What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson
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Updated 9 min 44 sec ago

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

What We Are Reading Today: ‘On Gaslighting’ by Kate Abramson

“Gaslighting” is suddenly in everyone’s vocabulary. It’s written about, talked about, tweeted about, even sung about it.

It’s become shorthand for being manipulated by someone who insists that up is down, hot is cold, dark is light—someone who isn’t just lying about such things, but trying to drive you crazy.

The term has its origins in a 1944 film in which a husband does exactly that to his wife, his crazy-making efforts symbolized by the rise and fall of the gaslights in their home. Kate Abramson examines gaslighting from a philosophical perspective, investigating it as a distinctive moral phenomenon.


What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life’ by Alexandre Lefebvre

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life’ by Alexandre Lefebvre
Updated 03 November 2025

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life’ by Alexandre Lefebvre

What We Are Reading Today: ‘Liberalism as a Way of Life’ by Alexandre Lefebvre

Where do you get your values and sensibilities from? If you grew up in a Western democracy, the answer is probably liberalism. Conservatives are right about one thing: liberalism is the ideology of our times, as omnipresent as religion once was.

Yet, as Alexandre Lefebvre argues in “Liberalism as a Way of Life,” many of us are liberal without fully realizing it—or grasping what it means.

Misled into thinking that liberalism is confined to politics, we fail to recognize that it’s the water we swim in, saturating every area of public and private life, shaping our psychological and spiritual outlooks, and influencing our moral and aesthetic values—our sense of what is right, wrong, good, bad, funny, worthwhile, and more. 

This eye-opening book shows how so many of us are liberal to the core, why liberalism provides the basis for a good life, and how we can make our lives better and happier by becoming more aware of, and more committed to, the beliefs we already hold.