Before we get back to the business of righting the good ship America, I present a list of some of the best books I read this year. I’ve included links to where you can find them and their authors. If you can, check these out at your local library! If Amazon and Barnes & Noble are your jam, terrific. If there’s a local bookseller you favor, they’re always my favorite option.
The 2025 Reeding List (in some order, but not a particular one…)
Don’t Talk About Politics - Sarah Stein Lubrano
Sarah has the ability to be upbeat and readable while smashing your darlings. Yes, big marches may make you feel good. No, they don’t scare regimes much. Debates might be good entertainment, but they don’t change many minds on core issues. Throughout the book, Sarah peels back many of the myths we hold dear when it comes to making real, lasting political change.
Check out my two-part interview with Sarah about her book.
Vulture Capitalism - Grace Blakeley
I found this book because of Grace’s Substack. Her book rips the mask off late-stage capitalism and reminds us, in excellent prose and incredible detail, that we do in fact live in a planned economy, but a very small number of wealthy, and powerful corporate interests (see AI) are doing the planning. Grace is a voice for a new generation and new direction in how we think about economics and their innate connection to politics and what we’d like to call ‘democracy.’
Check out my conversation with Grace about her book. You should also check out our subsequent talks!
Fire is alive. Very, very alive. Vaillant’s depiction of this living force combined with the oil and gas industry mixed with climate change is part science class, part adventure story. The 2016 Ft. McMurray Fire in Alberta, Canada provided the need for both.
Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
Why do teachers ask us to read books like Man’s Search for Meaning in high school? I read it 30 years ago but it takes experience, growing-up, and loss to even begin to understand what Frankl was teaching us. Better for the 46 year old than the teenager, the book provides stark reality while an uplifting message about perseverance. If he could do it, we can, too.
The Fourth Turning - William Strauss and Neil Howe
Part history lesson, part generational exposition, part Tarot Card reading, The Fourth Turning, written in the late 1990s, is prescient about where we are nearly 30 years later, and how we got here. Dear Generation X: We’re up at bat.
The March of Folly from Troy to Vietnam - Barbara W. Tuchman
This book is proof that you should always attend your library’s local book sale. I picked up (another of) Tuchman’s classic narratives for $2. She walks us through why the Trojans, the Vatican, the British, and the Americans keep getting the same lessons wrong. It’s as important post-Iraq (and pre-Venezuela) as it was when she wrote it more than 40 years ago.
They Thought They Were Free - Milton Mayer
I hate to break it to you: When Donald Trump finally passes from this Earthly plain, most of his most fervent supporters will not have a Rip Van Winkle moment. They won’t regret their time as MAGA die hards, it will simply be that a certain era has ended. The same was true of the collection of ‘everyday Nazis’ Milton Mayer spent time with a few years after the fall of Hitler and Germany. They didn’t transform overnight into social democrats: The war had ended and it was no longer socially or politically acceptable to wave the swastika around.
Nuclear War - A Scenario by Annie Jacobsen
Read this book and you won’t sleep. Read this book and then realize you have Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth in the roles described, and you won’t ever sleep well again (or until noon on January 20th, 2029.) A necessary look at something we all intentionally turn away from: In unsettled times, one wrong decision leads to events that cannot be undone.
The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order - Gary Gerstle
The neoliberals are holding on for dear life, but their time has passed. Gerstle’s incredible story takes us through the end of the FDR/New Deal era and into the 1970s when the neoliberal order began. It grew in prominence in the 1980s and reached full-flower in the 1990s. Now, nearly half a decade on, we’re well into the Trump era, but don’t yet know if it will become an ‘order’ - political and economic processes that dominate all others and both parties.
You should listen to my terrific two-part conversation with Gary as a companion to his book.
Fever Beach - Carl Hiassen
The master. What else is there to say? Start reading, start laughing.
Hope y’all have a terrific holiday or a few days off. I’ll be re-upping my 2024 Election recap next week to make up for the DNC not wanting to release their own autopsy. I wrote mine in a couple of weeks, and happy to share. They wrote theirs in a year and put it in a desk drawer.
Good list. Books I've Read (among many others), and you should also "Reed": (1) "Invisible Doctrine: The Secret History of Neoliberalism" by George Mondiot and Peter Hutchison, (2) Burned By Billionaires: How Concentrated Wealth and Power are Ruining Our Lives and Planet" by Chuck Collins, (3) Dear Marty: We Crapped In Our Nest: Notes from the Edge of the World" by Art Cullen, (4) "Dismantling Democracy: The forty-year attack on government, and the long game for the common good" by Donald Cohen, (5) "Psychological Roots of the Climate Crisis: Neoliberal Exceptionalism and the Culture of Uncare" by Sally Weintrobe.
I really think everyone should also read Davos Man by Peter Goodman. It shows how these oligarchs think and actually believe they are supreme beings aka complete narcissists.