Wathe, who will stop at nothing to purge the city of Archewood’s memory from the world of men. 
Also, there are superintelligent horses that act functionally sort of like Roy Rogers’ Trigger. If nothing else will pique your interest, that should do it.
There’s a genuine charm to &#8220;Travel by Star.&#8221; Its action and scares are balanced by an underlying gentleness. Its faith-based sensibilities are neither cloying nor overpowering, and Christians with a fondness for fictional worlds may particularly enjoy its handling of the influence of Jesus on a fantasy world and how Christ reaches the people there. The characters aren’t particularly compelling, but they are human and likable. 
The only downside is the page count. This book would have been a terrific read at 250-300 pages. It would have been fine at 350. But &#8220;Travel by Star&#8221; is six hundred and thirty-six pages. As a result, the charms get a little lost and the parts that drag have too much time to settle in. But it’s a book with real heart and with some things to say, particularly about the temptation to repay wrong with wrong, and living with choices that haunt you. And while it may not be as polished as mainstream offerings, at its best it portrays a fallen world that truly feels eerie and out of joint, and that’s harder to pull off than you’d think.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Turquoise-Serpent-Ashes-Urn-Book-ebook/dp/B088F4KMTZ">&#8220;The Turquoise Serpent&#8221; by Alexander Palacio</a>
This one’s lean and mean, folks. If you want more, there’s a sequel (&#8220;The Flowers of the Moon&#8221;), but the original is plenty fun on its own: It’s a straightforward sword and sorcery story with enjoyably contrasting characters, a hectic pace, and action aplenty. 
Having captured the brutish exile Cayucali, a band of soldiers and the spiteful young wizard-in-training Tezca are forced by a storm to detour their march home, only to find themselves in an unholy land where the fallen nation Kalak Mool is in thrall to the deadly cult of a dark god. Do our protagonists fall into the hands of utter villainy? Indeed they do. Is the muscled hero forced to fight in an arena? Yes he is. Is the cerebral co-protagonist flattered and tempted by the enticements of an evil sorcerer? But of course. Is there a pretty girl who must be saved? Absolutely. 
You can call a lot of the beats in this story going in. But that’s half the fun: &#8220;The Turquoise Serpent&#8221; does what it says on the tin, and isn’t it nice to know what you’re getting occasionally? The real spice comes not from the plot, but from the setting, a Mesoamerican-inspired fantasy world that isn’t afraid to get weird and have different attitudes from our modern day-to-day. It’s short, zippy, and doesn’t make the mistake of being overly ambitious. A good companion for a summer afternoon in the hammock.
<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mighty-Sons-Hercules-1/dp/B0CK3MMBPP">&#8220;The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 1&#8221; published by Cirsova Publishing</a>
The mighty sons of Hercules once thundered through the years. 
These men of steel could never feel the curse of a coward’s fears
The mighty sons of Hercules were men as men should be
They burned with dreams and turned their dreams into history!
Er, sorry, that’s the catchy old <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1109FzrOo">TV show theme</a>. Cirsova is hat-tipping here. In the late 1960s, some enterprising producers snagged the U.S. TV rights to a bunch of sword and sandal strongman pics. They renamed most of the heroes in dubbing, broke the movies into two hour-long episodes, slapped a title sequence on it, and dumped it into syndication. Tim Lucas’s Video WatchBlog <a href="https://videowatchdogblog.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-sons-of-hercules-thunder-through.html">notes</a> that it aired around the U.S. for 11 straight years and had a revival in the 1990s thanks to the cable channel TNT. 
What does this have to do with the anthology (and, one presumes, its sequel, &#8220;The Mighty Sons of Hercules: Volume 2&#8221;)? Absolutely nothing, except that the publisher is telling you the old sword and sandals are just what you’re in for here, in eight stories of inhumanly strong men, adventurers who help the troubled and free the oppressed. 
The best tale by far is Misha Burnett’s “Summer of the Stranger,” wherein a boy from a bandit-plagued village tries to assemble a defensive force based on the example of a traveling son of Hercules, but there’s great fun in several. Hero-vs-evil-king tale “Mighty Umaeo and the Tyrant’s Test” features the most delightful herculean strength feat of the book, wherein the hero saves a sinking ship by towing it to harbor, and “Maciste in the Land of the Snakes” and “Melkart the Unchained” both get the feel of the old sword and sandals pictures to come across very well.
Cirsova’s bringing back the rollicking, cheerful strongman hero, who tackles problems head-on with a smile and bulging biceps in the antithesis of grimdark fantasy. Villains are formidable but never seem unconquerable; the hero may be captured, but he never doubts or questions himself and always has good cheer and plenty of hope. Never for a moment do you doubt the good guy will win. And don’t we all need a little dose of that every now and then?
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David Hines has a background in forensic science and international human rights, has written for the Federalist and the American Conservative, and loves books. Possibly even yours.

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