January 2026: Nonfiction

ElAkkad_Jan26Cover

Meet-up recap

Mod Note: had a really nice chat :) I this this is going to be a fun year of reading and discussing! exceeded expectations! 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸 🐸

overall there was a lot to agree with here
for better or worse, it felt like a really long opinion piece
there are some incredible soundbites, but they don't all hit
we feel his anger
this discussion promped a long conversation about who this book is for
and how warranted its rebuke of the left is
really liked connecting observations in El Akkad's personal
and professional experience to the war in Gaza
some truly devastating nihilism in there for sure

A little about this month's book:

To kick off Dan's book club, we are starting strong with January's Nonfiction pick, "One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This" by Omar El Akkad.

On October 25, 2023, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet has been viewed more than 10 million times.

As an immigrant who came to the West, El Akkad believed that it promised freedom. A place of justice for all. But in the past twenty years, reporting on the War on Terror, Ferguson, climate change, Black Lives Matter protests, and more, and watching the unmitigated slaughter in Gaza, El Akkad has come to the conclusion that much of what the West promises is a lie. That there will always be entire groups of human beings it has never intended to treat as fully human—not just Arabs or Muslims or immigrants, but whoever falls outside the boundaries of privilege. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This is a chronicle of that painful realization, a moral grappling with what it means, as a citizen of the U.S., as a father, to carve out some sense of possibility in a time of carnage.

This is El Akkad’s nonfiction debut, his most raw and vulnerable work to date, a heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a brilliant articulation of the same breakup we are watching all over the United States, in family rooms, on college campuses, on city streets; the consequences of this rupture are just beginning. This book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.

"I can’t think of a more important piece of writing to read right now. I found hope here, and help, to face what the world is now, all that it isn’t anymore. Please read this. I promise you won’t regret it." —Tommy Orange, bestselling author of Wandering Stars and There There