Look. I get it. It’s hard out here. The world feels like it’s falling apart around us. Everything feels bad… Of course we’re all looking for escapism where we can find it. But we can’t just be numb to the horrors. Our best defence, our best way to make sure we don’t let more and more awful things happen while we’re avoiding the news cycle is to stay informed. Remember, being smart is sexy, and it’s important to be knowledgeable about the world around you. 

So, to help us get started, I’ve compiled a list of books about topics “pulled from the headlines”, that I hope will help you learn more about the world around you.  

Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman’s OpenAI by Karen Hao

Karen Hao’s Empire of AI is a thoughtful and meticulously reported read about OpenAI and Sam Altman. It’s quite an expansive book, engaging readers through an incredibly informative (and harrowing) depiction of the AI “arms race”, the development of AI technologies, Sam Altman and the history of OpenAI, as well as the impacts of AI on the world. From unflinching looks at the environmental and economic impacts of AI data centers, and content moderation jobs in the Global South, to a profile of Sam Altman, his behaviours, and his legacy, this was a really thoughtful, and thought-provoking read, that will arm you with a knowledge about some of the biggest innovations, changes, impacts and players in the world of AI.

Pizza Before We Die: An Eyewitness Account in Gaza By Hassan Kanafani (with Yasuko Thanh)

Hassan Kanafani’s Pizza Before We Die is a powerful work of journalism written by an ordinary citizen who bears witness to the undoing of his homeland and community. In the midst of the human tragedy unfolding in Gaza, Hassan began posting about his daily experience on Reddit. Three activists, moved by his words, started collecting his posts without a clear plan. They knew that his story needed to be seen, and hoped to somehow raise funds for him. By chance, those posts found their way to award-winning author Yasuko Thanh, who helped Hassan frame them into a book. This is a heartbreaking and vivid account of war and its toll, sharing stories of hunger, survival, and death — stories that aren’t being told, and demand to be heard. This book is literary journalism, capturing the horror and tragedy experienced in Gaza with thoughtfulness and clarity, ensuring that in the midst of chaos and devastation, humanity remains intact. A portion of the sales from Pizza Before We Die will be donated to Doctors Without Borders.

For the Sun After Long Nights: The Story of Iran’s Women-Led Uprising By Fatemeh Jamalpour and Nilo Tabrizy

For the Sun After Long Nights is a powerful exploration of 2022’s women-led protests in Iran, told through the interwoven stories of two Iranian journalists. In September 2022, a young Kurdish woman named Mahsa Jȋna Amini died after being beaten by police officers who had arrested her for not adhering to the Islamic Republic’s dress code. Her death galvanized thousands of Iranians, mostly women, who took to the streets in one of the country’s largest uprisings: the Woman, Life, Freedom movement. Under the threat of imprisonment or death for her work as a journalist covering political unrest, state repression, and grassroots activism in Iran, Fatemeh Jamalpour joined the crowds of people fighting to topple Iran’s religious extremist regime. Meanwhile, across the world, Nilo Tabrizy, whose family emigrated from Iran when she was a child, covered the protests and state violence, knowing that she would not be able to safely return to Iran in the future. Although they had only met each other once, Nilo and Fatemeh kept in correspondence. Their shared sense of sisterhood led them to document the spirit and legacy of the moment, as well as the history that led to it. This book offers two perspectives on what it means to tell the stories closest to one’s heart – both at the forefront, and from afar. 

Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre

Virginia Roberts Giuffre’s Nobody’s Girl is a devastating and unflinching memoir. Virginia Roberts Giuffre is known to the world as the most outspoken victim of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. She’s the woman whose decision to speak out helped send both serial abusers to prison, and whose photograph with Prince Andrew was the catalyst for his fall from grace. But her story had never been shared in full, and not in her own words. In April 2025, Giuffre took her own life, leaving behind a memoir written in the years preceding her death, and stating unequivocally that she wanted it to be published. Nobody’s Girl is Giuffre’s story, chronicling her life, including an unflinching account of her time with Epstein and Maxwell, who trafficked her and others to numerous prominent men. She discusses the molestation and brutality she suffered as a child, as well as her daring escape from Epstein and Maxwell’s grasp at the age of nineteen. As she grew up and rebuilt her life, Giuffre gathered the courage she needed to not only hold her abusers accountable, but also advocate for other survivors. 

Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives by Siddharth Kara

Cobalt is an essential component in every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today. These batteries power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles, among other things. Roughly 75% of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo – often by peasants and children, living in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world go about their lives (knowingly or unknowingly) participating in an environmental and human rights catastrophe in the Congo. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara’s Cobalt Red is an exposé of the immense toll extracted from the people and the environment of the Democratic Republic of Congo through cobalt mining, told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Kara travelled deep into cobalt territory in order to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. In this book, Kara investigates militia-controlled mining areas, tracing the supply chain of child-mined cobalt, all the way from the toxic pit to the consumer-facing tech giants. He gathers shocking and powerful testimonies, arguing that we must all care about what’s happening in the Congo, because we are all implicated.

The Knowing by Tanya Talaga

Tanya Talaga’s The Knowing is a book about many things. It explores Canada’s history of residential schools, from their start, to their devastating impacts, to the discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children, to the efforts made by Indigenous elders and representatives to receive a formal apology from the Catholic church. This is the story of Canada’s history of colonialism and violence, and this is also Talaga’s most personal work yet. It follows her own family’s journey going back several generations, and chronicling the family’s efforts to learn more about the life and death of one of their matriarchs – Talaga’s great-great-grandmother, Annie. Both deeply personal, and meticulously researched, The Knowing is a must-read to better understand Canada’s history of state-sanctioned violence against Indigenous people, and its long-lasting impacts.

Nothing at All by Olivia Tapiero

Translated from French, Olivia Tapiero’s Nothing at All is a genre-defying book that explores the familial trauma caused by the destruction of her ancestral lands of Lebanon and Morocco. Her family has been marked by devastation from imperialism and colonialism, which has been too difficult to articulate with language. So, a black hole of silence has formed instead, and it is through this black hole that Tapiero emerges in order to better understand her family’s history; and herself. This is an urgent and necessary book that reminds us to remember the human lives that have been impacted by mass devastations.

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Ameema Saeed (@ameemabackwards) is a storyteller, an avid bookworm, and a curator of very specific playlists and customized book recommendations. She’s a book reviewer, a Sensitivity Reader, a book buyer at Indigo Books & Music, and the Books Editor for She Does the City, where she writes and curates bookish content, and book recommendations. She enjoys bad puns, good food, dancing, and talking about feelings. She writes about books, big feelings, unruly bodies, and her lived experiences, and hopes to write your next favourite book one day. When she’s not reading books, she likes to talk about books (especially diverse books, and books by diverse authors) on her bookstagram: @ReadWithMeemz