Dear Reader,
Have you ever started listening to someone and found yourself unexpectedly entranced, inspired, and riveted? Last fall, a friend and I were Zoom-watching High Holiday services of Central Synagogue in NYC. Witnessing their Senior Rabbi, Angela Warnick Buchdal, created just such a moment. I had rarely experienced a spiritual leader as deeply compelling: grounded, empathetic, joyful, and wise. By chance, I recently received an advanced copy of Rabbi Buchdahl’s memoir, Heart of a Stranger: An Unlikely Rabbi’s Story of Faith, Identity, and Belonging. It’s hard to describe just how excited I was!
Angela was born in Korea to a Korean mother and a Jewish father and grew up in Tacoma, Washington. She has said she often felt like an outsider and that sense of “otherness,” she explains, helped her cultivate radical compassion and deep empathy. After seeing her featured on CBS Sunday Morning last month, I’ve been thinking about radical compassion ever since.
It may sound cliché, but in these complicated, divisive, and often scary times, understanding the lives of others truly feels essential. And, as ever, one of the most powerful ways to find that understanding is through books.
In addition to Rabbi Buchdahl’s book, I’ve included some additional titles that have deepened my empathy. Of course, I could name hundreds of such books—it is one of the joys of reading—but these are the most recent catching my attention.
There Is No Place for Us by Brian Goldstone
Journalist Brian Goldstone brings readers face-to-face with the realities of homelessness in America through intimate portraits of five Atlanta families struggling to remain housed in an increasingly unequal city. I was struck by how granular and humane his reporting is—he illuminates not just statistics but the invisible systems that keep people precarious. The frustration, fear, and resilience of these families linger long after you close the book. It reminded me of Random Family by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc—another masterwork of immersive, empathetic reporting that charts the tumultuous struggle of hope against hardship.
The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
This extraordinary and necessary book revisits one of the most brutal and defining crimes in American history—the murder of Emmett Till. Thompson’s research not only exposes the depravity of the killers but also illuminates the deliberate collective forgetting that followed. With integrity and depth, he traces how forces of power, money, and white supremacy conspired to bury the truth, and how a small group of people continue to fight to bring it fully to light. The Barn is a reminder that understanding our past, however painful, is essential to empathy and repair.
Baldwin: A Love Story by Nicholas Boggs
As you likely know, I’ve been a James Baldwin devotee for years. I’ve watched his fiery debate with William F. Buckley, his luminous conversation with Nikki Giovanni, and I’ve read every one of his books. But this new, 720-page biography reveals a side of Baldwin I hadn’t seen before: the intimate, emotional, deeply human one. Boggs explores Baldwin’s relationships and emotional life with tenderness and insight. It’s an extraordinary portrait of a man whose intellect was towering—but whose heart was just as expansive.
Then again, sometimes we just read to enjoy the beauty of fine writing—one such book is What We Can Know by Ian McEwan. I’m so glad I picked this up. Set slightly in the future, the story revolves around a poem written by a husband to his wife—but as with all McEwan novels, it’s about much more. The writing is exquisite, the language alive and luminous—it sparkles. It reminded me how nourishing it is to slow down with a beautifully written book—the kind that shimmers line by line rather than races toward plot.
Reading these books has felt like an exercise in both attention and empathy. They remind me that the best stories—real or imagined—help us understand the world not just as it is, but as it could be.
Perhaps radical compassion begins here: by picking up a book, sitting still, and letting another person’s life unfold in your hands.
Happy reading,
Roxanne J. Coady
Founder
RJ Julia Booksellers and Just the Right Book!
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For over a decade, readers have loved our personalized subscription service, choosing books for themselves or gifting them to loved ones. Now, by popular demand, founder Roxanne Coady is curating her own subscription—handpicking the unforgettable reads that rearrange her brain and linger long after the last page. The subscription is a mix of new hardcovers that she’s loving and paperback editions of some of her all-time favorite books.