SUMMARIES OF KEY BOOKS READ IN 2025
To view the full list of books I read, click HERE.
Here are some comments on the more noteworthy of the almost three dozen books I read last year:
HR McMaster, Dereliction of Duty. McMaster meticulously sets forth the events and errors that led to US escalation in Vietnam in the mid-1960s under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He spreads the blame throughout the involved parties in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, implicating individual decision making, process failures, and domestic and foreign political miscalculations. Early in his presidency, Kennedy expanded the number of military advisors in South Vietnam substantially beyond the number allowed by the 1954 Geneva accords. While telling the American public that US troops were not engaged in combat, they were in fact flying combat missions and fighting alongside South Vietnamese troops. Kennedy had no combat strategy for Vietnam. South Vietnamese Premier Ngo Dinh Diem’s assassination (which the US either explicitly or implicitly condoned) destabilized the situation just weeks before Kennedy’s assassination. From November 1963 through November 1964, Johnson’s primary mandate was to keep the Vietnam War from interfering with his reelection. It was important, he believed, for the US to be seen as providing advisors, not fighting troops, and to avoid front page coverage of the war. His stated strategy was to “kill more Viet Cong.”
Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was trapped in an effort to apply the incrementalism model used during the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam. He viewed military involvement primarily as “messaging” to Hanoi, while also trying to maintain flexibility for a quick US withdrawal. McMaster emphasizes that the Cuban Missile Crisis was an imperfect model at best since the counterparty (the USSR) was a nuclear power, Cuba much more directly implicated American interests, and the US was in direct contact with Khrushchev but not Ho Chi Minh. McNamara was also heavily involved in the details of military operations, often overruling the generals.
Maxwell Taylor continued as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when Johnson became President, but then replaced Henry Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to South Vietnam in mid-1964 with a broad portfolio. In both positions, Taylor advocated a “flexible response” military strategy, which roughly meshed with McNamara’s incremental strategy. Taylor viewed US involvement in Vietnam as important to show allies that the US would fight, even though it would not necessarily win, against the Communist threat.
McMaster argues that the inability of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to agree on recommendations due to interservice rivalry played into McNamara’s effort to control military response and maintain his strategy of incrementalism. He assesses responsibility for the JCS’s failures to both McNamara and to Taylor during his tenure as Chair of the JCS. McMaster paints the US involvement in Vietnam as confused, lacking in strategy, and intended more as a place-holder for eventual withdrawal rather than as intended to achieve anything that could be called victory.
Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. Mokyr, who shared the 2025 Nobel Prize in Economics, explores why the period of modern, transformative economic growth began around 1800 in Europe rather than at another time and in another region. He concludes that the cultural environment in Europe and Great Britain supported and encouraged innovation, application of new ideas, and entrepreneurship. “[T]he cultural foundations of modern growth were laid” from 1500 to 1700. (p. 6). He discusses “cultural entrepreneurs”—”the exceptional and unusual specimens who are the sources of evolutionary change.” (p. 60). The two cultural entrepreneurs to whom Mokyr attributes the most significance during the time leading to the Industrial Revolution were Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton. The “Baconian program” was “the attainment of material progress through propositional and prescriptive knowledge feeding off one another and creating a self-reinforcing (auto-catalytic) feedback loop that changed the economic history of the world.” (p. 71). “Technological or prescriptive knowledge, which is partially tacit knowledge, is passed among individuals who teach one another how to make things or produce a service, from music lessons to apprenticeships. The propositional knowledge (science) on which techniques are based is taught as well, although typically in a somewhat different setting[] and not always to the same people (although all engineers and technicians need to be trained in mathematics and physics).” (pp. 47-48).
As for Newton, “there is overwhelming evidence that in the highly competitive market for ideas in the late seventeenth century, Newton’s mathematical physics was recognized almost right away to be both innovative and correct. First through content bias (the best minds saw the logic of his work) and then through direct bias (his followers were themselves intellectuals of the highest standing), his work got the recognition it deserved in the market for ideas.” (p. 101). Newton’s “new physics was almost at once recognized to have overthrown what little there was left of ancient cosmology and physics.” (id.) “But replacing the religious core of natural philosophy with a more secular one was not pure metaphysical juggling. It had profound implications for the way the members of the intellectual elite saw their role in society.” (p. 116).
Mokyr discusses “The Republic of Letters,” in which leading intellects corresponded among themselves, with an implicit obligation by each to respond thoughtfully to correspondence received. This free exchange of ideas and information across borders created an environment of intellectual curiosity, constructive criticism of ideas, and rapid evolution and adoption of worthy ideas. Because the exchanges crossed borders, no single regime of government censorship, whether motivated by religious bias or protection of classical views, could effectively hold back the intellectual tide.
So why was Europe different from other advanced cultures, like the Middle East or China? “What made such successful entrepreneurs possible was that in Europe the market for ideas was not just contestable, but that ideas were actually continually contested, Intellectual sacred cows were increasingly being led to the slaughterhouse of evidence. What early European intellectuals did to Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Galen, their Ming-Qing colleagues could not do to Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi until the waning days of the empire in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.” (p. 319).
“The correct way to think about the rise of modern science and technology in Europe is to see it not just as the natural continuation of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance culture but also, paradoxically, as its repudiation. [citation omitted]. There was nothing inexorable about this turn of events; indeed, it was a closely fought outcome.” (p. 340).
“To see the true importance of the European Enlightenment in the economic developments that followed it, recall that it involved two highly innovative and complementary ideas: the concept that knowledge and the understanding of nature can and should be used to advance the material conditions of humanity, and the belief that power and government are there not to serve the rich and powerful but society at large.” (p. 341). Based on the case laid out by Mokyr, I would add that the interchange and contestability of ideas was also of critical importance.
CS Lewis, The Grand Miracle and Other Selected Essays on Theology and Ethics from God in the Dock. This collection of essays by Lewis is outstanding. I especially liked the first, entitled “Miracles.” To Lewis, the miracles done by Jesus help us to understand and appreciate the miracles happening every day before our eyes. “If a miracle means that which must simply be accepted, the unanswerable actuality which gives no account of itself but simply is, then the universe is one great miracle.” As an example, Lewis points out that the grape seed growing with water into a vine producing grapes which are then crushed with the juice fermenting into wine parallels the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana.
Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche. Watters argues that the spread of modern American culture has carried with it American psychiatric disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, and eating disorders. As one example showing how publicity surrounding these illnesses can affect others, he invokes studies showing that bulimia in Britain increased dramatically when rumors of Princess Diana’s condition began and spiked again when she publicly confirmed it, but then dropped significantly after she died. He does not minimize the importance or severity of these psychiatric issues, but argues that diagnosing and treating these illnesses must take into account the cultural context.
Jeff Rosen, The Pursuit of Happiness. Professor Rosen set out to investigate what the Founding Fathers meant by “the pursuit of happiness.” In a fascinating and detailed study, he reviewed not just the writings, but the readings, of the Founders, and concludes that their notion of “the pursuit of happiness” is consistent with Aristotle’s view of eudaimonia, or “the good life.” This book reflects an immense amount of careful research and thought, and was a very enjoyable and provocative read, but seems too often distracted by detours to discuss the particular Founder’s real life involvement with, and hypocrisy regarding, slavery.
Ezra Klein & Derek Thompson, Abundance. This was the “it” book among progressives this year. Following JS Mills’s admonition that “[h]e who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that,” I decided to read it. I found, somewhat to my surprise, that I agree with about 90% of it. Klein and Thompson argue that the regulations implemented primarily by the left over the last several decades have led to housing crises in major cities (due to construction, zoning, and environmental regulations), impeded the left’s “green agenda” (due to regulations restricting construction of power plants, transmission lines, rail lines, and so forth), and slowed innovation in the health sciences (through misdirected or unimaginative government funding, slow FDA approvals—although they do applaud the expedited treatment of Covid vaccines—and other regulatory burdens). No real argument with any of that.
My primary disagreement, however, is with their view that the government rather than the private sector should be the force to solve these problems in an environment of less restrictive and more rational regulations. Time will tell whether progressives act on the premise that extensive regulation, which they have championed,is undermining elements of their own agenda.
Rick Atkinson, The British Are Coming, and Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day. These are the first two volumes of Atkinson’s “Revolution Trilogy,” with the third volume forthcoming. Both were wonderful reads, especially as we approach the 250th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Meticulously researched and intricately detailed, each volume tells not just the battlefield details but provides a full context: what were King George III and the other British leaders really like, what were the British intentions and goals in engaging in the war, and what issues domestically and in other parts of the Empire affected their decision-making? Conversely, what led the Americans to transform a war that began seeking rights equal to those of British citizens into a war for independence from Britain, and what challenges did the Americans face in recruiting, equipping, and feeding troops, as well as in dealing with Loyalists? I learned a great deal from these volumes, but as much as anything they enhanced my appreciation for the role of hunger and disease on both sides in shaping the conflict. The stories of deaths of men and horses on the British transport ships are harrowing, and the ability of Washington to keep his army together in the face of delayed pay, hunger, disease, shortages of materiel including clothes (especially shoes), and frequent defeats on the battlefield confirms his greatness as a leader.
As Americans we focus on the War on this Continent, and primarily on the Eastern Seaboard, but Atkinson shows that the French, and later Spanish, entries into the war transformed the conflict into a world-wide conflict involving French efforts to invade Britain, conflicts throughout the British and French colonies in the Caribbean, and naval clashes throughout the eastern and western Atlantic. “In barely a year [from 1778 to 1779], Britain had gone from battling a noxious insurrection on the edge of the earth to fighting a world war against two formidable European adversaries.” (vol. 2, p. 458).
The American Army was constantly underfunded. Rather than agree to taxes to raise money, one delegate to the Continental Congress responded: “‘Do you think, gentlemen, that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes when we can send to our printer and get a wagonload of money?’ . .. The treasury consequently sent cash in great stacks to the army, along with shears to cut individual bills from the sheets of money.” (vol. 2, p. 308). Not surprisingly, inflation was extreme and the Continental currency became almost worthless. I eagerly await volume 3.