Welcome to yet another edition of The Federalist’s annual notable books column. At the end of every year, we ask the staff at The Federalist, as well as some of our more esteemed contributors, to make some book recommendations based on whatever they read in the last year that was enjoyable or edifying. So without further ado …

Shawn Fleetwood

If you want to learn more about how neo-Marxist ideology is crippling America’s military, then Saving Our Service Academies: My Battle with, and for, the US Naval Academy to Make Thinking Officers is a great place to start. Authored by Naval Academy professor Bruce Fleming, the book provides readers with an in-depth account of the school’s overzealous left-wing bureaucracy that has traded merit for so-called “diversity” and details how such policies are hampering the military’s overall efficiency.

Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America by Scott Walter is a terrific book for anybody interested in delving into the complexities of U.S. elections. It examines how the left-wing Arabella Advisors network operates as a key player in financing numerous left-wing groups and causes throughout the country and is a must-read for those seeking to understand how leftists finance Democrats’ election machine.

For my fellow sports fans, Head On: A Memoir by Larry Csonka is worth checking out. The former Miami Dolphins fullback documents how the team pulled off its historic undefeated 1972 season to capture the Lombardi Trophy. Filled with love, laughs, and heartbreak, Head On is the perfect non-political book to include on your Christmas reading list. 

Jordan Boyd

Books penned by politicians (or their ghostwriters) have always struck me as underwhelming and lackluster. I, like many other Americans, however, mustered up the courage to pick up a copy of J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis this fall and was not disappointed. My primary goal in reading was to learn more about President Donald Trump’s VP pick. What I took away from the 2016 page-turner, however, was a deeper understanding of family and flyover country dynamics.

Vance’s storytelling mixed with his skillful socioeconomic analysis paints a unique picture of not only his rags-to-riches success but also the importance of everyday Americans. He repeatedly reminds readers that his people, Appalachians, have been forgotten, a claim which is only reinforced by the response or lack thereof to recent disasters like the chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio, and historic, hurricane-induced flooding in the North Carolina hills.

Vance’s mini defense of patriotism, however, in spite of the hardship that plagues communities like the one he grew up in, offers a refreshing glimmer of hope about the future of the nation. Hillbilly Elegy, even eight years after its publication, delivers an important and timely message only accentuated by Vance’s role in a second Trump administration: the American Dream is not quite dead. 

Madeline Orr Osburn

It’s rare to see one specific book, let alone a single idea or general consensus, be shared across demographics and political leanings. But that’s what I saw this year with Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Everyone from my pastor to my in-laws and from my hairdresser to the far-left Instagram influencers was reading and discussing Haidt’s resounding conclusion that yes, screens are bad for our kids. And yes, the hypothesis that smartphones are causing the teen mental health crisis is not groundbreaking, but he offers the depth and data to a conversation in which we can no longer claim ignorance. And you should keep your kids far away from anyone who tries to claim otherwise.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I also read a book on a topic that very few of my friends and acquaintances seem to be interested in: the cost-benefit analysis of having five or more children. Economist Catherine Pakaluk published her wonky but also spiritually-minded findings this year in her book, Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. As someone who spent the first eight months of this year pregnant, reading her interviews with women who were on their eighth, ninth, and in some cases, tenth child and understanding the difficulty of such a calling felt very real to me. Her work is not just for women of childbearing age but for anyone trying to unpack our country’s fertility crisis and how we value children.

Rich Cromwell

The rates of autism are seemingly on the rise, with a recent study concluding that there’s been an explosion in diagnoses of the condition between 2011 and 2022. There are a variety of explanations, with the increase in childhood vaccinations remaining a favorite, though that connection remains weak, and parental or environmental factors plus increased screenings are more likely. Regardless, it is a concern, particularly for parents with a child or children on the spectrum who are incapable of living independently. 

While research should continue, there is another possibility, one that suggests the neurodivergent have been with us far longer than we realize. Steve Silberman, who passed away this year, published his treatise on the subject, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, in 2015 and his conclusion was that individuals with autism have indeed been hiding amongst us throughout history. In the book, Silberman provides a detailed history of research, including suppressed findings, as well as detailed examples of a variety of people on various points on the spectrum.

Easy to read and digest, with entertaining anecdotes of “eccentric” inventors (plenty of whom go on to do things like building rockets and obsessing about tackling government waste) as well as stories of those who struggle or do not lead lives of acclaim, the book is an invaluable look into the neurodivergent. (Incidentally, in a section about the misconceptions about creativity and senses of humor, readers learn that the neurodivergent label arose from a group of people who are themselves on the spectrum and came up with the term “neurotypical” as a way to make fun of those who are not. Though it’s no longer online, the creators of the term even made a website to help explain the “neurobiological disorder.”)

Whether you are a parent or friend of someone on the spectrum or simply interested in the condition, NeuroTribes provides insight into the experiences of those whose approach to the world more closely resembles that of Star Trek’s Doctor Spock than Captain Kirk. More importantly, it’s an invaluable resource for helping them lead fulfilling lives. 

Joy Pullmann

Disappearing the President: Trump, Truth Social, and the Fight for the Republic tunes readers’ expectations for Donald Trump’s second presidency. The latest from deep state chronicler Lee Smith arrived weeks before this year’s election deadline. It focuses on how Democrats use government power to interfere in elections by electronically sealing the mouths and ears of those who dissent from their party line.

It’s a quick read, and especially shines in providing exclusive interviews with top Trump allies such as now-FBI director appointee Kash Patel and former Rep. Devin Nunes. It points to several lesser-known dirty tricks Democrats can use — or already are — for a second round of denying voters the policies they demanded. These include destroying records through the National Archives and Records Administration, which already provided a predicate for raiding Trump’s home and impeding the peaceful transfer of power through abuse of intelligence services.

Eli the Eagle is a lovely picture book out this year from Minnesota’s Barb Anderson. She writes picture books that are gently counterculture simply by being aspirational, gentle stories lacking dark moral messages. Just Ducky, an earlier book from Anderson, tells children they are beautiful the way they are made and they don’t have to absorb peer pressure to act like anything else. It’s a loving affirmation of the body and identity we receive from God at birth. Eli the Eagle teaches the virtue of courage and celebrates eagles as the symbol of a great country — our own United States. My children love it.

In February, Steve Sailer’s anthology Noticing came out. Perhaps the most shocking thing in this compendium of essays from the last 50 years of the samizdat blogger’s writing is that it’s not very shocking. Sailer is not a bomb-thrower but a wry data guy whose humor is often almost undetectable. He was written out of public life two decades ago for noticing data showing transgenderism is a sexual fetish for most of its adult male adherents. The Southern Poverty Law Center organized a hit on him, as well as anyone else who engaged with the research in Northwestern University professor J. Michael Bailey’s 2003 book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, which shatters myths that being transgender is normal or healthy. 

Along with Charles Murray, Sailer also regularly applies the decades of solid data showing racial group differences in IQ. Neither man is a racist — they affirm that human dignity has nothing to do with IQ — but calling them such has closed many people’s ears to their data-driven arguments. Smear tactics have jumped the shark, however, allowing Sailer and others greater visibility that is much deserved. Noticing is even available on Amazon. I, for one, welcome more of his essays about the architecture of golf courses.

Tristan Justice

Last year, I recommended readers pick up a copy of a book by Harvard psychiatrist Christopher Palmer titled Brain Energy, which explains how our mental health crisis is a lifestyle crisis. This year I suggest readers interested in the topic follow up with Change Your Diet, Change Your Mind: A Powerful Plan to Improve Mood, Overcome Anxiety, and Protect Memory for a Lifetime of Optimal Mental Health, published by Dr. Georgia Ede in January.

Both books were included in my list of more than two dozen most influential books to shape my own book, Fat and Unhappy, on body positivity and the food industry, which was published last month. While Palmer linked nutrition and mental health in his groundbreaking book on metabolic psychiatry, Dr. Ede’s nearly 500-page book honed in on how our diets dictate our minds, and even offers readers a guide of complete recipes. If there’s still any confusion about how so many Americans have become anxious and depressed, these books put to rest any idea that we can continue to ignore what’s on our plate. I spoke to Dr. Ede about her book on The Federalist Radio Hour in April. Listen here.

On the celebrity front, Rebel Wilson’s memoir from earlier this year, Rebel Rising, was a hilarious autobiography and a worthy beach read. The actress appears on page exactly how she does on screen, while offering readers an inside glimpse of the kind of pointless drama that circulates in celebrity circles. It’s light-hearted and showcases how tough breaking out in Hollywood can be.

Sumantra Maitra

This year’s theme has been all about the death of a very specific form of “liberal democracy” and post-1945 world order, so I have greatly enjoyed Emily Finley taking a sledgehammer to our cherished myths, from Rousseau to Jefferson to The Ideology of Democratism. In Finley’s categorization, a rule by arch-bureaucrats (Hello, Tony Fauci) who use democratic rhetoric and rituals to consolidate power is anything but democratic. It is a superb book, in a depressing way, as it destroys all that one is made to believe about our vaunted stress-tested system.

John Zubryzcki’s Dethroned: The Downfall of India’s Princely States is another powerful and tragic story of an episode from history rarely studied in the West: the betrayal of the various small feudal states and protectorates of the British empire, which the empire failed to protect from the nascent Soviet-backed republic of India. The story of imperial collapse is often only read from a post-colonial lens. This is a nuanced corrective and attempts to provide voice to a minority voice now lost in history. 

William D. James’ excellent first foray into the debate of grand strategy comes with the aptly named British Grand Strategy in the Age of American Hegemony, which demonstrates with three cases (World War II, Suez, and Iraq), how Britain, from a relatively weaker position of power, attempted to navigate and in some ways influence a much bigger beast in the U.S. On occasions, they were even successful, although whether their success was to the benefit or detriment of the Americans is for posterity to judge.

Finally, I had a chance to read Allen Guelzo’s phenomenal biography Robert E. Lee: A Life. There are not many books that are worthy of a permanent place on one’s living room bookshelf. This character study — albeit with flaws — of a much misunderstood and maligned man, a great Virginian, and one of history’s flawed but great men, is one of them.

Lastly, my book The Sources of Russian Aggression took a considerable amount of my time this year. I humbly suggest that those who might be interested read it to understand the very rational chain of causality behind Russian foreign policy and military strategy. 

Ilya Shapiro

I feel like I read a ton these days, but not as many books as I’d like — and certainly not enough memorable books. But two stand out this year, and they’re very different. One is fiction, the other non-fiction. One is old, the other is new. One has been made into a movie, the other … I’d buy out a cinema, but it’s unlikely to happen.

The first is The Godfather, Mario Puzo’s classic Italian-American epic. I had finished watching “The Sopranos” for the first time earlier this year, but none of their spin-off books were doing it for me, so I thought I’d go back to the urtext of mafia stories. In a word, it was amazing. In two words, it was a page-turner, which actually undersells it. In these days of smartphone-addled attention spans, even those of us who read and write for a living find it hard to concentrate on long texts. Well, my wife and I each read this 448-page tome during a one-week vacation this summer. I can’t say enough good things about it — except that you shouldn’t buy any of the other Godfather books, whether written by Puzo or under license by others; they just don’t capture the same magic.

But speaking of magic, there’s no better conjurer of civil society and constitutional governance than Yuval Levin, whose American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation ― and Could Again is the cure for what ails the body politic. It’s a blend of history, political analysis, and engaging prose. As the Amazon description puts it, “Levin showcases the Constitution’s exceptional power to facilitate constructive disagreement, negotiate resolutions to disputes, and forge unity in a fractured society.” You don’t have to be as big a fan of the Constitution as I am, but if you care about America and the morass of political culture in which we’re wading, this book will make you think, smile, and hope.

Brianna Lyman

For four years the left has tried to force Americans to cede their right to question the outcome of an election or whether the election results were tainted by fraud — and if you did question it, you were smeared as an “election denier.” But the reality is Republicans, Democrats, and Americans have rightfully questioned the outcomes of elections since the inception of this country — and for good reason. Ballot Battles: The History of Disputed Elections by Edward B. Foley dives into the nation’s most controversial elections, rigged elections, and even deadly elections. The book provides in-depth portrayals of both sides of the aisle and underscores the reality of our imperfect election system. A great read heading into 2025, when the left will use the “election denier” smear against Trump to try and demean his presidency. 

Fair warning, the last half of The Cause: The American Revolution and Its Discontents by Joseph J. Ellis feels a bit liberal. But the first few chapters analyzing “The Cause” or the Spirit of ’76, provide insight into the feelings of colonists at that pivotal moment in history. Rekindling that sense of “Americana” is vital to the future of this nation, as so many Americans have forgotten what it means to be American. The first few chapters help paint a detailed picture of what led to our independence. 

Government has grown too large, a sentiment surely not new to most Americans. But as government expands, Americans should harken back to the Founding era to really understand the Founders’ vision for this country. In A Great Power of Attorney: Understanding the Fiduciary Constitution, legal scholars Gary Lawson and Guy Seidman argue that the Constitution was written as an instrument to grant limited powers to the national government and to remind elected officials that they are bound by fiduciary duties such as care, impartiality, and personal responsibility. By emphasizing these fiduciary obligations, Lawson and Seidman clarify the original design of a government with constrained powers that is focused on serving the interests of the people. 

Finally, Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America explores American society in the 1830s. Drawing on his travels, Tocqueville praises America’s democratic institutions, social mobility, and emphasis on liberty. Democracy in America may be often referenced and quoted, but that’s because each new generation of Americans has its own reasons for finding it relevant. For instance, Tocqueville warns of the “tyranny of the majority” and cautions Americans against materialism and erosion of civic virtues. Sound familiar? 

Elle Purnell

I remember my dad being gifted David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon a few years before the October 2023 movie exploded its popularity, but unfortunately, unlike my Cherokee forebears, I am not a trailblazer and didn’t read the book until this year when my dad and husband both recommended it to me. (I did read it before watching the movie, for what that’s worth.)

The story, which chronicles the suspicious murders of wealthy Osage Indians for their oil headrights in the 1920s, has it all — murder, innocence, love, hate, money, jealousy, and government corruption. Grann writes with the detail-forward style of a reporter and the page-turning suspense of a mystery novel, even if he veers toward writing at too much length about his own investigative process in the final third of the book.

To Grann’s credit, despite efforts by some to politicize it, the book doesn’t labor to project 21st-century racial narratives of victim and oppressor onto the story, but portrays the murders as a human story of loyalty and greed. And while the FBI gets credit for solving the Osage murders, the feds don’t come out as heroes here.

Tom White, the loveable, larger-than-life lawman who pursues the case as J. Edgar Hoover plots for political gain in Washington, represents everything antithetical to Hoover’s bureaucratic institution. As someone who was raised with stories of my ancestor who walked the trail of tears pregnant, only to die shortly after childbirth upon reaching Indian Territory, this book did nothing to increase my estimation of G-men.

Oh and for what it’s worth, the Scorsese movie that followed six years after the book’s release is worth watching too, with masterful performances by Lily Gladstone and Leonardo DiCaprio as Osage heiress Mollie Kyle and Ernest Burkhart, her husband and the nephew of ranching magnate “King” Hale.

Nathanael Blake

The most interesting book I’ve read this year isn’t finished yet. Ross Douthat, the sole conservative columnist atThe New York Times, has written The Falcon’s Children, a fantasy novel that he is releasing as a serial on Substack, with the first 12 chapters available for free. As a columnist, Douthat is superlative; as a novelist, he is, so far, merely good. But his story is fascinating, both in its treatment of genre tropes and its character development. And unlike “Game of Thrones,” Douthat’s saga might actually be finished someday.

Spencer Klavan

It’s always bothered me that one of my favorite passages in all of C.S. Lewis — his ode to friendship in The Four Loves — culminates in a reference to “an old author” whom Lewis declines to identify. Not all of us have your encyclopedic recall of late antique arcana, Clive! Tell us which old author, why don’t you? 

But he doesn’t because — as I finally managed to determine this year — the identity of the author in question is contested. It’s Dionysius the Areopagite, and by leaving the mention of him periphrastic Lewis sidestepped a touchy debate over whether the books in question really belong to the biblical saint whom Paul converted in Athens or to a later Neoplatonist philosopher contriving to imitate him. 

Either way, the Celestial Hierarchy attributed to Dionysius is a criminally underrated and blazingly reverential tour through the ranks of angels, akin to Dante’s Divine Comedy in its meticulously graded registration of divine entities and powers. It’s also weirdly topical, since the internet has got us all thinking again about disembodied currents of influence upon our souls. This at a time when we are less equipped than ever with the necessary language to talk plainly about the entities that, in a more spiritually straightforward era, would have been frankly designated as angels and demons. It couldn’t hurt to re-acquaint ourselves with the appropriate lexicon.

Celestial Hierarchy outlines a chain of creation that carries messages of God’s love from the very throne of grace down to earth — a network of communion that Lewis described in Perelandra as “an environment of minds as well as of space … a spider’s web wherein each mind lives along every line.” Dionysius is perfect reading for the season of the Annunciation — as of course are The Four Loves and the whole Space Trilogy, which includes Perelandra.

John Davidson

One of the undercurrents across the West right now is the reenchantment of the world, a turning away from the cold, secular materialism of the past century and a half and a rediscovery of an integrated cosmos where mind and spirit meet, where faith and reason complement one another. For generations now we have been told that only what we can measure with our instruments is “real,” that faith is merely superstition fueled by fear and ignorance, and that only science — or “the science” — can reveal what is true.

That was of course a fiction, and close observers in the West are beginning to point the way out of it. Two new books in particular come to mind on this front. Spencer Klavan’s Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith takes the reader on a whirlwind tour of scientific discovery and development across the millennia, with a particular focus on developments in the West since the scientific revolution. Klavan’s purpose is to show that our ideas about science and knowledge are hopelessly out of date; they have not kept up with actual scientific discovery, especially in the field of quantum mathematics, which has cast serious doubts on the mechanical universe of the previous century. So far from rejecting the claims of religion, quantum mathematics suggests that a reintegration of faith and reason is what “the science” today is actually telling us.

Another new book that comes at this subject from a different angle is Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, which takes a more direct aim at the reenchantment of the West and engages with its dark side. For a post-Christian civilization, after all, reenchantment carries grave dangers: as any student of myth can tell you, most enchantments bode ill for the enchanted, especially if one isn’t protected against the devils lurking in the forest.

Dreher, always an engaging and candid writer, delves into the strangely spiritual phenomena of UFOs and aliens, lately a relevant topic given the shocking disclosures from U.S. government whistleblowers in recent congressional hearings. He explores the rising popularity of the occult and the therapeutic use of hallucinogenic drugs — what Dreher aptly calls a “dark enchantment.” And he urges his readers to take the mystical and spiritual world seriously, to learn how to discern its reality, engage with it through prayer, and guard against its dangers. It is, after all, all real, and since the brief period of secular materialism in the West is coming to an end, we’re going to need to learn how to navigate an enchanted cosmos once again.

David Harsanyi

One of my favorite books of the year was historian Jacob Wright’s Why the Bible Began, which explores the origins and context of the world’s most influential book. Wright tries to answer the central question of why the Jews, rather than other more powerful ancient people, ended up producing mankind’s most enduring text. Wright contends that after the devastation of Jerusalem by Babylonians, Jews reinvented themselves, not merely as adherents of a monotheistic faith, but also as the first “political community” and nationality. 

In his book 1177 B.C., Eric Cline told the story of the Bronze Age collapse of society and the mysterious Sea People. In After 1177 B.C., as the title suggests, Cline details the reconstruction of the Mediterranean world and the emergence of new powers and people, ending his story at the first Olympics.

In his provocative The Case for Colonialism, Bruce Gilley not only contends that colonialism was often a positive force, but that it can be again. As a critic of nation building, I went into the book a skeptic, but Gilley’s case is quite strong and probably not what you imagine.

In anticipation of speaking to Gad Saad about my new book, I decided to read The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. I’m happy I did. It’s fantastic. Saad synthesizes complex ideas into entertaining and thoughtful prose, often connecting with the reader by telling his own story.

Milton Friedman: The Last Conservative by Jennifer Burns is an exhaustive and worthwhile biography of the legendary economist. Kubrick: An Odyssey is, I contend, the best biography written about one of my favorite filmmakers.

This year, I reread one of the best on the evolution of the judicial branch, the late William Rehnquist’s The Supreme Court. But I noticed that I’d been collecting old books. Among them: Human Rights: Fact or Fancy? by Henry Veatch. Elie Kedourie’s Nationalism. Crowds and Power by Elias Canetti. The Totalitarian Temptation by Jean-Francois Revel.

But perhaps my favorite among these was Dangerous Knowledge by Robert Irwin — who offers a masterful debunking of Edward Said’s far-too-influential Orientalism.

On the fiction front, every novel by Neal Stephenson is worth reading, and Polostan, his twist on a Cold War spy novel and the first book in the Bomb Light series, is no exception.

Finally, numerous people have suggested through the years that I read the novels of Charles Portis. Though he’s best known for True Grit, I plowed through The Dog of the South and the exceptionally funny Masters of Atlantis. I’m sorry I waited this long.

Kylee Griswold

With 2024 being a presidential election year, I feel like I skidded to the finish line having read embarrassingly little outside X feeds and daily deluges of breaking news. However, two books, both religious, stand out.

The first, Seamless: Understanding the Bible as One Complete Story by Angie Smith, is a six-week study that offers a 30,000-foot view of the major stories of the Bible in the Old and New Testaments. For longtime Christians, the resource is fairly elementary, and I found many parts, including the accompanying online videos, to be hokey. But for a study group of six ladies ranging from seasoned believers to one woman who didn’t know what Christmas and Easter signified, the approachable book was the perfect springboard for first-time Bible reading, Gospel-oriented conversations, and the practice of daily spiritual disciplines.

Even for longtime Christians, reading the Bible as one whole story cultivated a new appreciation for God’s plan of redemption. For instance, I gained a new appreciation of the significance of the temple veil tearing after having just studied Old Testament sacrifices, or of how the blood that covered and saved the children of Israel during the Passover in Egypt foreshadowed how the spotless Lamb of God would shed his own blood to cover and save His people, Jew and Gentile alike, once and for all.

The second book, originally published in 1865, is Charles Haddon Spurgeon’s Morning and Evening, which provides two readings for each day of the year to be consumed — you guessed it — in the morning and evening. I picked up a copy of the devotional at a thrift store in Cincinnati for 10 cents! I haven’t completed it yet but have benefitted from its rich theological truths and know it’s one of those books I’ll reach for again and again in the years to come. 

“Immanuel, God with us in our nature, in our sorrow, in our lifework, in our punishment, in our grave, and now with us, or rather we with Him, in resurrection, ascension, triumph, and Second Advent splendour,” Spurgeon writes in his Christmas Day entry. Amen.

It seems only fitting to leave you with Spurgeon’s morning entry for the last day of the year: 

Hayden Daniel

There’s no shortage of classics on the American Civil War and the events leading up to it, from James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom to anything ever written by Shelby Foote. After reading it earlier this year, I’m convinced that William Freehling’s two-volume epic, The Road To Disunion, ranks among the greatest studies of the antebellum South’s society and why it resorted to secession after the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

Freehling deftly traces the ideological evolution of the pro-slavery, abolitionist, and neutral factions in American society from 1776 to the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861. It introduces pivotal figures in the debate over slavery and secession who may fly under the radar in more casual surveys of American history, like James Henry Hammond and William Lowndes Yancey. Freehling’s magisterial work astutely captures the tragic powder keg that built up around the issue of slavery, ultimately ending in the deadliest conflict in the nation’s history.

The Road To Disunion is not a short read by any means, but it’s utterly engrossing, informative, and surprisingly witty for the whole journey. If you or someone you know is a Civil War buff, I can’t recommend The Road To Disunion highly enough.

Have you ever looked at a globe, spotted one of the more remote and exotic points on it, and wondered, “How do people survive there?” More than any other place, I’ve often wondered that about the Amazon. Everything there is hostile: plants, animals, and even the baking equatorial sun. But some people still scratch out a living there — practically untouched since even before the first Europeans set foot in the New World — and still hold on to traditions that in some cases date back millennia.

That’s why I picked up a book about one such group of people: Napoleon Chagnon’s Yanomamö: The Fierce People. The chronicles Chagnon’s effort in the early 1960s to study the cultural and religious practices of the Yanomamö, an Amazonian tribe that had only recently started to make sustained contact with the outside world after centuries of isolation in the jungle. Some of the Yanomamö’s practices, beliefs, and problems described by Chagnon are both totally alien and disturbingly familiar to modern readers. In one chapter, the author takes one of the more bold tribesmen to Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and he’s absolutely amazed by modern technology. The tribesman is unable to even think about how to describe what he saw in Caracas to his friends and family back in the jungle, convinced they’ll call him a liar. Despite the miracles of modern technology he witnessed, the tribesman tells Chagnon that the Yanomamö way of life is superior.

Yanomamö: The Fierce People is a quick and utterly fascinating look at a culture seemingly plucked from prehistory, and the similarities between them and us, regardless of being separated by thousands of miles and centuries of isolation. It provides more than enough food for thought.

You never really hear a whole lot about Indonesia unless you really go looking for it, even though it’s the fourth most populous country in the world, straddles vital global trade routes, and has the eighth-largest GDP in the world by purchase power parity — bigger than that of the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea. So, you’re forgiven if you had no idea that the CIA helped orchestrate a coup in 1965 that installed a friendly anti-Communist government. In turn, the new Indonesian government destroyed the Communist Party of Indonesia — the third largest communist party in the world after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party — and killed up to a million suspected communists in less than a year.

That’s the subject of Vincent Bevins’ book The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. Bevins identifies this oft-overlooked aspect of Cold War history as a major turning point for the West in its struggle against Soviet communism. He also describes how the CIA attempted to replicate its success in Indonesia with similar operations in Latin America and how those operations sowed the seeds of our current border crisis.

Bevins does approach the event from a leftist perspective, but his description of the CIA’s covert actions in Indonesia and elsewhere during the Cold War to undermine sovereign governments should strike a chord with conservatives. If you’re looking to read a book about an underreported historical event that had a massive impact on our modern world and one that will make you trust the U.S. intelligence community even less, The Jakarta Method is a great pick.  

Matt Kittle

I’ve crossed the Rubicon from young man into old guy in recent years, and not just because AARP keeps hounding me. Perhaps that’s why I generally eschew anything new in the world of fiction and nonfiction — or anything in the culture for that matter. Everything I’ve read in 2024 was not published in 2024. In fact, the “newest” book on my personal list of “good books” is Michael Beschloss’ Presidents of War: The Epic Story, From 1807 to Modern Times. It was published in 2018, thankfully before Beschloss became radicalized and started overestimating Joe Biden. Even the famed historian’s “Modern Times” section barely makes it into the Obama years, and a passing glance at that. 

But the book is an excellent survey of not only the commanders-in-chief leading — or inheriting — the wars in which this exceptional republic has been engaged but the circumstances behind them. Presidents of War is a good reminder of the better angels and the bad ones that have roiled the thoughts and motivations of these chief executives.

This is particularly true of the chapters on Lyndon Baines Johnson and the hell he endured and put the nation through in no small part by deferring to the “military-industrial complex” Eisenhower warned Americans about. “I feel as if I’m in a plane that’s crashing, and I don’t have a parachute,” Johnson tells the first lady in 1965, as the U.S. military’s presence in Vietnam escalated and literally exploded.

That sense of helplessness would not be lost on previous presidents of war, particularly Abraham Lincoln, who asked an old friend and congressman in the darkest days of America’s cruelest war, “Doesn’t it seem strange to you that I should be here? Doesn’t it strike you as queer that I, who couldn’t cut the head off of a chicken, and who was sick at the sight of blood, should be cast into the middle of a great war, with blood flowing all about me?” 

Beschloss’ book, as per usual, is extraordinarily researched and filled with the burning thoughts and visions of the central and ancillary players of the nation’s greatest dramas. 

Then there is America’s game. Well, at least baseball remains America’s game to me, despite market share and revenue numbers that scream a different story. Despite talk of a “Golden At-Bat” rule (don’t get me started) and pitch clocks, baseball still means something fundamental to me and the seven other old-timer fans desperately trying to keep it that way. That’s why an old book on the old game the way it was played “back in the day” was such a refreshing read and a delightful “pastime” on an extended flight — as they all seem to be these days. 

My father-in-law, a baseball nut like me, gifted me The Glory of Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It. First published when Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson dominated batters, Lawrence S. Ritter showcases the stories of the men who now seem like dinosaurs in the sabermetrics and replay review era.

As the subtitle promises, the book is written from the perspective of the boys of summer who played a century or better ago. Guys like Sam Crawford, Lefty O’Doul, Joe Wood, Chief Meyers, and Chief Bender. Real characters, like Rube Waddell, a leftie as legendary for his fastball and curve as he was for his antics on and off the field. Rube, dubbed a “sousepaw” by the Sporting News, apparently was fond of the drink.

The book also offers a look into some of the better-known legends of the game through the recollections of players like Davy Jones. A charter member of two American League teams in Milwaukee and St. Louis, Jones talks about the lure of big money in signing on with the Chicago Cubs. He couldn’t resist a two-year contract for $3,600 a year, “the highest salary on the club,” plus an immediate $500 signing bonus — a fortune in the early 1900s. To play a game. Jones also shares his experience patrolling the legendary Detroit Tigers outfield alongside Crawford and the cantankerous Ty Cobb. He often played peacemaker in the combustible relationship. 

The Glory of Their Times is a tribute to the founding of Major League Baseball and to a simpler time, perfect for old-timers who cherish both. 

Helen Raleigh

One book that touched me deeply this year was Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class. It’s a book about Henderson’s short (Henderson is in his early 30s) but already remarkable life, from living as a foster care kid to being adopted by a working-class family to joining the Air Force and then majoring in psychology at elite universities.

Reading about Henderson’s traumatic childhood was especially heart-wrenching, as he recounted being abandoned by the three adults: his birth parents and his adopted father. This book is not just a personal memoir, but also an indictment of our nation’s foster care system, which keeps moving children from home to home, not wanting kids to get emotionally attached to their foster families until they are permanently adopted.

The book’s strength is that by waving his personal experience with his knowledge of psychoanalysis, Henderson shows us that the instability caused by the foster care system does more harm to young children than poverty. According to Henderson, children who grow up with instability tend to seek relief from emotional pain through destructive behaviors that end up causing them more pain.

Conversely, the book is a powerful endorsement of a traditional two-parent family; as Henderson wrote, “For children, having a stable environment with two parents who implement rules, provide effective care, and cultivate a sense of security goes a long way. Being poor doesn’t have the same effect as living in chaos.” The second half of the book becomes a bit preachy as Henderson dives deep into the phrase he coined, “luxury beliefs,” a term used to describe “ideas or opinions that confer status on the upper class at minimal cost, while often inflicting costs on the lower classes.” But overall, this terrific book is worth your time.

Mark Hemingway

In preparation for Trump 2.0, I’m in the middle of reading two books that should help explain his policy agenda. First, a friend foisted on me No Trade Is Free: Changing Course, Taking on China, and Helping America’s Workers by Trump’s former U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer. While there are certainly reasons to be critical of tariffs and Trump’s approach to trade, this might also be the most consistently misrepresented and misunderstood part of Trump’s agenda. A lot of what we’re told is “free trade” isn’t really free at all, and if you want to read the idealized case for what Trump hopes to achieve by using trade policy to level the economic playing field with America’s allies and punish our rivals, this is the book.

The second book is Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Future of War by Raj M. Shah and Christopher Kirchhoff. Obviously, a lot of attention has been paid to Elon Musk’s influence in the national security arena. As the Ukraine war has demonstrated, our Pentagon has become so sclerotic our national security depends heavily on private technologies such as Musk’s Starlink. But many tech bros besides Musk are interested in getting more involved in shaping policy, and defense is perhaps the most vital area where a patriotic brain trust is sorely needed.

Earlier this year, I read David Talbot’s very readable The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. It’s an eye-opening, not to mention hostile and picaresque, account of the guy who basically invented the deep state. Regardless of whether The Devil’s Chessboard is scrupulously reliable in every particular, it’s thoroughly convincing in painting a big picture showing how America’s modern national security apparatus was created by a bunch of amoral maniacs with no regard for democracy or individual rights.

For what it’s worth, Talbot is an outspoken lefty — he was the founder of Salon — and it’s amusing to note that when he published the book in 2015, he had no idea his ideological fellow travelers were on the verge of jettisoning decades of outrage directed at the CIA. The Bad Orange Man compelled them to embrace Cold War-era Russian paranoia, reject a valid election result, and embrace the three-letter agency that launched a thousand coups as the supposed protectorate of American democracy. I don’t know whether Talbot is amused or horrified his book is now more likely to be embraced by the right than the left.

On the literary front, I’m grateful I managed to read Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These earlier this year before the hype train left the station. (It’s Oprah’s book club selection for December, a book cover escutcheon that is usually a reliable indication of mediocrity.) It takes place in the ’80s, and ostensibly, the book is about the Magdalene Laundries scandal in Ireland. As such, I was worried it would be some anti-Catholic jeremiad or pro-abortion screed, but thankfully it’s something deeper, subtler, and, well, smaller than that. (The trailer for the film adaptation looks less nuanced, alas.)

The book revolves around Bill Furlong, a coal merchant raised by a single mother surrounded by questions about his father. Nonetheless, he has gone on to a happy working-class existence, sustained by a loving marriage and family. One Christmas while delivering coal to the local convent, however, he makes an unsettling discovery that brings a lot of feelings to the surface.

I’m honestly impressed with Keegan’s ability to convey often subtle and internalized burdens that husbands and fathers carry with them but rarely talk about. In this respect, Keegan is to be lauded for bucking the politically correct trends of a publishing industry where even overtly feminist authors such as Joyce Carol Oates observe the “category of straight white males is the only category remaining for villains & awful people in fiction & film & popular culture.” There’s a larger political context that could be read into the book that may or may not be agreeable, but what Keegan actually put on the page is a graceful and sympathetic tale about the struggles of a normal and honorable family man struggling mightily to do right by his family and community. And did I mention it’s pleasantly short?

I should also confess that I read a lot of not-so-literary fiction, and if you’re looking for a good mystery thriller that won’t tax your brain, I can see why Everybody Knows by the Edgar-award-winning Jordan Harper attracted a lot of buzz when it was released last year. The protagonist is a “black bag” publicist who specializes in hushing up problems for celebrities and powerful Hollywood types, before her moribund conscience is tested by stumbling into a lurid plot that seems loosely based on the real-life Dan Schneider controversy. It’s not a perfect book — the book’s two main characters are frankly not that likable — but the best mysteries often succeed on the sense of place alone. And in that respect, Everybody Knows reeks of verisimilitude. Whether it’s discussing the manipulative aspects of celebrity social media or describing the streets in particular L.A. neighborhoods, it’s a compelling neo-noir that will sharpen your intrinsic dislike of the entertainment industry.  

Speaking of L.A. noirs, my friend Michael Walsh — one heck of a writer in his own right — told me a while back that he thought James Ellroy was maybe the best American writer working today. I had never read any Ellroy, so this year I managed to plow through the first two books in Ellroy’s “L.A. Quartet” — The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere (you’ve undoubtedly heard of the third book in the quartet, L.A. Confidential, as a result of the film adaptation which received nine Oscar nods). And about all I can say is, uh, wow? The historical details of L.A. in the ’40s and ’50s are spot on, and the characterization and plot are effortless. It’s as if Raymond Chandler had the scope and worldbuilding of Dickens.

And speaking of Michael Walsh, he was the editor of Against the Corporate Media: Forty-two Ways the Press Hates You, a book in which he was kind enough to ask yours truly to contribute a chapter. I wrote about how media “fact-checking” organizations are used as a tool for censorship. But there are also great contributions from Andrew Klavan, Steven Hayward, Nick Searcy, Larry O’Connor, Charlie Kirk, and many others.

Finally, I recently finished Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove after Federalist publisher Sean Davis raved about it earlier this year. I nearly gave up on the book, because it’s a thousand pages long, and there are 300 pages of leisurely backstory about two dozen characters before the main plot kicks in. But let me tell you, hang in there because, boy, does Lonesome Dove pay off spectacularly.

It’s hard to begin to describe a book that is this epic in scope but handles so much so well, effortlessly switching between drama and pure adventure. It’s a pretty well-known book, and it sold a gazillion copies when it came out in the ’80s, but it’s so good I’m honestly surprised it’s not even more celebrated. It’s not just one of the best westerns ever written, it should be in the conversation when discussing the best American novels ever.  

Enjoy the upcoming holidays, and we’ll have more book recommendations for you next year.