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Just under a year ago, on October 23, 2025, my book, Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy, was published. Of course, I’d finished it long before that, which is one of the strange things about writing a book about current events: history keeps unfolding after you finish.
The book did well, surprisingly so to me as a first-time author. It was an instant New York Times bestseller, and I got to travel around the country meeting many of you in the process. I really enjoyed talking with people about the book. And perhaps most gratifying as an author is that, even now, people are reading it individually and also with their book clubs and telling me that it’s helpful, which is what I really wanted the book to be.
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Because of those conversations, I decided to reread the book from cover to cover. I wanted to see how it would hit now. It turns out that it feels at least as urgent now as it did when I was writing it. And there were some parts where I found myself thinking, “This is exactly the conversation we should be having right now.” So I decided to do exactly that. Starting tonight.
Once a week, for the next 10 weeks, I’m going to share a short passage from the book that felt extremely relevant to where we are now when I reread my book. I’ll explain why that part of the book feels important today, given where we are. We can talk about why I chose each passage and how it resonates with you now, nearly two years into Trump’s second term. I think these will be important conversations to have as we approach, go through, and, hopefully, move beyond the midterm elections. (The news cycle may mess with my planned schedule, but I’m going to shoot to share these pieces with you on Wednesday or Thursday each week.)
This isn’t a greatest hits collection from the book, and I’m not trying to serialize it. I want to revisit ideas that still feel useful for where we are now. We’ll talk about frogs (if you’ve read the book, you already know), why living through a constitutional crisis can feel surprisingly normal, and why we never had that moment when the country awoke from its fever dream and got back to normal—whatever that means. We’ll talk about our institutions and the danger of writing them off as broken beyond repair, why the Founders were dead set against having a king, and why an imperfect democracy is still worth saving.
I’ve got ten essays planned in all, and I’m excited to share the excerpts I’ve chosen with you, along with my thoughts about where we are now. And I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
When I wrote Giving Up Is Unforgivable, I wasn’t trying to write a book about Donald Trump. In fact, I regretted his presence in it because the book is really about much more important things. It’s about us and our love of freedom and democracy. It’s about institutions and the rule of law. It’s a look at our history and the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and who we want to be. It’s also about voting and citizenship and the responsibilities that come with living in a democracy. Ultimately, it’s about whether we believe we have the power and the obligation to keep the republic.
I’m going to start next week with the frogs, because that seems like the right place to begin.
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If you have the book, this is a good time to pull it back off the shelf and read along with me (and the chickens). And if you don’t have it yet, you can pick up a copy and join the discussion. Many local libraries have copies.
I want to leave you with one question to think about as we get started: What is happening in our country today that would’ve shocked you a few years ago, but that you now find yourself taking for granted, even treating as normal? So much has changed. It’s important to identify it. And I’m very interested in your answers.
We’re in this together,
Joyce