I finished Manufacturing Consent a while back and could not shut up about it, which anyone who knows me will tell you is out of character, I’m generally the one at the clinic who doesn’t say much on a slow overnight shift. But this book rearranged something in how I read a headline, and I did the thing you’re not supposed to do, I told three different coworkers over the space of about two weeks that they absolutely had to read it, no context, no warning about what kind of read it actually is, just pure enthusiasm with no off ramp.

Ferris took me up on it first, and about a week later mentioned over a very slow Tuesday night that he’d started it and found it “kind of a slog, honestly,” which stung more than it should have, since I’d basically promised him it would change his whole outlook and instead I think I just handed a tired man a dense academic argument with zero preparation for how much citation-heavy density was coming. I hadn’t mentioned that it’s not really a book you read in a sitting, that it wants time and rereading and probably a notebook next to it, I’d just said “you have to read this” like it was a novel you could breeze through on a lunch break.

The one that actually landed badly was a newer tech, still learning the overnight rhythm, who I’d handed the book to a little too eagerly and who came back genuinely rattled a few weeks later, said it made her feel like she couldn’t trust anything anymore, which, fair, that’s kind of what the book does to you the first time, but I hadn’t prepared her for that landing at all, hadn’t said anything like “this is going to reframe how you see every news story you’ve ever read, budget for that.” I’d just treated my own reaction to the book as universal and assumed everyone would land somewhere similar to where I did instead of somewhere destabilized and a little bit alone with it.

I’ve since gotten better, I think, at handing someone a book with an actual warning label attached, “this one’s dense, budget real time for it,” or “this one’s going to mess with your head a little, don’t read it right before you need to sleep.” It seems obvious written out like that, but I didn’t used to do it, I used to treat my own enthusiasm as the whole recommendation, as if loving a book hard enough was the same thing as knowing how to hand it to someone else responsibly.

Ferris did eventually finish it, for what it’s worth, and came around on it slowly, in pieces, over another month of slow nights. The tech is still working her way through it, at her own pace now, with actual warning intact this time. I think that’s probably the better way to have done it from the start.