BESTSELLERS

Fiction

1. A Court of Silver Flames

by Sarah J. Maas. The fifth book in “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series. Nesta Archeron is forced into close quarters with a warrior named Cassian.

2. The Four Winds

by Kristin Hannah. As dust storms roll during the Great Depression, Elsa must choose between saving the family and farm or heading West.

3. The Midnight Library

by Matt Haig. Nora Seed finds a library beyond the edge of the universe that contains books with multiple possibilities of the lives one could have lived.

4. The Vanishing Half

by Brit Bennett. The lives of twin sisters who run away from a Southern Black community at age 16 diverge as one returns and the other takes on a different racial identity, but their fates intertwine.

5. The Sanatorium

by Sarah Pearse. Elin Warner must find her estranged brother’s fiancée, who goes missing as a storm approaches a hotel that was once a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps.

6. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue

by V.E. Schwab. A Faustian bargain comes with a curse that affects Addie LaRue’s adventure across centuries.

7. Where the Crawdads Sing

by Delia Owens. In a quiet town on the North Carolina coast in 1969, a young woman who survived alone in the marsh becomes a murder suspect.

8. The Russian

by James Patterson and James O. Born. The 13th book in the “Michael Bennett” series. An assassin killing a number of women might disrupt the detective’s wedding plans.

9. Faithless in Death

by J.D. Robb. The 52nd book of the “In Death” series. Eve Dallas investigates the murder of a young sculptor in the West Village.

10. Missing and Endangered

by J.A. Jance. The 19th book in the “Joanna Brady Mysteries” series. The Cochise County sheriff’s daughter becomes involved in a

missing persons case. Nonfiction

1. How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

by Bill Gates. A prescription for what business, governments and individuals can do to work toward zero emissions.

2. Just As I Am

by Cicely Tyson with Michelle Burford. The late iconic actress describes how she worked to change perceptions of Black women through her career choices.

3. The Sum of Us

by Heather McGhee. The chair of the board of the racial justice organization Color of Change analyzes the impact of racism on the economy.

4. Walk in My Combat Boots

by James Patterson and Matt Eversmann with Chris Mooney. A collecreveals tion of interviews with troops who fought overseas.

5. A Promised Land

by Barack Obama. In the first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama offers personal reflections on his formative years and pivotal moments through his first term.

6. Caste

by Isabel Wilkerson. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist examines aspects of caste systems across civilizations and a rigid hierarchy in America today.

7. Greenlights

by Matthew McConaughey. The Academy Awardwinning actor shares snippets from the diaries he kept over the past 35 years.

8. Between Two Kingdoms

by Suleika Jaouad. The writer of the New York Times column “Life, Interrupted” chronicles her fight with cancer and an impactful road trip.

9. Untamed

by Glennon Doyle. The activist and public speaker describes her journey of listening to her inner voice.

10. Four Hundred Souls edited by Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain. A compendium featuring 90 writers covering 400 years of African American history.

When Lupe Garcia, a 71-yearold retired community organizer, asked me for help finding blankets for residents without power in a low-income housing unit in Austin, my first reaction was to be glad. Not because of the circumstances, but the story: Here was a situation I could write about to make people care about how the failures of the Texas government disproportionately impact vulnerable communities. The request was simple and clear — usually the best type of story to tell to elicit the kind of sympathy that leads to action.

But after a moment of gladness, I felt rage. As a Texas-based writer who covers refugees and other underrepresented groups, I get tired of telling the stories of those who bear the brunt of injustice in order to garner sympathy from individuals, organizational leaders and policymakers so they are compelled to respond.

The failures of the Texas government to update the power grid and the catastrophic results of last month have been well documented. Officials have isolated the state’s power grid and allowed power providers to ignore the threat that extreme weather or emergencies pose to their equipment — even after past storms revealed significant issues. Texas set itself up for the colossal statewide collapse from Winter Storm Uri, which disproportionately impacted lowincome people.

But as Texas conducts a postmortem on the Deep Freeze, this moment reveals a critical disconnect in the political and moral framework for Christian voters in a state where faith remains something we talk about easily and often, and for other Christian voters who are watching and responding to the needs in Texas.

I have lived the majority of my life in Texas. I would have identified as a “compassionate conservative” in the first presidential election in which I voted. I still know and love many people who would use that phrase to define their values.

But compassion conservatism was always a tenuous pairing with political conservatism’s desire for evermore limited government. According to Amy Sullivan, author of “The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats Are Closing the God Gap,” compassionate conservatism “walked a fine line” between “the idea that we need to care for one another” on the one hand, and the fact that “it’s not always within an individual’s ability to pull themselves up” on the other.

Even when compassionate conservatism was the dominant ideology in the Republican Party, it was evident that a wellmanaged social safety net remained critical. In 2012, David Beckmann, then president of the nonpartisan Christian advocacy group Bread for the World, wrote that the “most effective way to meet the needs of hungry and poor people in the United States is through strong federal government programs.” He noted that all food provided by churches and charities accounted for only 6 percent of what the federal nutrition programs provide.

As the Republican Party moved away from the politics of George W. Bush to the politics of Gov. Greg Abbott, former President Donald Trump and others, the emphasis on limited government remained, while the compassion seems to have been lost.

That shift has left many people I know in a complicated political place. They continue to align themselves with a party that once seemed to match their Christian values reasonably well. But Texas’ inability to provide for its people showed again the failings of that political alignment.

Garcia and her neighbors got their blankets, but they deserve more than a system that depends on people responding to sympathetic stories of those in need. They need a government that cares enough to make sure their electricity and water don’t evaporate in a cold snap.