Gal Beckerman

26 Nonfiction Books We’re Excited About This Spring

When spring finally does decide to arrive...check out "How to Be a Dissident."

Why People Shed Tears for Tyrants Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. This common reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage they do.

Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei—and this shared reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage those dictators do, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues.

Why People Shed Tears for Tyrants Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. This common reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage they do.

Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei—and this shared reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage those dictators do, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues.

Why People Shed Tears for Tyrants Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. This common reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage they do.

I wrote about all the tears that followed the death of Khamenei...they seemed drawn from a deeper well than just happiness or sadness.

Why People Shed Tears for Tyrants Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. This common reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage they do.

Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei—and this shared reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage those dictators do, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues.

Why People Shed Tears for Tyrants Both loyalists and dissidents cried over the death of Ayatollah Khamenei. This common reaction to a dictator’s demise is a symptom of the damage they do.

I wrote about all the tears that followed the death of Khamenei...they seemed drawn from a deeper well than just happiness or sadness.

Oh man, I wish I could be there. I’ll just have to watch it on C-SPAN and cry into my scotch alone at home

The Washington Post’s Books Section Worked Why the editor of the scuttled review pages believes that the paper’s subscribers know better than its leaders

A needed and brilliant defense of the subscription model from @johnwilliams.bsky.social

"I expect publications I support to attempt growth without radically changing the focus or quality of the work or pivoting to some get-traffic-quick scheme every time readership dips over a holiday weekend."

I’ve spent the past year on a search. How do we push back against the forces that are crushing us right now? How do we resist the dehumanization of our politics, our technology? The answers came from people who pushed back before us: the dissidents...🧵

How to Be a Dissident by Gal Beckerman: 9798217089215 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books An invigorating guide to fighting back—part philosophy, part history, and part manual for living with integrity in an age of conformity and authoritarian drift How do we push back in a world where...

The book will be published 4/21 and my hope is that it sparks a conversation, that it helps readers think differently about the current moment, that it makes them feel more mentally equipped for it. Stay tuned for more! And pre-order here!

There are extreme examples of behavior and thinking here, and I don't believe we can all be dissidents, but these people offer us something essential—they do for me, anyway—when it comes to figuring out how to live a moral life, especially when it feels hard.

The book explores a history that stretches from the agoras of Ancient Greece to Tehran today. I looked at philosophy and art and stories from the past that all helped me get closer to an understanding of what makes a dissident.

There Is a Word for What Is Happening in Minneapolis What ICE’s opponents are doing in Minnesota is part of a long and successful historical tradition: dissidence.

I didn't have to venture very far to see what a dissident could look like in America in 2026. In this @TheAtlantic piece from last month, I observed what was happening in the streets of Minneapolis and saw something familiar.

"How to Be a Dissident" is a book about that mindset. I explore 10 aspects of the dissident that emerged from reading memoirs and talking to people in much more dire situations than our own. It helped me start to orient myself differently.

This is a personal book for me. I have felt confronted by an endless stream of moral choices lately. How to respond to ICE? To Gaza? To AI? Dissidence is often framed as a decision in a particular moment, but it's actually a mindset, a way of being.

I’ve spent the past year on a search. How do we push back against the forces that are crushing us right now? How do we resist the dehumanization of our politics, our technology? The answers came from people who pushed back before us: the dissidents...🧵

First, Boehm dispenses with the identitarians-both the ideologues on the right, who fight "in terms of traditional values," and those on the left, who fight "in the name of gender and race." The MAGA versus critical race theory death match is an easy foil, two sides of the same group-centric approach that is ill-suited for pluralistic society, let alone all of humanity. But if this was his only target, a reader weary of the culture war might just easily nod along. Boehm goes further, and takes aim at the 400-year-old tradition of Western liberalism, or what he calls "false universalism." Because he is trying to invoke a politics built on essential, everlasting truths, Boehm considers the marketplace of ideas almost as much of a cul de sac as the tribal alleys of identitarians. One of the legacies of the Enlightenment, he argues, is that moral obviousness was replaced by a culture of "consensus, interest, and opinion." We reason our way to a point of view, and argue and haggle with others toward some moral compromise. In practice, we usually end up balancing delicately on the knife's edge of the thinnest majoritarianism. This might sound like a reasonable place to end up, and even the best we can hope for-except when it works to mask injustice.

Is anything morally obvious anymore?
The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal truths. www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0... By @galbeckerman.bsky.social #RadicalUniversalism

America Needs ‘Self-Evident’ Truths The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal morality.

The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that Americans have held on to our sense of universal morality, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues. He considers a timely new book about “radical universalism”:

I tried to think through whether there were any "self-evident truths" for Americans today...it wasn't so hard. Which makes our busted political life all that more distressing.

America Needs ‘Self-Evident’ Truths The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal morality.

The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that Americans have held on to our sense of universal morality, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues. He considers a timely new book about “radical universalism”:

America Needs ‘Self-Evident’ Truths The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal morality.

I struggle still to understand what happened in Minneapolis, the actions and risks ordinary citizens took, and are continuing to to take. Reading Omri Boehm's recent book, "Radical Universalism," gave me some helpful American language for it.

Thank you for the mention! I also thought that film was extraordinary.

America Needs ‘Self-Evident’ Truths The public reaction to the violence in Minneapolis suggests that we have held on to our sense of universal morality.

I struggle still to understand what happened in Minneapolis, the actions and risks ordinary citizens took, and are continuing to to take. Reading Omri Boehm's recent book, "Radical Universalism," gave me some helpful American language for it.

‘Together, We Are America’ Bad Bunny’s critics said his Super Bowl halftime show would be divisive. They were totally wrong.

You can call Bad Bunny's halftime show many things—fun, meaningful, staggeringly detailed, wholesomely hot, surprisingly Gagatastic—but not divisive.

www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026...

Let Trump Keep Building Monuments to Himself The president’s penchant for gilded statues and self-glorification might at least help clarify the nature of his leadership.

Let President Trump keep building monuments to himself, @galbeckerman.bsky.social argues: It may be “the most effective way to highlight the unprecedentedly self-serving nature of Trump’s presidency.”

Let Trump Keep Building Monuments to Himself The president’s penchant for gilded statues and self-glorification might at least help clarify the nature of his leadership.

A 15-foot golden statue of Trump is about to be erected. I look at the bright side...

Oh god, two of my favorite people in one post 🤯

Shutting down (the stellar) books coverage at WaPo is a real telling move when your owner is literally Jeff Bezos