As we entered the darkest part of a very chaotic year, we asked ourselves on Slack: What book would you recommend to relight a spark … to help make our inner fires burn brighter in 2026?
Five Labbies responded with books ranging from a memoir … to a Southern novel … to a “manifesto for New Majority Learner-Earners.”
We hope they help remind you of your purpose … and inspire you to cozy up next to a fireplace or light a candle while you read.
Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America
By Beth Macy
I highly recommend this acclaimed book on a few “best” lists for 2025, not just because the author and U.S. House candidate is a former journalism colleague of mine, but because it’s a love letter to public education and community colleges especially. It speaks to why my career path led to Education Design Lab: Fight for the underdog. “Paper Girl” is a very personal journey that tells the story of the “backward mobility” happening in Macy’s rural Ohio hometown, her politically polarized family, and — most movingly — the story of Silas, a New Majority Learner from her hometown who juggled a full-time job and caregiving responsibilities while taking welding classes at the local community college. Because of this book, I know the name Claiborne Pell, the U.S. Senator who saw his namesake Pell Grant as a “G.I. Bill for everybody” — which made college possible for the author, and which can now be used for short-term training programs.
— Stephanie Ogilvie Seagle, Communications Director
Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life
By Henry Oliver
I recommend this book because it completely shreds the idea that if you did not “make it” by 25 or 30, you somehow missed your window. Oliver pulls in psychology and neuroscience, but what sticks with me are the stories of people who found their lane later in life and treated that as normal, not as some consolation prize.
For the Lab and our Innovator Network, this reads like a manifesto for New Majority Learner-Earners. The people who are working, caregiving, paying bills, and only now getting a real shot at their second or third act. It gives us language we can actually use with them: “You are not behind. You are right on time for the life you are building.” It also puts a quiet but sharp question back on us as practitioners. Are our micro-pathways, supports, and stories really built for late bloomers, or are we still secretly designing around the straight-through 18- to 22-year-old?
Second Act reminds me that some of the most powerful innovations in education will come from people who were never framed as “the chosen ones” on paper. Our job is to build systems where blooming late is seen as a source of power, not something to apologize for.
— Dr. Kaman Hung, Data Coach
Nonlinear: Navigating Design with Curiosity and Conviction
By Kevin G. Bethune
This book responds powerfully to the moment we find ourselves in, a moment where complexity is the everyday terrain and old playbooks are no longer enough. As part of the Simplicity: Design, Technology, Business, Life series by MIT Press — which includes work by John Maeda and Kat Holmes as well as Bethune’s earlier book “Reimagining Design” — this volume continues a tradition of pushing designers to work with greater care and awareness. Bethune shows how traditional and linear frameworks fall short when they meet the lived experiences of people whose paths rarely unfold in straight lines, including the New Majority Learner-Earners at the center of our work. What lights my fire is how he lifts up a design practice based on nuance, intuition, and deeper care, offering guidance that feels suited to the challenges of this time.
I have seen the call for nonlinear design across many areas of my own work, from co-designing with Opportunity Youth to supporting justice-impacted individuals and navigating systems that shift faster than they can be mapped. This moment requires noticing what is actually happening, listening beyond the obvious, and allowing complexity to shape the work. Bethune’s perspective encourages us to design in ways that meet those pursuing opportunity on their own terms and provide support where they aspire to go.
— Brian Rubin, Senior Education Designer
Demon Copperhead
By Barbara Kingsolver
This was the book that got me out of a reading-for-fun hiatus … that had lasted many years. This is an honest story about a boy growing up in the rural foothills of Appalachia, incredibly swarmed by poverty, addiction, and fighting a system that was never designed to build him to succeed. I call Southern Appalachia home and having worked in those schools, this story feels less like fiction, but a scrapbook of stories of my former students.
This book fuels my belief that while we at the Lab are in the business of human flourishing, this isn’t a stand-alone mission — this work truly takes a village. When one learner makes it through, a whole interconnected web of people and stories is carried through. This story is a powerful reminder that resilience must be met with grace, opportunity, and champions that see a learner not as a data point, but as a story still being written.
– Gabby Billiot, Associate Education Designer
The Fourth Turning is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us About How and When This Crisis Will End
By Neil Howe
I recommend this book because it refuses to treat our current chaos as a glitch in the system. Howe argues that every generation inherits a turning. This moment, unsettling as it feels, is also a generational invitation. As a student of history, the stories of past crises that looked impossible until ordinary people rebuilt the civic and economic structures around them were particularly inspiring.
For the Lab and our partners, this reads like a field guide for system re-designers. The people who are juggling work, family, and survival (those we might consider New Majority Learner-Earners) while pushing for something better are not outliers. They’re the protagonists of every renewal moment. It gives us language we can use with employers, colleges, policymakers: “This isn’t collapse. This is the start of rebuilding — and learners and workers who’ve lived through instability are the ones we should trust to lead.” It also puts a mirror up to us as practitioners. Are we designing pathways and validation tools that genuinely prepare communities for a new social contract? Or are we quietly anchoring to assumptions from a world that’s already gone?
The Fourth Turning Is Here reminds me that the most transformative ideas often come from people and places dismissed as too chaotic, too working-class, too “in crisis.” Our job is to build systems that see that turbulence as a source of invention and to help learners and workers claim their role in shaping whatever comes next.
— Meghan Raftery, Education Designer
We can’t forget to mention Who Needs College Anymore by Kathleen deLaski, the Lab’s founder and current board chair. Her book was featured in this “best of” higher education book list for 2025.
Forbes columnist Michael T. Nietzel writes that it “offers good ideas for how postsecondary education should support the needs of more students through pathways like skills-based learning, apprenticeships, and other kinds of practical training.”
Congrats, Kathleen! And now we have even more books to add to our stack.
