Favorite Books of 2025

Previously: 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024

In 2025, I read 100 books. You can view my 2025 reading list on Goodreads. Each year, I blog about my favorite books, an idea I got from the incomparable Aaron Swartz.

Without further ado, here are my...

Favorite Books Read in 2025

1) Sociopath by Patric Gagne. This book is the engrossing memoir of an admitted sociopath. Patric recognized early in her childhood that she did not feel the emotions that other people felt, so she learned to mask this in order to fit in. As a student at UCLA, she decided to study sociopathy to see if she could learn how to curb her dangerous impulses. Sociopaths are 2% of the population; they walk amongst us. Patric offers a unique window into the mind of a person who feels no sense of empathy or danger, and needs to experience extreme thrills in order to feel whole.

2) Son of Hamas by Mosab Hassan Yusef. This is the memoir of a high-ranking Hamas member who spied for the Israeli Shin Bet. Yusef tracks the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and the rise of Hamas in astonishing detail. He confirms how Yasir Arafat secretly ran the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades because Arafat wanted to continue his campaign of terror against Israel while continuing to play the role of Nelson Mandela to the world stage. Yusef’s moral journey from aspiring terrorist to Israeli spy is harrowing and fascinating, as Yusef becomes disillusioned by Hamas’s atrocities and comes to see Israel as the good guy.

3) Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett. This is the memoir a musician who grew up in the dangerous California cult, Synanon. The writing is lyrical and evocative, particularly in the opening chapters. It is a fascinating story of how one can be misprogrammed in one’s childhood, and how long it takes to deprogram one’s self.

4) The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich August von Hayek. Hayek’s central thesis is that communist Russia and fascist Germany were both collectivist, which is the enemy of freedom. Centrally-planned economies can't get price signals from the free market, inevitably spawn black markets, and then require coercion in order to force market compliance. So, in Hayek’s view, socialism leads inexorably to authoritarianism.

5) Parkinson’s Law by C. Northcote Parkinson. This is a delightful book on bureaucratic ineptitude. Parkinson’s most famous dictum is that “work expands to fill the amount of time allotted for it.” However, this book is filled with many other funny and apposite laws. For example, Parkinson wrote an equation to describe the exponential rate of growth of clerks in the British Navy, after he observed that between World War I and World War II, the amount of clerks expanded to outnumber the actual sailors. This bureaucratic growth rate is echoed throughout modern life. For example, college administrators now outnumber professors by three-to-one, and in medicine, administrators now outnumber doctors by the same ratio. Parkinson also coined the Law of Triviality, which states that a committee will spend time on an issue in inverse proportion to its importance. He further notes that bureaucrats can’t measure success with profits, so they measure success by budget and department size. This book is a gem and, sadly, is just as accurate today as it was in the 1950s.

6) Krakatoa by Simon Winchester. I’ve read many of Winchester’s charming books and had no idea that he once shot a polar bear at age 21, as an Oxford student, when he was on a geological research mission to Greenland. This book is putatively about the eruption of Krakatoa, but takes many wonderful diversions to discuss great geologists and evolutionary theorists from history. Winchester is always meticulously researched without ever being dull or pedantic. A treat to read.

7) Ethnic America by Thomas Sowell. This is the fascinating history of each ethnic migration to America, and their progress toward cultural assimilation. The Irish, for example, escaping centuries of poverty and abuse in their homeland, took more than a century to catch up to US averages for income and education. Sowell’s first thesis is that centuries of cultural baggage continue to play out for generations once an immigrant group reaches America. Sowell’s second thesis is that the speed at which cultures assimilate equals the speed at which they attain measurable success in America. The book tells the story of immigrant groups such as Italians, Japanese, Chinese, East Indians, East Africans, Jews, Germans, and Puerto Ricans.

8) Kasher in the Rye by Moshe Kasher. The astonishing story of how Kasher grew up with deaf parents, started therapy at age 4, became an addict by age 12, survived mental hospitals, and finally got sober at age 16. A funny and heart-breaking tale of how hard it can be for people to get sober.