Lunch Break Reads: October 7, 2025

Robert Sanchez follows people in Colorado who chose to end their lives through medical aid in dying, and the doctor who walks beside them through it. The writing is tender and unflinching. It doesn’t turn away from the grief, the fear, or the quiet love that fills those final days. I found myself crying, then sitting in silence afterward, thinking about what it really means to have control over your own ending. It’s one of those rare stories that feels sacred, heavy, heartbreaking, and somehow still full of grace.

If you’re even half as curious about dark capers and the secret lives of books, read “The Pushkin Job.” It starts with a quiet theft, rare Russian classics vanishing from European libraries, and turns into a story about obsession, loss, and the strange economy of stolen beauty.

A throwback to a favorite of mine from 2017. It’s a raw, confessional piece about Robert Maxwell’s dream of opening a restaurant and how that dream almost destroyed everything: his marriage, his finances, his health.

How do we warn people thousands of years in the future about buried nuclear waste? This story focuses on the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in New Mexico, where experts in language, anthropology, and design are working to create messages that can survive for millennia. The story explores ideas such as enormous stone monuments, symbols of danger, and even oral traditions that could be passed down through generations.