2025

2025 Summary: 58 books

Favorites, in no order: American Nations, Prisoners of Geography, How To Be A Good Creature

1. The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi by Wright Thompson
2. Mark Twain by Ron Chernow
3. 100 Rules for Living to 100: An Optimist's Guide to a Happy Life by Dick Van Dyke
4. Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder
5. Baltimore Prohibition: Wet and Dry in the Free State by Michael Walsh
6. Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia by Judah Schept
7. The Last American Road Trip: A Memoir by Sarah Kendzior
8. Thirty Three Cyclists: Daredevils, Visionaries & Adventurers by David Houghton
9. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad
10. Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy
11. Fresh Banana Leaves: Healing Indigenous Landscapes Through Indigenous Science by Jessica Hernandez
12. Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital by Sheri Fink
13. The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore
14. Actress of a Certain Age: My Twenty-Year Trail to Overnight Success by Jeff Hiller
15. Making Sense of Wine by Matt Kramer
16. Bonnie and Clyde: The Making of a Legend by Karen Blumenthal
17. The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History by John Barry
18. Thirty Below: The Harrowing and Heroic Story of the First All-Women's Ascent of Denali by Cassidy Randall
19. The Vegetarian by Kang Han
20. Mapping the Cold War: Cartography and the Framing of America’s International Power by Timothy Barney
21. Four Red Sweaters: Powerful True Stories of Women and the Holocaust – A Moving Account of Jewish Girls' Extraordinary Resilience and Courage by Clothes Historian by Lucy Adlington
22. Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley
23. My Brief History by Stephen Hawking
24. The Sirens' Call: How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource by Christopher Hayes
25. A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory by Jagadish Shukla
26. A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown
27. Secrets of Adulthood: Simple Truths for Our Complex Lives by Gretchen Rubin
28. Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson
29. We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Foer
30. 999: The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz by Heather Dune Macadam
31. America's Deadliest Election: The Cautionary Tale of the Most Violent Election in American History by Dana Bash
32. Ukraine: The History and Legacy of Ukraine from the Middle Ages to Today by Charles River Editors
33. First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers by Loung Ung
34. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms & a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Simon Winchester
35. The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston
36. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson
37. Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children by Noliwe Rooks
38. The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson,
39. They Can't Kill Us All: Ferguson, Baltimore, and a New Era in America’s Racial Justice Movement by Wesley Lowery
40. Detroit: A Biography by Scott Martelle
41. Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don't Know by Malcolm Gladwell
42. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
43. The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong by Judith Rodin
44. Faith: A Journey For All by Jimmy Carter
45. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
46. 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann
47. Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics by Tim Marshall
48. Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania by Erik Larson
49. Decolonizing Paradise: A Radical Ethnography of Environmental Stewardship in the Caribbean by Rosalina Díaz
50. The Greatest Beer Run Ever: A Memoir of Friendship, Loyalty, and War by John Donohue
51. Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded by Simon Winchester,
52. Knowing What We Know: The Transmission of Knowledge: From Ancient Wisdom to Modern Magic by Simon Winchester
53. The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon Winchester
54. How To Be A Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals by Sy Montgomery
55. Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty by Hillary Rodham Clinton
56. Citizen: My Life After the White House by Bill Clinton
57. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard
58. The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester