Jonathan P. Baird

I wanted to create a space for book reviews, interviews and everything related to my new book Defiance is beautiful. I do have a new author website at authorjonathanbaird.org

The book is now available as an eBook. If you download the Amazon kindle app which is free you can get the book for $2.99 and read it on your laptop or tablet or phone.

The book review below was written by my friend, Rusty Conroy.

Defiance Is BeautifulTowards a Renewed Democratic SocialismBy Jonathan P. Baird(Self-published, available as an e-book, August 21, 2026)Defiance Is Beautiful is, among other things, a Philadelphia story. Growing up at Eagles games, Jon recalls the time when Eagles fans booed Santa Claus at halftime during the losing decades. “These are your people!” his mom reportedly told him, gesturing toward the fans throwing snowballs.Although Baird says he wrote this book “for Joe six-pack,” Defiance Is Beautiful  may be most effective in modeling a way toward meaningful work for the college-bound. He narrates how his father, who for a period made good money through a textile-waste business, sent him to Friends Central and Episcopal Academy to prepare him for the college education he himself never got. Jon turned his chances at Trinity College and Franklin Pierce Law School into a four-decade career as community legal services attorney and social security judge in New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Along the way, he became an organizer and democratic socialist. The book charts the ins and outs of how this defiant course emerged. Jon’s father lost most of his money when big corporations took over the rag business; Defiance Is Beautiful may remind us of the 1930s Michael Gold classic Jews Without Money – except that this might be Jews with Some Money – Briefly. Like Gold’s book, this one is a real page-turner. It suffers from none of the pretensions that one might expect from a graduate of Episcopal and Trinity. It is not elitist, nor all aglow. It portrays real life, in its ups and its downs, particularly offering some strong critiques of the Left.  At Trinity, the political philosopher Michael Lerner was the main influence on Jon. Lerner was founder of Tikkun, the leftwing Jewish magazine. Defiance Is Beautiful reflects thoughtfully on Judaism, Israel and Palestine. While deeply affected by the Holocaust, Jon gives a sober, eyes-wide-open reckoning of what Peter Beinart has called “being Jewish after the destruction of Gaza.” Returning to Baird’s main focus: Defiance was rushed to “print” (at first, only in e-book form) in order to be part of the resistance to MAGA before the November elections. Baird’s chapters on the dangers of fascism provide the book’s culmination. And yet, the chapters on becoming a people’s lawyer, then a people’s judge, might be the most valuable to an idealistic college-bound young person. And the chapters on the Baird family and Philadelphia –  including a chapter on the Eagles – will be favorites in the City of Brotherly Love.