Top 10 Books of 2025

My favorite reads from the past year

Poor Jack's Almanack
January 02, 2026

2025 was an exciting year. I moved from Charlotte to Austin, travelled the world, and started a new job.

But the constant through it all was reading. I managed to knock out 41 books this year ranging a span of topics from the origin of the blues to The Troubles in Northern Ireland.

There is no common throughline that connects my favorite books of 2025 other than the fact that I thought they were fantastic and worthy of recommendation.

Without further ado, here are my top 10 books of 2025

The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro

Whenever I tell people that the subject of my favorite history books is Lyndon Johnson, they often widen their eyes in surprise. Somehow over the past six decades since his presidency, Johnson’s legacy has largely been buried among the company of other oval office occupants. He may be some what notorious as the president who escalated the war in Vietnam (“hey, hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”) and who introduced the credibility gap - a lapse in trust between the American public and their leader that persists to this day but as I have written previously, The Years of Lyndon Johnson are “equal parts Shakespearean tragedy, historical narrative, and House of Cards-esque political thriller.”

The series is four volumes, totaling over 3,000 pages, centered around Lyndon Johnson, a Texan, WW2 veteran, Congressman, Senator, Vice President, and eventual 36th president of the United States. As a character, LBJ is endlessly fascinating and full of contradictions. He is the ultimate anti-hero who embodied the archetype long before Walter White and Tony Soprano made it so common in popular media.

How could the man who was so ruthless in the way he accumulated power (ending men’s careers, threatening, cajoling, sometimes physically striking), use that power to advance some of the most righteous causes in American history such as the first Civil Rights bill passed in over 100 years since Reconstruction?

How would the man who passed so much progressive legislation in the name of the downtrodden in the United States conduct such a senseless and destructive war abroad in Vietnam?

LBJ as a character is so intriguing and as the 2nd most powerful man in America during his time as Senate Majority Leader in the 50s (only behind Eisenhower) and the most powerful man in America during the middle and latter half of the 60s, he wielded his power during some of the most interesting time in our nation’s history as America ascended to its position as the preeminent world power we know it as today.

If four volumes and 3,000+ pages of LBJ intimidates you, I suggest Working by Robert Caro. It’s a short collection of his experiences researching and writing the LBJ books which served as the gateway drug for me to get into his work and I hope it does the same for you.

Favorite Line: “President Kennedy’s eloquence was designed to make men think; President Johnson’s hammer blows are designed to make men act.” - James Reston in The Passage of Power

The Cost of These Dreams by Wright Thompson

Wright Thompson spent his career as a writer for ESPN profiling some of the most dominant and admired athletes of our time. His subjects include Michael Jordan, Lionel Messi, and Tiger Woods. While so much of our impression of these people is viewed through the lens of their greatest accomplishments - Thompson cuts a layer deeper, delving into what drives these people to the insane measures they take to win. How do they handle ageing and separation from a sport that defined their lives in almost every way since they were young? Why do we as fans put so much of our emotional well-being into the outcome of a game and to what extent is that game bigger and more meaningful than a simple contest?

One of the biggest takeaways from this book for me is that so often we think we want to be these people because we see them win on the biggest stages on tv, basking in the glory of their fans and peers, drunk on the taste of victory, but that scene is the tip of the iceberg. We don’t see how tortured many of these people are to win and how that fuel and drive to overcome is often traced back to the complicated relationships they have with their families (Jordan and Woods).

We don’t see how much they sacrifice in terms of their relationships with loved ones (Urban Meyer) and how Father Time is undefeated in stealing ability from these athletes who appear invincible at their peaks yet whose tortured drive remains even as their skills wane.

The Cost of These Dreams is more than cautionary tales; it’s a book about people and meaning and the role of sports in our world both from the perspective of athletes and fans.

Favorite Line: “The tools required to gain greatness often prevent someone from enjoying it.”

Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland by Patrick Radden Keefe

I’m embarrassed to write this but I had no clue about the history of Ireland and its relationship with England until I visited Ireland over the Summer and read a couple books about it. Say Nothing tells the history of The Troubles in Northern Ireland - a multi-year guerrilla conflict between various factions representing the Republic of Ireland/Catholics against the English backed/Protestant Northern Irish. The book’s author, Patrick Radden Keefe, attempts to uncover what happened to a single mother living in Northern Ireland who was “disappeared” by the IRA for her alleged sympathies to the Northern Irish while explaining the history of the conflict that lead to this atrocity.

The book is filled with tragedy as you watch a cause that initially appears righteous deteriorate into a series of horrific murders, delegitimizing whatever moral high ground the IRA felt it was fighting from. The story is gripping, reflecting aspects of the Irish ethos while also depicting how conflicts can span generations as children inherit the beliefs and banners of their parents, carrying on legacies that doom their futures and those of their descendants. Each side of the conflict is constantly seeking vengeance for past injustices, real and perceived, in an endless loop of vigilante violence whose consequences are felt by Irish and English society at large.

Though the period of violence between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland/England is over, bad blood still exists between the two nations today. Almost everyone I talked to in Ireland detests their “former colonial oppressors” and the travel bookstore I went to in England that was categorized by country was noticeably light on its Irish selection.

Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

On a much lighter note, when I visited London over the Summer I went to a legendary bookstore called Heywood Hill. While there, I asked one of the workers if they had any recommendations that were quintessentially English and Jeeves is what they offered.

Jeeves is a series of fictional misadventure stories by the comic writer P.G. Wodehouse. They detail the life of Bertram Wooster, an English aristocrat who is always getting himself into undesirable situations such as engagements to women he is not interested in (yet too polite to turn down) or disputes with his domineering aunts.

The character for which the series is named, Jeeves, is Bertram’s Shakespeare quoting butler (or Gentleman’s Gentleman as he puts it) whose ability to quote obscure poetry is only matched by his genius for conjuring up schemes to alleviate Bertram of whatever deserved predicament he finds himself in.

Famed investor Charlie Munger counted himself among Jeeves fans. In the only biography of Munger that exists today Janet Lowe said of the Munger family vacation home “A sign over the front door of the main house reads ‘Angler’s Rest’ a name taken from one of Charlie’s favorite books by P.G. Wodehouse, demonstrating Charlie’s devotion to both Wodehouse and fishing. Before the house was remodeled, the upstairs walls, more partitions than anything, didn’t go all the way to the ceiling. Molly lay in bed at night hearing her father in his bedroom chuckling as he read stories about Wodehouse’s zany character, Bertie Wooster.”

If the infamous curmudgeon Charlie Munger got some laughs out of Jeeves, I’m fairly certain you will too.

Favorite Line: “I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled.”

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Remains of the Day is another story about an English butler, yet this one is far more tragic and devoid of humor than the Jeeves stories. The Remains of the Day is about Stevens, an ageing English butler whose place in society is radically disrupted by the fact that his household is now owned by an American who is unfamiliar with the traditional customs of the English aristocracy.

After taking over as owner of the house, the American insists that Stevens take a long overdue holiday through the English countryside. As Stevens does so, he reflects on his life and the work he did for his former boss, a member of the English upper-class who was a Nazi sympathizer and appeaser during WWII.

Stevens derived meaning from the work he did in serving these English elites and believed he was contributing to something greater than himself - the aversion of another world war. Yet as history played out the appeasement route proved disastrous and Hitler fully revealed himself as a power-hungry lunatic. As Stevens travels through the countryside reflecting on his life, he must come to terms with the role his former boss played in global affairs and in doing so we see the remarkable capacity of human nature to rationalize previous actions in a manner that can be lived with.

Remains of the Day has been cited by Jeff Bezos as his favorite book and the ultimate catalyst that caused him to quit his cushy, high earning hedge fund job to go start Amazon. The book inspired Bezos’ regret minimization framework as he didn’t want to live a life like Stevens that upon examination, in the evening of one’s life, was full of regret from unpursued opportunities.

Favorite Line: “The remains of the day are precious, and one should make the best of them.”

The New York Stories by John O’Hara

Earlier this year I listened to an interview with Shelby Foote where he was asked of all the authors he hadn’t met, who would he like to meet the most? His answer was John O’Hara. This was the first I’d heard of O’Hara but if Foote thought so highly of him that was a good enough endorsement for me to check out his work.

O’Hara is primarily known for pioneering The New Yorker genre of short story. This collection tells the stories of New Yorkers of all class, ethnicity, and moral background - assembling a fascinating, fictional portrait of the city through its diverse inhabitants. O’Hara’s capacity for convincingly portraying characters who were far different than he is impressive. If you liked A Table for Two by Amor Towles, you’ll probably enjoy this too.

Favorite Line: ‘Do you know what gardeners are like, Mrs. Harrington?’ ‘In what way?’ said Gretchen. ‘They’re generally very quiet men, really more interested in what they’re doing than they are in people. Most of the time they’re working with dirt, the soil. And all they produce is beauty, and often the most beautiful things don’t last very long. A few days, maybe a few weeks. But it’s worth it to them, to bring that beauty up out of the ground.”

On Desperate Ground by Hampton Sides

This was a recommendation from my brother that blew me away.

Similar to LBJ among the ranks of presidents, the Korean War does not get the respect it deserves sandwiched between the widely supported participation in WWII and the widely detested participation in the Vietnam War. Whatever you think of the strategy behind the Korean War and its consequences for international relations, there is no debate that the marines who executed the plans of the military strategists were courageous beyond words conducting battle in an icy hell of a climate.

On Desperate Ground is inspiring as a tale of the bravery of seemingly ordinary men. But it is also terrifying in the way it highlights how leaders can condemn men to horrible, meaningless violence in pursuit of their own vainglory and ego as General MacArthur often did.

Robert Caro once said “people don’t give enough force to the key role that character, personality plays in politics and power”. The trajectory of human events can be alarmingly malleable to the whims of flawed human beings with great power, confidence, and flaws. That rings resoundingly true in this book.

Favorite Line: “A few days earlier, when he learned that his regiment had become surrounded at Koto-ri, he minted a new Pullerism: ‘So the Chinese are to our east. They’re to our west. They’re to our north. And to our south. Well, that simplifies things. They can’t get away from us now!’”

Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is one of my favorite authors of all time and Moneyball was a glaring hole in my Lewis collection. I am a huge fan of the movie starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill but the book (as is often the case) managed to surpass the greatness of the movie.

Moneyball is the story of Billy Beane, a baseball prodigy who was a massive bust in the Major Leagues. Now, Billy is the General Manager of the Oakland A’s, one of the MLB’s smaller market teams. Baseball is a notoriously unfair sport because big market teams (Los Angeles, New York, etc.) have far more money to spend on a roster than smaller market teams. So naturally the teams with the largest budgets assemble the most talented rosters, and win the most games. Billy knew he could not compete based on sheer dollars but maybe he could compete on talent assessment. At the time, baseball was a highly inefficient market where factors like a players physical appearance may make them more or less expensive in spite of their on-field performance. Beane used a statistics based approach to evaluate players, finding the neglected misfits of the MLB who may have been overweight or slow or non-conventional pitchers but were effective at their jobs nonetheless.

By taking an eccentrically rational approach to the game, Beane found success despite the fact that the guidelines of the league were rigged against him. Moneyball revolutionized not only baseball but the world as statistics are now common in every sport, industry, and market. The opportunity to write Moneyball was a pitch lobbed right over the middle of the plate for Michael Lewis as it hits his sweet spot at the intersection of sports and financial markets.

Favorite Line: “The human mind played tricks on itself when it relied exclusively on what it saw, and every trick it played was a financial opportunity for someone who saw through the illusion to the reality.”

Born to Run by Chris McDougall

This was a recommendation from a friend of mine. It’s narrative non-fiction with a bit of science and anthropology mixed in about an ancient tribe of native Americans, the Tarahumara, who are remarkably good endurance athletes with a fraction of the resources modern runners have. Despite being seemingly disadvantaged from a resource standpoint, this mysterious tribe regularly beats the best endurance athletes in the world and the author wanted to understand why.

By telling the story of one of the greatest ultra endurance races the author develops and explains a theory that humans evolved to run on our bare feet and we cause our body many running related injuries by wearing modern shoes that neutralize the very bones and muscles in our feet that our ancestors benefited from. It’s an interesting theory and a better story that’s worth reading especially if you’re a runner.

The Guns at Last Light by Rick Atkinson

Over the Summer I was lucky enough to go to Normandy with my family. One of the highlights of that trip was reading The Guns at Last Light which details the European Theater of World War 2 from the invasion of Normandy all the way through the end of the war.

In between tours of Utah and Omaha beach, I would read about the preparation for the assault, the strategy behind its planning, and the personalities of all the generals who played important roles in the defeat of the Axis powers.

Often when you think of war you think of tales of gallantry and heroism, and this book was certainly no exception as it features narrations of some of the bravest Americans to ever live. But you also gain an appreciation for how much success in war is a matter of logistics, coordination, and communication. Coordinating units in battle while facing enemy fire and chaos beyond comprehension is unbelievably difficult. And keeping those men fed and armed is another challenge in itself as armies move across entire continents. Reading The Guns at Last Light brought new significance to the Napoleon quote “A genius is the man who can do the average thing when everyone around him is losing his mind.”

First and foremost, D-Day was a feat of human courage but it was also the greatest feat of technology, logistics, and industrial power the world had ever seen up to that point.

Favorite Line: “All planning was not just likely to recoil ironically; it was almost certain to do so. Human Beings were clearly not machines. They were mysterious congeries of twisted will and error, misapprehension and misrepresentation, and the expected could not be expected of them.”

Every Book I Read in 2025:

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