My 2025 in books

The quiet of the holiday season offers the perfect setting to take stock of the last twelve months of reading. On January 1st, Stephen King’s The Dead Zone kept me company during the early hours of 2025, and now, 10,307 pages later, Bruno Giussani’s pro-European manifesto Moins d'Amérique dans nos vies (Less America in our lives) closes out a year in which I’ve learned a great deal.

I’m closing 2025 with 36 books read, maintaining an average of 3 books per month. After a start to the year dedicated almost entirely to fiction, my interest shifted toward non-fiction. Between August and November, I devoted a lot of time to the Ukraine question, the US-European relationship, and the mechanisms of logic. I then wrapped up the year ranging from historical sociology (The Crowd by Le Bon is as timely in its dynamics as it is dated in its prejudices) to the inner workings of NATO with Stoltenberg and Apps.

A few scattered observations:

• With 10 titles read this year, I’ve brought my lifetime total of Stephen King books read to 26. Worthy of note are The Shining, a masterpiece I finally got around to reading (and watching the movie), and The Running Man, which I devoured in one go. The Dark Tower saga is struggling to take off: after the first three, I’m finding it hard to start Wizard and Glass.
• Only the Dead by Bear Braumoeller is a critique of the declining violence thesis (see Steven Pinker). Braumoeller shows how no significant decrease in the intensity or lethality of wars has emerged since the end of the Napoleonic era.
• The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan deals with systematic distortions in voting behavior and questions both the rational voter assumption and the more lenient interpretations of direct democracy. Caplan identifies four recurring biases (anti-market, anti-foreign, make-work, and pessimistic) and introduces the concept of rational irrationality: when the individual cost of a political error is zero, it becomes rational to maintain erroneous but psychologically gratifying beliefs, with relevant aggregate effects on public policies. I liked it.
• God Emperor of Dune by Frank Herbert, the fourth novel in the Dune Saga, was as interesting as it was complex. It deserves a reread.
• Christian Realism and Political Problems by Reinhold Niebuhr was a highly topical read that helped me shape my ideas on pacifism.
• The Strategy of Denial by Elbridge A. Colby, a Republican political scientist, is extremely rigorous and helped me interpret certain decisions and statements from the American administration (the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the longed-for disengagement in Ukraine, Trump’s broadsides against the EU).
• Few readings have made me feel such a sense of despair as Night by Elie Wiesel (Nobel Peace Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor).

Complete list of readings:

Date	Title	Author	Pages	Notes
Jan 07	The Dead Zone	Stephen King	469	Great start to the new year!
Jan 16	The Running Man	Stephen King	245	Good, read in one breath
Jan 21	Dolores Claiborne	Stephen King	215	Cute, especially the ending
Jan 26	The Storytelling Animal	Jonathan Gottschall	212	Nothing earth-shattering
Feb 05	On Writing	Stephen King	284	Interesting
Feb 16	Rage	Stephen King	233	Less crazy than expected
Feb 18	The Experience Machine	Andy Clark	228	To be re-read
Mar 03	The Colorado Kid	Stephen King	179	Interesting
Mar 14	God Emperor of Dune	Frank Herbert	578	To be re-read to understand better
Mar 21	Only the Dead	Bear Braumoeller	344	Super interesting
Mar 23	Il lato oscuro dei social network	Serena Mazzini	240	Moralistic
Apr 07	The Waste Lands (Dark Tower III)	Stephen King	544	Finally getting somewhere (in the second half)
Apr 27	Mickey7	Edward Ashton	324	Movie was better
May 06	The Shining	Stephen King	560	Truly beautiful
May 17	Diversamente	Immanuel Casto	288	Fun
Jun 11	La Svizzera è un paese neutrale (e felice)	Maurizio Binaghi	289	Positively surprised
Jun 21	Doctor Sleep	Stephen King	516	Beautiful!
Aug 18	Gerald's Game	Stephen King	374	Boring until the last 20%, then phenomenal. Well written, but too much introspection
Aug 20	Russia: The Empire That Cannot Die	Anna Zafesova	161	Linear, interesting
Sep 24	Ignorance: A Global History	Peter Burke	314	Lots of dates, but great to have on the shelf
Sep 25	Rationality	Steven Pinker	395	I am a bit bored by this type of book (read too many). Interesting, but nothing new
Sep 30	The Strategy of Denial	Elbridge A. Colby	384	Rigorous
Oct 01	Mathematica	David Bessis	274	Making math accessible, using imagination and creativity
Oct 08	Bad Arguments	Robert Arp	409	Good handbook of logical fallacies
Oct 11	Christian Realism and Political Problems	Reinhold Niebuhr	191	Interesting essays of great relevance
Oct 14	L’Ucraina in 100 date	Giulia Lami	209	Precise
Oct 21	Night	Elie Wiesel	112	Heartbreaking
Oct 27	Dawn	Elie Wiesel	85	Last 10 pages are stupendous
Oct 29	The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind	Gustave Le Bon	169	Timely, interesting
Nov 02	L’impunità dei coloni	Ronen Bergman	69	Well-done reportage
Nov 13	The Myth of the Rational Voter	Bryan Caplan	209	Very interesting
Nov 21	Allegro ma non troppo	Carlo Cipolla	80	Funny pamphlet, 5 laws of human stupidity
Nov 30	Quarant’anni sulle strade della criminalità in Ticino	Giorgio Galusero	157	Nice to recognize the places!
Dec 08	Deterring Armageddon	Peter Apps	486	History of NATO
Dec 25	Nella stanza dei bottoni	Jens Stoltenberg	431	Interesting and full of behind-the-scenes
Dec 26	Moins d’Amérique dans nos vies	Bruno Giussani	50	European federalist manifesto

My personal top-5 includes, in random order:

• Caplan, The myth of the rational voter
• Niebuhr, Christian Realism and Political Problems
• King, Shining
• Braumoeller, Only the Dead
• Arp, Bad Arguments