If You Only Read A Few Books In 2025, Read These
I can’t predict the future, so I don’t know what the year will bring, but I feel pretty confident in predicting that 2025 will be challenging.
First of all, because what year hasn’t brought challenges? Never forget, Seneca reminds us, Fortune has a habit of behaving exactly as she pleases. Why would 2025 be an exception to this rule? There is no normal in this life…except disruption, change and surprise.
Second, because it already is challenging. We’re three weeks into the year and there have already been fires and wars, political dysfunction, attacks and earthquakes. My kids have already been sick. And we’re just getting started.
The question, then, is not how we can avoid these challenges but how we can prepare for them. One of my favorite quotes, inscribed across the back of my bookstore, comes from Walter Mosley: “I’m not saying that you have to be a reader to save your soul in the modern world. I’m saying it helps.”
2025 will be crazy and weird and tough. But probably not any more than the year 1925. Or the year 25 AD. That means there are lots of books, lots of ideas, lots of history that can help us with what lies ahead…because it will rhyme with what lies behind us. Whether we’re navigating personal trials, global upheavals, or moments of inspiration, books remain one of the most reliable tools to help us prepare for what’s to come. They challenge us, ground us, and offer us the wisdom of centuries.
With that in mind, here are some books—some timeless, some timely—that I recommend for 2025. Each one offers something unique to help you grow, reflect, and thrive. You can also get this collection at my bookstore, The Painted Porch.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
As we head into 2025, the pressure to do more, to be constantly busy, to fill every moment with productivity and progress feels more intense than ever. In Slow Productivity, Cal Newport, one of my favorite writers and thinkers, rethinks what productivity can and should mean, making a strong case for the power of doing less but doing it better. It’s funny, people think I work a lot, but I don’t. I’m much closer to Cal’s outline in this book. I take my kids to school every day. I get home well before dinner every night. I take a lot of walks (here’s Cal and I talking about the power of walks for idea generation). I just do this steadily and consistently. When Cal came on the podcast (watch here), we talked about this idea of Festina lente—make haste slowly—that is my philosophy for the most part.
The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger
Dr. Eger is a complete hero of mine. At 16-years-old, she’s sent to Auschwitz. And how does this not break a person? How do they survive? How do they endure the unendurable? And how do they emerge from this, not just not broken, but cheerful and happy and of service to other people? The last thing Dr. Eger’s mother said to her before she was sent to the gas chambers was that very Stoic idea: even when we find ourselves in horrendous situations, we can always choose how we respond to them, who we’re going to be inside of them, what we’re going to hold onto inside of them. Dr. Eger quotes Frankl, who she later studied under, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” It was this idea that allowed Dr. Eger to not only endure unimaginable suffering but to find meaning in it. I’ve had the incredible honor of interviewing Dr. Eger twice (here and here) and the joy and energy of this woman, this 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, is just incredible.
Montaigne by Stefan Zweig
We did a video right after the election about what a Stoic should be thinking about in times like these. It might be of use to you. Me? I picked up my copy of Zweig’s little book on Montaigne, which has been of solace and strength since I read it back in 2016. There are two kinds of biographies: Long ones which tell you every fact about the person’s life, and short ones which capture the person’s essence and the lessons of their life. This biography is a brilliant, urgent and important example of the latter. It is what I would call a moral biography—that is, a book that teaches you how to live through the story of another person. If you’ve been struggling with the onslaught of negative news and political turmoil, read this book. It’s the biography of a man who retreated from the chaos of 16th-century France to study himself, written by a man fleeing the chaos of 20th-century Europe. When I say it’s timely, I mean that it’s hard to be a thinking person and not see alarming warning signs about today’s world while reading this book. Yet it also gives us a solution: Turn inward. Master yourself. This book helped me get through 2024, no question. Plutarch’s Lives is another one I’d add to the moral biography genre, which I used to help me write Right Thing, Right Now.
The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro
As much as I love those short, moral biographies, there is nothing I love more than door-stopper biographies. You know those magisterial, epic books that seem like they couldn’t possibly be worth reading, but somehow you’re riveted on every page? If you want to try one of those this year, start with Robert Caro. Just these four books alone could tie you up for the whole year, and that alone would be well spent. It’s unquestionable to me that Caro is one of the greatest biographers to ever live. His intricate, complicated, sprawling investigation into Lyndon Johnson will change how you see power, ambition, politics, personality and justice. If there is one line that sums up the whole series it’s this: It’s that power doesn’t only corrupt. That’s too simple. What power does is reveal.
A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy said that his most essential work was not his novels but his daily read, A Calendar of Wisdom. Before he wrote it, he dreamed of creating a book composed of “a wise thought for every day of the year, from the greatest philosophers of all times and all people… Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Lao-Tzu, Buddha, Pascal.” As he wrote to his assistant, “I know that it gives one great inner force, calmness, and happiness to communicate with such great thinkers… They tell us about what is most important for humanity, about the meaning of life and about virtue.” As you can imagine, I am a big fan of daily devotionals. Check out dailystoic.com and dailydad.com for the free daily email versions I do.
Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do About It by Richard Reeves
I’ve got two young boys (thus the Daily Dad email), so I’ve been following Richard Reeves’s work for some time. This book could so easily have been culture war fodder, but thankfully, he is so much above and beyond that. The gains society has made for women–especially in America–have been utterly unprecedented. But men are struggling, or rather, young boys are struggling. How do we help them? How do we show them a better path? How do we teach them to fulfill their potential and contribute their unique contribution to society? Given my work with Stoicism, I think we’ve gone too far in describing masculinity as ‘toxic’ (check out a recent video I did about Stoic lessons on masculinity) but I would say there are many toxic examples (and thinkers) out there who are misleading young men (which I talk about in this video). If you’re a parent or a teacher or a policy maker, you have to read this book. Check out my conversation with Richard Reeves here.
Bright Shining: How Grace Changes Everything by Julia Baird
So when I was in Australia, I sat down with Julia to talk about her new book, Bright Shining, which is all about the idea of grace (watch that episode here). We are wicked people living amongst wicked people, Seneca said, that’s why we need to be patient with each other, why we need to forgive each other. I would say this is especially true coming out of the pandemic and the recent election.
The Children by David Halberstam
I was deeply moved, in some cases to tears, by David Halberstam’s The Children, when I first read it in 2022. It tells the story of the early days of the Civil Rights Movement from the perspective of the young activists who played pivotal roles in the struggle for racial equality and grew up to lead the movement. It’s an incredibly powerful book about youth and social change–and how it comes from brave young people. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I first read it. Trust me, pick it up this year.
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65, and At Canaan’s Edge: America in the King Years 1965-68 by Taylor Branch
Another long biography series…I was blown away by Taylor Branch’s epic three-part biography on Martin Luther King Jr. when I first read it back in 2020—it was truly life-changing for me. I was once again profoundly impacted by this series as I picked it back up to do research for Right Thing, Right Now. This trilogy does a phenomenal job of revealing the ways that an individual person really can have an impact on the collective. It’s a masterpiece of a series, made even better by the fact that Branch began the series when his son was born, and finished it with the help of that same son years later (read more about that here).
Same as Ever: A Guide to What Never Changes by Morgan Housel
Too often, we give way too much attention to what is shiny and new or urgent and timely instead of focusing on what truly matters—the things that are perennial and enduring. Morgan (who I had a great conversation with Morgan on the podcast) put together a great book of anecdotes and musings on the constants of human nature and history. In a world that seems to change faster every year, this book reminds us of the things that stay the same—and why they matter. If you loved Morgan’s The Psychology of Money, this book is a natural next step. It’s not just about what we know—it’s about what we understand about ourselves, our behavior, and the world we live in. This is a book to read, reflect on, and revisit.
The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Speaking of things that never change—there are some awful people and awful movements on the march around the world. This feels new, but of course, it’s not–these people have always existed. The problem is they are just not well understood. Worse, good people are not often armed with the tools (or the cunning) to defeat or to effectuate change. If you want to live life on your terms, climb as high as you know you’re capable, and avoid being controlled by others—you need to read this book. You’ll leave not just with actionable lessons, but an indelible sense of what to do in many trying and confusing situations. Is there a darkness to this book? Yes. But there is a darkness to life, too. You have to understand it and be able to defend against it. If you don’t want to read it because you think it’s ‘immoral,’ well then you definitely need to read it, as I explain in this video.
It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
One of my reading rules is: If you want to understand current events, don’t rely on breaking news. Find a book about a similar event in the past. It’s also true that fiction helps us understand the human heart and the events of history more than nonfiction can. This book will make you so uncomfortable you’ll probably pick it up and put it down several times. One of America’s most famous writers wrote a bestselling novel in 1935 about an appalling populist demagogue who won the presidency of the United States. Life imitates art. Change the dates, places and names and it’s no longer fiction, it’s real. If you don’t read the book, at least please read about it. Because you need to know. It can happen here.
Address Unknown by Kathrine Kressmann Taylor
This is another timely book to pick up this year. It’s a short but important read about a series of letters between two business partners (one Jewish, one not) during the rise of Hitler in Germany. One is slowly corrupted by the events happening around him, his heart closing to the people and ideas he once believed in. It’s a heartbreaking but eye-opening look at the banality of fascism. People don’t just suddenly become evil or awful. It’s a process, a slide, even a response to incentives. It can happen to anyone. We should all be careful! I first read Address Unknown years ago, but I was reminded of it again when I read 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff last summer which is about a New York TV writer and a British bookseller exchanging letters in the aftermath of WWII. Read Address Unknown and then follow it up with 84, Charing Cross Road.
The Expanding Circle by Peter Singer
Even though Stoicism is a ruggedly individual philosophy, at the core of it is this idea of “the circles of concern.” Our first concern, the Stoics said, is ourselves. Then our family, our community, our country, our world, all living things. The work of philosophy is to draw these concerns inward—to learn to care about as many people as possible, to do as much good as possible. I dedicated an entire chapter in my book Right Thing, Right Now to this idea, titled “Expand The Circle” (you can listen to an excerpt of that chapter here!). So when I had Peter Singer on the podcast and mentioned this book, he said he only chanced on a similar metaphor, not knowing its Stoic origins. The Expanding Circle is a great book about expanding our focus on the welfare of family and friends to include, ultimately, all of humanity—animals, the environment, all of it.
Atomic Habits by James Clear
A perennial favorite because it works. It’s when things are chaotic and crazy, when the world feels like it’s falling apart, that we most need to develop good habits. I think about James Clear’s concept of atomic habits on a regular basis. To me, this is a sign of a great book—that even just thinking about the title has an impact on you. I love the double meaning of the word atomic—not just meaning explosive habits, but also focusing on the smallest possible size of habit, the tiniest step you can take to start the chain reaction that can in fact lead to explosive results.
Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan: With an Extensive Introduction and Notes by Alexander Bennett by Inazō Nitobe
I can’t remember which subscriber emailed me about this book, but I really liked it. Written in 1905, Bushido: The Samurai Code of Japan was the first book written for a Western audience about the code of conduct that governed the lives of Japan’s ruling class. It gets to “the soul of Japan” by answering the question of why certain ideas and customs prevail. It was a huge sensation in the U.S. when it came out. I believe Theodore Roosevelt read it. It’s a lovely peon to the virtues of an ancient tradition and deserves to be read up there with The Book of Five Rings and Zen in the Art of Archery (two other favorites of mine). Fictionally, there is also Rules for a Knight, which is another great read.
How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World by Donald Robertson
I remain as ever a big fan of Donald Robertson. His biography of Marcus Aurelius is one of the best books I’ve read and I loved his other book on Marcus Aurelius, How to Think Like a Roman Emperor. There’s a hilarious quote by Macaulay that I used in the Wisdom book (just finishing it): “The more I read about Socrates the less I wonder that they poisoned him.” Because while the dialogs are fun to read now, they weren’t fun for the people he was making a fool of. Socrates considered himself the ‘gadfly’ of Athens. People hate flies! When Donald came on The Daily Stoic Podcast, this was one of the things I wanted to ask him about–that for all Socrates’ wisdom, he seemed to lack social intelligence. Emily Wilson talks about this in her book The Death of Socrates quite a bit (a good companion to Donald’s book). Fascinating book about a guy who, like Cicero, I can’t decide if I like.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
This will always be my ultimate book recommendation. No matter who you are, where you live, how old you are, or how many times you’ve already read Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations, it’s time for you to read it. I’m a champion of the Gregory Hays translation, but if you are re-reading it, I’ve found that a new translation of a book you’ve read (or love) is a great way to see the same ideas from a new angle…or find new ideas you missed on the previous go-arounds. So if you haven’t read Robin Walterfield’s edition, check that one out. There’s a reason this book has endured for almost twenty centuries (here are some lessons from me having read Meditations more than 100 times). If you haven’t read Marcus Aurelius or if you have…you should read this book and then read it again.
