During Election Week 2020 my struggle to keep my bearings involved burying myself, when I’d seen too much for the day of the Electoral College numbers, in two gripping books that happened to be on top of my bedside stack. One was a comforting and inspiring book about an obscure man who has been dead for many years; the other was a disturbing book about an infamous man who is too much alive right now, but may have taken one giant leap toward dying—so-to-speak—that fateful week. That book fed the fire of my anxieties, while the other doused it. I couldn’t have made it through the week without them.