Reading fiction builds the empathy democracy actually needs

When two friends clash over politics in Zadie Smith's short story "The Waiter's Wife," the argument feels familiar—sharp, seemingly irresolvable, the kind that leaves both people convinced the other is beyond reason. But then a stranger's quiet empathy shifts something. The women don't suddenly agree. They just become willing to share the world with each other anyway.

That small moment is the entire thesis of Michael Fischer's new book, How Books Can Save Democracy. He's arguing something that sounds almost quaint in 2024: reading—really reading—can rewire how we think about people who disagree with us.

Fischer isn't making a sentimental case. He's building on research showing that fiction activates something in our brains that political debate alone doesn't. When you read a character's interior life, when you spend pages inside their thoughts and contradictions, you're practicing a specific skill: seeing someone as fully human even when you find them wrong.

The book draws on work by political theorist Danielle Allen and others who've studied what holds democracies together. It's not agreement. It's something harder and quieter: what Fischer calls "mutual toleration" and "forbearance." Accepting that your political opponent is a legitimate person. Treating power as temporary, not permanent. Building what Allen terms "practices of political friendship"—the daily habits that let citizens coexist across real differences.

Novel writer Rachel Kadish teaches a writing exercise where students inhabit the perspective of someone with abhorrent views. The goal isn't to agree with those views. It's to understand the interior logic—how a person gets there, what they fear, what they value. Research backs this up: emotional transportation through short stories measurably increases empathy in readers.

None of this is magic. Fischer isn't claiming that a book club will fix partisan polarization. But he's pointing at something that feels increasingly rare: the deliberate practice of seeing complexity in people you oppose. Democracy doesn't need everyone to be friends. It needs citizens who can tolerate genuine disagreement without consigning the other side to irredeemable evil.

Fischer ends with a thought that cuts both ways: "If hatred can gather momentum and spread, so can compassion and understanding. The future of our democracy depends on it." It's not a prediction. It's a choice—one that starts, maybe, with opening a book.