I failed. Miserably. For only the second time since I started keeping track, in 2007, I did not read fifty books last year. In 2018 I read forty-five. For some reason, this year I only read forty. And I really have no explanation for why. Looking back over my last and seeing which months I read a lot and which I did not, I cannot identify any particular reasons. Regardless, I shall have to be more diligent in the year ahead.
Now for what I did read, though.
The first book I read in 2025 was one given to me by my father, Ted Leavengood’s Ted Williams and the 1969 Washington Senators. My father grew up a Senators fan and he told me that this book would help me to understand his frustration when the team moved to Texas. Ted Williams, the Hall of Famer and hitter extraordinaire, was hired to manage the Senators and he led them to their only winning season. They had never won more than 76 games in a season before, but he led them to a record of 86-76. It was a fluke, though, as they won only 70 games the next season and 63 the year after that. But the book explains the maneuvering of the team’s owner, who wanted to relocate the club. Williams would manage the team during its first season in Texas too, where they went just 54-100. Between 1973 and 1985, the club would have thirteen different managers before Bobby Valentine took the helm for the better part of eight seasons.
That was not the only baseball book I read in 2025. One Tough Out, by Rod Carew and Jaime Aron, tells the story of Carew’s childhood, his incredibly baseball career, the loss of his daughter to leukemia at age 18 and the resulting toll that took on his family and his own health struggles, including kidney and heart transplants. I Was Right On Time, by Buck O’Neill with Steven Conrad and David Wulfs, tells the story of Owens, who had a tremendous career in Negro League Baseball and became the first African American coach in the MLB. He became an untiring ambassador for the history of the Negro Leagues and a driving force behind the Negro League Museum in Kansas City. Robert Peterson’s Only the Ball Was White is a history of African-American players and teams. My son gave my Robert Whiting’s The Meaning of Ichiro, which seems to also have been published as The Samurai Way of Baseball in softcover. It recounts the absolute single-minded focus of Ichiro’s father in raising Ichiro to be a baseball superstar—which both explains Ichiro’s incredibly skill as a player but also leaves one wondering how he did not learn to hate baseball rather than to love it. The book also explores the Japanese approach to baseball—vastly different than the US style—and the success, or lack thereof, among Japanese players coming to the US and American players going to Japan. Averell Smith’s The Pitcher and the Dictator tells the intertwining stories of Satchell Paige and Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, as well as other players who played in the Dominican. It’s quite possible that the 1937 series in the Dominican included the best collection of baseball players ever assembled. But the book also includes insightful accounts of racism and politics.
Nikki Haley’s If You Want Something Done… is a short book with interesting overviews of ten women who played important roles in history—some well-known and others I had never heard of before. Lisa Rogak’s Propaganda Girls is a fascinating look at women who served in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, during WWII.
Alexei Navalny’s Patriot is an autobiography that managed to escape the Russian government even though Navalny did not. Much of the book was written while Navalny was in prison and it grows increasingly snarky as it goes along, but that is not surprising given the way that he was treated by the Russian government. Eventually, of course, he was killed by poison, though the Kremlin denies involvement. He was probably the most prominent and visible opponent of Putin in Russia in recent years.
Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom draws from the work of a number of philosophers, activists and thinkers to describe what freedom is and how we are in danger of losing it. He has spent considerable time in Ukraine and that features prominently in the book. I definitely do not agree with Snyder on everything but he offers thought provoking insights that need to be taken seriously. Kaitlyn Schiess’s The Ballot and the Bible is subtitled “How Scripture Has Been Used and Abused in American Politics and Where We Go from Here”and she addressed the way in which Bible verses are pulled into political debate—sometimes accurately, but often not—and what should be done about that. Anne Applebaum’s Twilight of Democracy examines changes that have taken place in Poland, Great Britain and the United States, with considerable discussion of Hungary as well. Like Applebaum, I could recount examples of people that used to be my friends, who agreed with most of the time politically, but who have embraced politicians and political positions that I never would have imagined—resulting sometimes, unfortunately, in a loss of friendship.
I read a variety of history books. Dean Jobb’s A Gentleman and a Thief tells the incredible story of Arthur Barry, an audacious thief during the Jazz Age who stole the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars worth of jewelry from some of the country’s richest families—not uncommonly while they were in the house or even sleeping in the room he was robbing. David Von Drehle’s Triangle tells the story of the shirtwaist industry, the efforts of those who fought for safe and fair employment practices and the details of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in 1911.
Barbara Tuchman’s The First Salute offers a look at the Revolutionary War from a unique perspective, blending the conflicts between England, France and Holland with the Revolution and emphasizing the role of the navies in the conflict. David Hackett Fischer’s Washington’ Crossing is a sizable book (nearly 600 pages) that recounts how the titular event, as well as the determination of Washington and others, kept the American fight alive in the first year of the Revolutionary War when it seemed that the British were going to win easily.
History Matters is a collection of speeches and writings by David McCullough, assembled by his daughter and long-time assistant after his passing. Anyone who really cares about history should read everything McCullough ever wrote, I think, but this book in particular shares why it is so important that we study and seek to learn from it.
David Waldstreicher’s The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is an excellent biography of a too-often-ignored figure in American history. (I actually had someone tell me a few years ago that Paul Laurence Dunbar was the first African-American poet in the US because Wheatley didn’t count. Not only does she count, she died almost a century before Dunbar was born). Richard Brookhiser’s John Marshall is an outstanding biography of the man who is perhaps the most well-known and most influential Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the nation’s history. Linda Hirschman’s The Color of Abolition capably tells the story of the fight for abolition, including the leading figures in that fight.
Larry Tye’s The Jazzmen is an outstanding joint biography of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Count Basie. Elizabeth Varon’s Longstreet is a solid biography of the general who became Lee’s most trusted commander after Jackson died but who spent the rest of his life wresting with the realities of the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, including his own failure to protest more strongly to Lee about his plan for what’s most commonly known as Pickett’s Charge. McKay Coppins was given virtually unlimited access to Mitt Romney and his personal writings, resulting in what will surely be the definitive biography of a man who has been far more involved in recent American history than is often recognized. Anyone who wants to understand him should read Romney. It made me both like and dislike him at times and Coppins writes fairly about him, I think. Amy Coney Barrett’s Listening to the Law explains her position on the responsibility of judges, at all levels, when it comes to deciding cases. I was reading it at the same time I was reading Brookhiser’s biography of John Marshall, which was particularly interesting. I still dislike the way that Coney Barrett became a justice of the Supreme Court but I do appreciate her thoughts on the way judges should do their job.
Jason Hundley’s first book, Beyond the Shallows, is a book about spiritual maturity and the importance of taking seriously the condition of our hearts. John Piper’s What is Saving Faith? Is Piper’ argument that true, saving faith will result in treasuring Christ above all else. It is consistent with Piper’s Christian Hedonism and the bottom line is that affection for Christ is a necessary element of true faith.
Alan Bandstra’s Beyond Control is a terrific book about the importance of effective classroom management, which includes more than simply controlling student behavior. I would recommend it for any teacher.
As per usual, I read the latest offerings from the fiction writers that I enjoy: James Patterson’s The House of Cross and Return of the Spider (Alex Cross series), Paranoia, with James Born (Michael Bennett series) and The Picasso Heist (a stand-alone book that says it is all true except for the parts that aren’t—which really leaves you wondering), Daniel Silva’s An Inside Job, End Game by Jeffrey Archer (the end of the William Warwick series), John Grisham’s The Widow, and David Baldacci’s Strangers in Time. I enjoyed the Grisham book and the Baldacci book was unlike any of his other books I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope he writes more like it.
I read Brad Meltzer’s The First Counsel, the first Meltzer book I’ve read, and Elizabeth George’s A Slowly Dying Cause, the first George book I’ve read in a while. Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad is an interesting book. As always with Whitehead, it is well written. It weaves together some realities of the Underground Railroad with some fictional aspects of it—such as it being an actual railroad that traveled underground. And for a classic, I read Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. While I wouldn’t necessarily say that I enjoyed it, it is alarming how much of what it describes can be seen happening in the real world today.
One more—Air Castles, by my friend David Paul, who is, I believe, in his eighties now. It is a collection of stories about his life, many of which are humorous and a number of which also include valuable life lessons.
So, that’s my 2025 in books. I certainly hope to reach or exceed fifty again in 2026. Given how rarely I post here any more I have considered ending this blog, but I hope you enjoyed this quick overview of my year in books. Happy reading!
THINKING OUT LOUD 