“The Best Books I Read in 2025”

Dear Readers,

With this list, we enter a third decade of the “Best Books I Read…”, which is both difficult to comprehend and heart-warming to ponder.

This yearly feature began with the simple belief that you, the reader, still love to read good books. I wish we could take such things for granted, but I’m not sure we can.

I began reading at age four, and I’ve not stopped since. But I also know that there’s so much more to read. So many great books, so little time.

Of course, it’s not a contest. It’s better to read one or two good books, with a deep and abiding appreciation, than to storm through a stack of banal best-sellers.

But it’s also good—and encouraging—to learn what others have read. One of the powerful and abiding qualities of reading is sharing what we read, learn, and understand with others.

In that spirit, here are over forty lists of books read and appreciated during 2025. Happy reading!

Pax Christi,

Carl E. Olson
Editor, Catholic World Report

Dale Ahlquist
Mary Jo Anderson
Dawn Beutner
Bradley J. Birzer
Joanna Bogle
David Bonagura, Jr.
Casey Chalk
Susan Ciancio
Richard Clements
Shawn Phillip Cooper
David P. Deavel
Deacon David Delaney
Conor B. Dugan
John Echaniz
John M. Grondelski
Ronald L. Jelinek
Christopher Kaczor
James Kalb
Timothy D. Lusch
Daniel J. Mahoney
Joseph Martin
Filip Mazurczak
Fr. R. McTeigue, S.J.
J.C. Miller
Eleanor Nicholson
Sam Nicholson
Carl E. Olson
Jared Ortiz
Rhonda Ortiz
Joseph Pearce
S. Kirk Pierzchala
Matthew Ramage
Paul Seaton
Piers Shepherd
Edward Short
Carl R. Trueman
John Tuttle
Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.
Amy Welborn
Chilton Williamson
Tod Worner

Dale Ahlquist:

Like most people who read, I keep two or three books going at the same time. So while I was reading Father Joseph Fessio, S.J.: California Blackrobe by Cornelius Michael Buckley, S.J., the Father Fessio biography, I happened to pick up the so-called modern American classic On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I’d been putting off reading that book for several decades. I only wish I had put it off several more decades. However, it provided an interesting companion volume to California Blackrobe. First of all, both books take place partly in California. Jack and Joe have similar stories in how different they are. Both raised Catholic, both reckless, both thinkers, both travelers. But one is going nowhere while he seems to be focused on breaking all the previously mentioned Ten Commandments. The other is going everywhere, trying to do God’s will. One is devoted to losers as mentors, the other to saints. Both experience regular defeats, but the one leaves you disheartened while the other inspires you. I’m not sure why there are Catholics who admire Kerouac, but I really can’t figure out why there are Catholics who criticize Father Fessio.

Prior to that contrasting combo, I read a couple of powerful books side-by-side that were both dark, but one has hope, and the other doesn’t. One is fact that reads like fiction, the other is fiction that is thinly disguised as fact. The latter is Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler. The former is George Orwell’s Down and Out in London. 

My two favorite books of the year are both novels that are both by Catholic writers and are about as different as you could imagine. The first is Well-Behaved Children Seldom Make History by Christopher Chan, a multi-level murder mystery that includes an engrossing diversion that takes up most of the book. I’m not going to give anything away. The second is Two X Two by John C. Sondag, who could have written a textbook on how to take a lukewarm Catholic parish and an apathetic Catholic school and fill them with a bold and exciting faith. But who wants to read a textbook? Instead he has accomplished the same task with an engaging and sweet-spirited novel with familiar, relatable characters, from the devout and dedicated young priest, fresh from his studies in Rome, eagerly leaping into first assignment as an associate pastor to the lax and lukewarm older priest, for whom the new has become old, and who doesn’t want to try anything old that would actually be new, to the liberal habit-less nun who is more interested in manipulating—or wo-manipulating—the liturgy rather than serving souls. Both books are highly recommended.

I read The Endurance: Shackleton’s Legendary Antarctic Expedition by Caroline Alexander so that I won’t complain about the inconveniences of travel or about winter in Minnesota. It somehow went together with Musings on a Starry Night, a collection of luminous essays by the late Thomas Howard.

And I read Dickens’ David Copperfield for the first time, followed by GK Chesterton’s introductions to all of Dickens’ novels (for the severalth time). And I had the joy of teaching (and therefore re-reading) GKC’s The Ballad of the White Horse to the sophomores at Chesterton Academy in Minneapolis.

Dale Ahlquist is president of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton, creator and host of the EWTN series “G.K. Chesterton: The Apostle of Common Sense,” and publisher of Gilbert Magazine.

 

Mary Jo Anderson:

Classics:

I had the pleasure of reading Joseph Pearce’s critical edition of Hamlet with a grandchild in preparation for a Great Books program. The teen perspective: Prince Hamlet is a student with sudden, grave responsibilities, centered on the real-world consequences of human frailties. A younger grandchild led me through the chivalry of Howard Pyle’s delightfully illustrated The Story of King Arthur and His Knights.

The Grapes of Wrath had been my single encounter with John Steinbeck. His classic Cain and Abel story, East of Eden, I read under the assumption that lesser-known-works-of-famous-authors are often better than contemporary fiction. Next up in that category is Black Tulip, by Alexandre Dumas.

Theology/ Spirituality:

A bit of contretemps followed the release of Mater Populi Fidelis by the Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith. I had just finished Antonio Socci’s The Fourth Secret of Fatima, which explores the history and controversy surrounding the Fatima revelations. Mater Populi prompted a reread of Michael Hesemann’s masterful Mary of Nazareth, where “Mariology definitively became ecclesiology” as shown by the early Advocata Icon in the catacombs. November’s All Saints meditation, by St. Catherine of Genoa, introduced me to the concept of spiritual hunger in Purgatory. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible,  1&2 Samuel provided excellent biblical insight into Israel’s possession of Canaan and their subsequent exile from the land. It’s an aid to understanding modern Israel’s state identity and conflict with Gazans.

A sobering but excellent handbook is the University of Mary’s From Christendom to Apostolic Mission. Most Catholics still assume a “Christendom ruling vision,” though we face a deadly “progressive utopian” society that requires Catholics to become apostolic once again. That apostolic mission could overwhelm one, but for the inspiration of The Holiness of Ordinary People by French mystic Madeleine Delbrel.

Poetry, Biography, Fiction:

I was introduced to poet Jane Greer online. James Matthew Wilson described Greer’s work as “like an avenging angel.” Her collection, Love Like A Conflagration, is stirring. Lyra Martyrum, the Poetry of the English Martyrs, edited by Benedict J. Whalen, Ph.D, bears the heavy sorrow yet glory of that grievous era: “I speak of saints whose names cannot decay” from “Upon the Death of M. Edmund Campion” by St. Henry Walpole, S.J.  This poem naturally led to Evelyn Waugh’s Edmund Campion, A Life. To follow the theme of English Martyrs, next up on that stack is Clare Asquith’s Shakespeare and the Resistance, including “poems that challenged Tudor tyranny.”

First place for historical fiction goes to The Cypresses Believe in God, set in pre-Civil War Spain. The lost years of John LeCarre’s George Smiley, spy extraordinaire, are uncovered in Karla’s Choice, penned by LeCarre’s son, Nick Harkaway. His prose is elegant, restrained.

Old Friends:

Flannery O’Connor has been a companion for decades. This year, Fr. Damian Ference gave us No One Was Paying Attention to the Sky: Flannery O’Connor and Modernity. It is superb. My copy is already dog-eared. Eudora Welty is another Southern writer worthy of revisiting. Losing Battles celebrates the sweet bonds of storytelling, kinship, and memory during a two-day birthday bash for ninety-year-old Granny Vaughn. Best read in a rocking chair on the back porch.

Christmas:

CWR readers may be familiar with Taylor Caldwell’s novels, Dear and Glorious Physician (about St. Luke) and Great Lion of God (on St. Paul). Few have read her short personal account, “My Christmas Miracle.” Alone with her small daughter, jobless and without rent money on Christmas Eve, despair threatens any hope of Christmas joy. Until…!

A Holy and Merry Christmas to all!

Mary Jo Anderson is a Catholic journalist and public speaker. She is a board member of Women for Faith and Family and has served on the Legatus Board of Directors. With co-author Robin Bernhoft, she wrote Male and Female He Made Them: Questions and Answers about Marriage and Same-Sex Unions (Catholic Answers Press, 2005).

 

Dawn Beutner:

In 2025, I fell in love with the writing of Ida Friederike Görres. If you haven’t yet read any of this insightful woman’s books, start with The Hidden Face about Saint Therese of Lisieux. Then read the translation of John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed. Then join me in praying that someone will translate and publish more of her works. (I have not yet read the recently released Bread Grows in Winter, but it is on my list.)

The Miracles of the Saints by Henryk Bejda makes you feel like you have visited the shrines of dozens of saints, but without the inconvenience of leaving your own home. It includes biographies, maps, and great artworks for each saint, as well as detailed descriptions of the miracles that led to each saint’s canonization.

We all think we know a lot about Mother Teresa. But Fr. Leo Massburg’s biography, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, makes you feel like you have actually lived and worked alongside her, as he did. All his stories about Mother include a spiritual lesson. Here is my favorite. The morning after he arrived in Calcutta, Father Massburg woke up to find one of his arms covered with angry bug bites. When Mother Teresa saw them, her response was, “It’s a gift from God, Father.” Then she told him to go see a doctor. He learned over time that the expression “It’s a gift from God” was her way of describing an experience of suffering. The challenge from Mother Teresa to all of us is to try to see every suffering as a gift from God.

I don’t know why I delayed so long before deciding to read Abbé François Trochu’s biography of the great patron of priests, Saint Jean Vianney. If only every saint had a biographer as sympathetic, careful, and comprehensive as Abbé Trochu! My only quibble is that the dear Abbé sometimes assumes a greater knowledge of French phrases than I possess.

I have tried to read and understand the writings of Saint John of the Cross for many years. Unfortunately, I have generally felt like I was a college freshman trying to understand quantum mechanics. But two men gave me the courage to try again. First, I read Richard Hardy’s biography, John of the Cross: Man and Mystic, which explained several aspects of Saint John’s life that have puzzled me in the past. Second, while I was on a retreat, a diocesan priest (see a different retreat by that priest here) pointed out that one could read just a page or two of Saint John’s Collected Works each day and complete the entire book in a year. Now I have a reasonable goal.

When I entered the Catholic Church as an adult three decades ago, it was not easy to find solidly Catholic books. I realized that when I started reading a Biblical commentary on the Pauline letters and recognized that the author—a Catholic priest—seemed skeptical that St. Paul had written any of them. Thanks be to God for Fr. Buckley’s biography of Ignatius Press’ founder Father Joseph Fessio, which gave me new reasons to be grateful, both for the existence of Ignatius Press and for Fr. Fessio’s faithfulness and determination.

Dawn Beutner is the author of The Leaven of the Saints: Bringing Christ into a Fallen World and Saints: Becoming an Image of Christ Every Day of the Year, both from Ignatius Press. 

 

Bradley J. Birzer

It’s hard to believe that another year has passed, and that we’re back to the absolutely wonderful ritual of recounting our favorite reads of the past 12 months.

One book that I read that was totally out of my wheelhouse was The Church Against the State: On Subsidiarity and Sovereignty by Andrew Willard Jones. I loved it, and I gained much in reading it.

As is typical, much of my reading this past year, though, was dictated by my own writing interests. As such, I had the grand privilege of reviewing not just one but three brilliant new books on J.R.R. Tolkien: Joseph Loconte’s The War for Middle-earth; Graham McAleer’s Tolkien, Philosopher of War; and Giuseppe Pezzini’s Tolkien and the Mystery of Literary Creation. These three books—along with Michael Drout’s The Tower and the Ruin, which I’ve just received, but have not read—constitute nothing less than a second spring when it comes to Tolkien scholarship. It began a few years ago with the publication of Holly Ordway’s magisterial Tolkien’s Faith, and it remains, to this day, unabated and with no end in sight. From my own perspective, these excellent books on Tolkien only confirm that Tolkien was our era’s greatest mythmaker, the 20th-century equivalent of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Milton. Five hundred years from now, scholars will study Tolkien’s entire legendarium in the way we read The Divine Comedy to understand the late Middle Ages.

Though I greatly and gloriously devoured each of the books just mentioned, I must single out Pezzini’s book as even extraordinary. Stunningly, Pezzini brings together two rival schools of Tolkien thought—those that present a more secular and intellectual view of Tolkien and those that focus on the fundamental truth of Tolkien’s profound Catholicism—so fiercely that Tolkien scholarship will never be the same. Pezzini’s book now stands as one of the great milestones in Tolkien studies.

Partly for scholarship and partly for the pure joy of it, I re-read several of Ray Bradbury’s works including the newly re-released Dark Carnival, Bradbury’s first and very disturbing collection of short stories first published in 1947, Dandelion Wine and its sequel, Farewell Summer, The Martian Chronicles (my great friend, Gary Gregg, and I led a weekend seminar on this at the University of Louisville), Fahrenheit 451, one of the finest dystopian novels ever written, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and the virtually unknown or forgotten From the Dust Returned, an extremely clever novel about a supernatural family living somewhere north of Chicago. Bradbury was truly the prophet of the Space Age, one of America’s best prose writers, equally influenced by Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Willa Cather, and an artist who called to our best selves and who made us all better than we really are.

Writing of the Space Age, I also read the delightful Futuristic by the always intrepid Mark Voger. Beautifully laid out and beautifully written, Futuristic looks at the pop culture of the Space Age, 1950s-1960s. It imagines an America that might have been had the optimism of the moon shot permanently gelled in American culture and in the American psyche. If only.

For leisure reading, I completed the Dune series: God Emperor of Dune; Heretics of Dune: Chapterhouse Dune; Hunters of Dune; and Sandworms of Dune. Though the first three were written by Frank Herbert, the final two were written by Brian Herbert and my great friend, Kevin J. Anderson. Admittedly, the Dune books just get weirder and weirder as they go on, Brian Herbert and Anderson wrote a very satisfying conclusion to the whole mythology.

Next up, I’m joyfully tackling Drout’s new book on Tolkien, Joel Miller’s The Idea Machine: How Books Built Our World and Shape Our Future, and Dylan Pahman’s The Kingdom of God and the Common Good: Orthodox Christian Social Thought.

Bradley J. Birzer is the author of the forthcoming The Declaration of Independence: 1776 and All That (May 2026) and Tolkien and the Inklings: Men of the West (November 2026).

 

Joanna Bogle

It has, of course, been a Newman year.

Edward Short’s Newman and His Family (Gracewing 2025) is an absolutely fascinating and well-researched exploration of St JH Newman’s bonds with his father, mother, and siblings. It has a poignant chapter on Mary, the sister he adored who died young after a short illness, and there is a different sort of anguish in the details of the breakdown in understanding with his sisters Jemima and Harriet when he became a Catholic. With his brothers—one an ardent Socialist and the other a deeply anti-Catholic evangelical—there were even wider breaches. Newman never lost his love for his—had been a happy childhood in an affectionate and united home—but in his final years, it was the Church and the Oratory where he found peace.

The story of the struggles to establish the Catholic University in Ireland is well documented in Paul Shrimpton’s gathering of Newman’s letters on the subject. It is all laid out in this beautifully produced book (Gracewing 2022), with an Introduction and notes by Shrimpton. The title has a ponderous 19th-century feel, My Campaign in Ireland, part II: My Connection with the Catholic University—but through the pages there emerges the complications of travel (ferry and stage-coach) and the intransigence of an Irish episcopsy at variance with emerging needs of a changing era.

Looking to a much earlier era, The Age of Arthur: A History of the British Isles from 350 to 650 (Weidenfeld 1989) by John Morris is fascinating. I was brought up on tales of our legendary king and his Knights of the Round Table—it is good to discover there is something there beneath the mists of history. And at a very concrete historical level, William Hague’s William Wilberforce: The life of the great anti-slave trade campaigner (Harper, 2008) is a magnificent read, superbly written and researched. Wilberforce emerges as not only dedicated, devout, and enormously energetic, but as a cheery host and a good family man. His achievement is one of the noble chapters in Britain’s story, and Hague has done it full justice. Warmly recommended.

Joanna Bogle is a journalist in the United Kingdom. Her book Newman’s London is published by Gracewing Books.

David G. Bonagura, Jr.

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit, The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

I will begin this year’s list with a confession: proving that education is sometimes wasted on the young, I read The Hobbit and The Fellowship of the Ring as a kid, but never got into them; all I remembered was “second breakfast” (a most valuable retention). This summer, I decided to revisit Tolkien after decades of absence and read the novels in the order written above. I fell in love with the stories and the characters, and since then “LOTR Fever” has consumed my whole family. It’s the best contagion we have ever caught!

Religion and the Modern State, Beyond Politics, The Judgment of the Nations, by Christopher Dawson

The historian Dawson’s only three political books, written between 1935 and 1942 to confront the rising totalitarian menace, penetrate beyond the surface issues to consider the cultural crisis that opened the door to totalitarianism in its hard forms (Germany, Italy) and soft forms (western democracies that seek increasing control over private citizens). The first two books, along with sage analysis, offer practical suggestions for how the Christian churches can survive and how to maintain the principles of liberty. The third, deemed his best book by many critics, is a brilliant analysis of the flaws of modernity and how to combat them.

Blue Walls Falling Down, by Joshua Hren

Few contemporary novelists are able to capture the excesses of our contemporary moment as well as Joshua Hren, editor-in-chief of Wiseblood Books. This novel, set in 2021, connects a Woke revolutionary with a rural Wisconsinite New Right militant through a forty-year-old single woman fighting her biological clock. The results are simultaneously tragic, sad, and amusing.

Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke

I read Burke’s Reflections for a political philosophy course as an undergraduate. It was most profitable to revisit it, this time under the guidance of the Russell Kirk Center’s new School for Conservative Studies. Among its many highlights: Burke’s articulation of liberty as inheritance, as self-regulating virtue, as part of the divinely constituted order; his defense of prescription; and endorsement of reform over revolution. He coined the phrase “moral imagination” and wrote with such a style. To wit: “I love a manly, moral, regulated liberty” and, for approaches to reform that do not meet his standards, “Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.”

Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious, by Ross Douthat

Whether Douthat’s apologetic for religion, and, in the end, Catholic Christianity, persuades its intended audience—the nonreligious and antireligious readers of the NY Times—I cannot know, but his approach, gained from years of answering emails from Times readers, is noteworthy. He offers the skeptic a mixture of scientific and rational evidence along with direct challenges to materialistic notions of reality. He also leverages the angst and flightiness of our contemporary moment to present the case for commitment as a way to find true fulfillment. His ability to engage the opposing perspective in a friendly way and his willingness to note the difficulties of his own position should at least open the doubters to taking his argument seriously.

David G. Bonagura, Jr. is an adjunct professor at St. Joseph’s Seminary and Catholic International University. He is the author, most recently, of 100 Tough Questions for Catholics. He is the translator of Jerome’s Tears: Letters to Friends in Mourning.

 

Casey Chalk:

The best (new) books I read this year I’ve reviewed elsewhere, so I hope CWR will permit me to highlight some other strong recent Catholic titles that deserve a wider audience.

The Protestant Fallacies: Ten Ways Anti-Catholics Break the Laws of Logic by Parker Manning presents a variety of fallacies that prominent Protestant apologists commit, such as special pleading, hasty generalizations, red herrings, tu quoques, and false dilemmas. It’s a good introduction both for understanding logical fallacies and how they relate to recent Protestant-Catholic debates. I couldn’t help but laugh as I noticed Reformed Baptist James R. White—a sparring partner of Catholic apologists since the 1990s—is featured as committing most of the fallacies in the book. Granted, White is probably the most willing Protestant in America to publicly debate Catholics, but many Protestants I know would say his arguments (and style) do not represent them. Manning’s book could benefit from engaging with some other scholars who engage at a more sophisticated level than the tiresome Dr. White, such as Carl Trueman, Peter Leithart, Matthew Barrett, Jerry L. Walls, and Kenneth J. Collins.

I’d also recommend Karlo Broussard’s Meeting the Protestant Response: How to Answer Common Comebacks to Catholic Arguments. Though not necessarily the kind of book one reads cover-to-cover—it systematically works through Catholic and Protestant debates over twenty-four hotly contested verses from the New Testament on issues such as the papacy, the sacraments, and salvation—it is an excellent resource for apologetic consultation. And, as Broussard rightly notes, proof-texting arguments are not just about winning a fight, but digging “deeper into the riches embedded in the sacred page.”

Bishop Athanasius Schneider, this year, published a beautiful little text, No Greater Love: The True Meaning of Martyrdom, which offers a much more expansive definition of martyrdom than most would likely realize. There is not only the “red martyrdom” of those killed for the faith, but the “white martyrdom” of heroically living for God, and the “green martyrdom” of self-abnegation and asceticism. Often, an over-reliance on the quotes of others can crowd out the original thought of the author, but in this case, Bishop Schneider’s extensive use of quotations makes this a worthy devotional text. I also enjoyed the section on martyrs to whom Bishop Schneider has a personal connection.

Towards Dawn: Essays in Hopefulness, a collection of essays by Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, covers a lot of ground, including evangelization, synodality, liturgy, the sexual abuse crisis, and DEI. In his ability to draw deep theological reflections from a wide variety of sources—from the Epic of Gilgamesh to Sigrid Undest—Varden reminds me of the literary style of Joseph Ratzinger. His essay describing the monastery as evincing a true, commendable form of diversity, equity, and inclusion was especially surprising.

Casey J. Chalk is a freelance writer. He holds a B.A. in History and an M.A. in Teaching from the University of Virginia, and a master’s in theology from the Notre Dame Graduate School of Theology at Christendom College. His writing discusses Catholicism in the public square, conservative politics, and cultural analysis. Casey, his wife, and four kids live in his native Northern Virginia.

Susan Ciancio:

For the past 15 years, I have hosted a monthly book club with friends. It’s a great time to discuss a book and drink wine. Or maybe I should say to drink wine and talk about a book. I had two favorites this year:

The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni is a fiction book about a young boy born with red pupils, otherwise known as ocular albinism. It’s described as a “coming of age” story, and it follows Sam to adulthood as he navigates life, relationships, and his Catholic faith.

Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan is the true story of a woman who “temporarily” leaves her high-paying job on Capitol Hill to help in her father’s small-town doctor’s office. She soon finds that helping the poor people of her hometown is much more rewarding than she had imagined.

In my job as both a magazine editor and a freelance editor, I have the privilege of reading and then writing about books and also editing them. Here are a few great ones that passed my desk this year:

Adventures with the Saints #4: Saint Joan of Arc: The Soldier Saint

If you have kids ages 6-10, you don’t want to miss the Adventures with the Saints series by Maria Riley. These delightful chapter books follow the Martin family, whose three children journey to meet a Catholic saint as they learn an important lesson. I can’t say enough good things about these books. So far, the kids have met St. Joseph, St. Therese of Lisieux, and St. John Bosco. Maria’s most recent book takes the kids to the time of St. Joan of Arc. A fifth one will be released soon!

Biblical Heroes: Stories of Faith and Courage by Mark Hart (CIO of Life Teen) is a fantastic book for middle schoolers, filled with stories of biblical heroes. Mark’s friendly, funny, and knowledgeable tone will make this, or any of his other books, a favorite in your home.

The Way of the Rosary by Shannon Wendt walks readers through the mysteries of the rosary and helps us understand and deepen the relationship we have with both Jesus and Mary as we accompany them through the joys and sorrows they experienced. Not only do we grow in understanding of the connections between the Old and New Testaments and the rosary, but we also look at how they are incorporated into the Mass and into our lives.

The Most Powerful Saints in Exorcisms by Charles D. Fraune and Patrick O’Hearn takes readers into the disturbing world of exorcisms and evil. Yet, despite its terrifying theme, the book speaks of hope, of Fatherly love, and of the fierce protection of the saints. It beautifully illustrates that our friends in heaven are always willing to intercede for us.

These last two are books I read because they are about two of my favorite saints:

Love Is a Radiant Light: The Life & Words of Saint Charbel by Hanna Skandar is a collection of the saint’s writings along with a short bio. For many years now, St. Charbel has been one of my “go-to” saints, but I didn’t want to always just ask him for help. I wanted to hear his wisdom and learn more about him. This beautiful book is a must-have for those who want to grow in their relationship with Christ.

My Son, Carlo: Carlo Acutis through the Eyes of His Mother by Antonia Acutis is an insightful and heartwarming book about this incredible young man. It will open your eyes to his childhood, to his faith journey, and to the easy way (for him!) he led others to the faith.

Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame, editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine, and executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program—a pre-K-12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

Richard Clements:

Back in 1917, Max Weber gave a speech in which he famously claimed that modern science had brought about the “disenchantment” of the world, stripping the world of its magic and mystery. Since then, much has been written about this theme of disenchantment. In Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, Rod Dreher brings a fresh perspective to this issue. He argues that the world has not, in fact, become disenchanted; rather, the problem is that “we modern people have simply lost the ability to perceive the world with the eyes of wonder.”

Dreher places great emphasis on the need to recover the experiential, even “mystical,” aspect of the Christian faith, noting that many people today seek an experience of God; they want to know God, not just know about God. In this regard, Dreher quotes Karl Rahner: “The devout Christian of the future will either be a ‘mystic,’ one who has experienced ‘something,’ or he will cease to be anything at all.”

Although Dreher doesn’t cite Hans Urs von Balthasar, he, too, would have supported Dreher’s emphasis on the experiential aspect of the Christian faith, having written that “The beautiful…will only return to us if the power of the Christian heart intervenes so strongly between the other world salvation of theology and the present world lost in positivism as to experience the cosmos as the revelation of an infinity of grace and love—not merely to believe but to experience it.”

Dreher argues that it is a mistake for churches to de-emphasize the numinous and the mystical in an attempt to make the Christian faith more accessible today, calling instead for a return to “strong” religion: “Only the return of strong religion—one that makes demands, offers compelling explanations to the problems of death and suffering, and gives worshipers a visceral sense of connecting to the living God—has any hope of competing in the post-Christian marketplace.”

Like Dreher, Paul Kingsnorth has shown himself to be a perspicacious observer of, and commentator upon, contemporary cultural trends. In Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity, Kingsnorth laments the ongoing supplanting of what he refers to as the pre-modern cultural values of “past, people, place, and prayer” by the “anticultural values of the Machine”: science, self, sex, and screen. Kingsnorth views modernity as a “machine for destroying limits,” including the limits that are inherent in our status as finite, embodied creatures.

Although Kingsnorth is sometimes too extreme in his criticisms of capitalism and his rejection of many of the benefits of modern technology, he nonetheless has numerous insights to offer with regard to the changes that are taking place in Western culture. And he is correct in pointing to “a return to the spiritual center,” “a rediscovery, or a reclamation, of the transcendent realm and its place in our lives” as the ultimate solution to our current cultural problems.

Kingsnorth rightly views many contemporary cultural trends (such as “transhumanism”) as the latest manifestation of a temptation as old as humanity itself: the temptation to reject our creatureliness and strive to make ourselves into gods via our own efforts. He summarizes our current cultural situation as a “spiritual war”: “It is the Machine versus human-scale culture, the technium versus creation, our desire to be gods versus our desire to be with God.”

I would also recommend The Truth and Beauty by Andrew Klavan. The book’s lengthy subtitle, How the Lives and Works of England’s Greatest Poets Point the Way to a Deeper Understanding of the Words of Jesus, provides a good summary of the book’s contents.

Richard Clements is a writer and public speaker. He has written two books (The Meaning of the World Is Love: Selected Texts from Hans Urs von Balthasar with Commentary and The Book of Love: Brief Meditations), and he has written articles for Catholic World Report, Crisis, and Word on Fire’s Evangelization & Culture Online. You can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at “Beauty-Goodness-Truth” or find more of his work at RichardClements.org.

 

Shawn Phillip Cooper:

This list is provided unranked and has been sorted alphabetically by author surname.

Allen C. Guelzo & James Hankins, The Golden Thread: A History of the Western Tradition, vol. I – The Ancient World and Christendom (Encounter Books, 2025). With its introductory tour de force of arguments defending the importance of learning the history of Western civilisation, and with its capaciously illustrated and eminently readable body text that provides clear-eyed and ample coverage of the creation, transmission, and development of Western culture, the first volume of The Golden Thread has justly won plaudits from conservative commentators, critics, and academics. As a textbook (and a physically large one, at that), the style may be unusual for the everyday reader of general histories, but every minute spent with this stupendous tome is time well-invested. Look for the much-anticipated second volume of the two-volume set to arrive at booksellers later this month.

Tom Holland, trans. The Lives of the Caesars, by Suetonius (Penguin, 2025). A thrillingly vibrant, supremely clever, and fastidiously accurate translation that, like Suetonius himself, spares no blushes in its portrayal of the Caesars who ruled over the beginnings of the Roman Empire. The passage of two thousand years has not diminished the fascination of modern readers one iota, and with Holland’s translation it is easy to see why, for the Caesars seem to embody at once sagacious wisdom and heedless folly, careful prudence and extreme impetuousness. In Suetonius, we find the most readable accounts of the ambition of Julius, the command of Augustus, the wickedness of Caligula, and the depravity of Tiberius. Holland’s edition manages to capture the wit of Suetonius’s at times earthy language without inventing details or embellishing what is present in the Latin. He thus avoids the errors of prudishness or inaccuracy into which other popular translators have strayed. This fine edition should become the standard version in English.

Bijan Omrani, God Is an Englishman: Christianity and the Creation of England (Swift Press, 2025). What Tom Holland did for Western civilisation in his landmark work Dominion, Omrani now does for England in this beautifully-written new volume. Arguing the centrality of Christianity to the development of English culture and institutions, Omrani calls attention to the crisis that faces England (and, indeed, Great Britain) to-day: that the hollowing out of its Christian spiritual centre not only leaves the nation fragile and wayward, but also that it deprives the nation of one of the most potent forces that has driven its progress and accomplishments over the last millennium. In this latter regard, the second part of the book focuses on what role Christianity should still have in the life of the English people, and what it can do for the nation. Hopeful but not impractical or optimistic, Omrani’s book should be read by every Christian in England—and across the pond in the former colonies, as well, where similar arguments might well be made about the role of Christianity in the New World.

Shawn Phillip Cooper, Ph.D., is Vice President of the North American Branch of the International Courtly Literature Society and an Assistant Editor at The European Conservative.

 

David P. Deavel

My kid: “You are always reading autobiographies and biographies.” Guilty! They’re fascinating because, as C. S. Lewis said, people are immortal while nations, empires, and civilizations are mortal.

Autobiography/biography. Will This Do? was Auberon Waugh’s funny, sad, masterpiece memoir. Unlike Waugh, who left the Church in adulthood, journalist Robert D. Novak arrived. The Prince of Darkness covers fifty years of politics and his conversion. Peter Kreeft’s From Calvinist to Catholic is his off-handed, witty, and wise account of a Dutch Calvinist coming home through philosophy, literature, and art. Malcolm Muggeridge’s Something Beautiful for God is not a biography proper, but was one of the first books to introduce us to (now) Saint Teresa of Calcutta. So, too, I. F. Görres’s John Henry Newman: A Life Sacrificed has plenty of biography in it, but goes to the heart of the saint’s thought and spirituality. James Matthew Wilson’s The Wayward Thomism of John Martin Finlay gives brief biography and literary criticism of a poet personally fraught but intellectually and artistically fruitful. Thanks to the Yanks: WWI Letters from an Indiana Farmboy to his Sweetheart is a collection edited by Lori Samuelson of letters from my Great Uncle George to his fiancée, Aunt Elsie. Fascinating even if you’re not kin.

Theology/spirituality. Jennifer Bryson translated Görres’s book, as well as Görres’s volume The Church in the Flesh. The latter are letters showing why and how to embrace the Mystical Body fully. Similarly, Andrew Petiprin’s The Faith Unboxed shows insiders and outsiders how to think about the Church outside the usual boxes She is placed in. Joseph Ratzinger’s Called to Communion was a reread: short and biblically deep, it defends priesthood, the papacy, and the Church’s nature. John W. O’Malley’s What Happened at Vatican II provides lively history and (sometimes debatable) analysis of a Council now sixty years in the mirror. Shemaiah Gonzalez’s Undaunted Joy is a book of essays rooted in her own discovery of the deepest form of joy. And Paul Schroeder’s translations of texts of Basil the Great, On Social Justice, provide a window into the fourth century and the Tradition.

Politics/philosophy/culture. We Have Ceased to See the Purpose is a new collection of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s essential speeches edited by his son Ignat—a great introduction for beginners. Daniel J. Mahoney’s The Persistence of the Ideological Lie examines the contemporary world’s continued struggle with old heresies in new forms such as Wokism. The Roots of the World is a dense, provocative philosophical tome by Duncan Reyburn explaining why Chesterton was so prescient. David S. Guthrie’s Dreaming Dreams for Christian Higher Education is from a Reformed perspective, but Catholics will benefit from his perspective of 30 years in the field.

Literature. Chesterton and Belloc thought George and Weedon Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody a work of genius. You will, too. Allen Mendenhall’s A Gloaming Peace This Morning is a blend of Southern comedy and tragedy that entertains and terrifies. Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas entertains, instructs, and reminds. Alice Thomas Ellis’s four volumes of collected Spectator “Home Life” columns—Home Life, More Home Life, Home Life Three, and Home Life Four—display the novelist’s genius in casual form.

Children’s lit. Meindert De Jong’s The Wheel on the School is a delightful story of Dutch villagers and storks. I reread childhood favorites Soup, Soup and Me, and Soup for President. Robert Newton Peck’s stories remain favorites. Kate Seredy’s The Chestry Oak is a World War II story, both magical and realistic. Her Philomena and A Tree for Peter are perfect to read with younger kids. Esther Forbes’s 1943 Johnny Tremain is a poignant read for America’s upcoming 250th.

David P. Deavel is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative.

Deacon David Delaney

This year’s list is the fruit of my attempts to reduce the mountain of books in my “to read” stacks. Some have been there for decades, some of more recent vintage. Here is a summary of the imperceptible dent I was able to make this year.

The Drama of Atheist Humanism, Henri de Lubac

Nearing a century since de Lubac’s original French edition of this work appeared, it is still relevant for today. In this tome, he shows how the four great architects of modern atheistic humanism—Feuerbach, Comte, Marx, and Nietzsche—each offer a counter-revelation of the human person attempting to rival the unveiling of the Bridegroom-Lamb in the true Apocalypse. Read through the sacramental-nuptial lens of Revelation, their systems form a kind of “Anti-Apocalypse”: not a prophetic reversal but a counterfeit apokalypsis, an unveiling of false humanisms that offer a corrupted vision of man and obscure his supernatural destiny.

Feuerbach’s reduction of God to projected ideals turns man in on himself, closed off from God and from one another. Comte’s positivist civil cult makes humanity into an idol to whom man now must ironically submit. Marx’s immanentized liberation, rooted in suspicion, frees man only from authentic relationships with God and with one another, offering instead a totalitarian collectivism. And Nietzsche, the most honest and destructive of the four, proclaims a nihilistic death of God, offering in God’s place, the new god of the “will to power” and an unceasing obligation to dominate the other simply because he has a will that is not my own.

Together, they seem to form the Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse—symbols of distorted “revelations” that oppose the Lamb’s self-gift. Instead of illuminating man, they darken his horizon; instead of elevating him, they diminish his dignity; instead of communion, they generate self-enclosure, collectivism, and nihilistic isolation. De Lubac unmasks how each of these visions collapses under the weight of its own logic, demonstrating that humanism without God destroys man.

The Cardinal Müller Report, w/ Fr. Carlos Granados

In this 2017 book-length interview, Cardinal Müller presents a unified vision of man, in which the truth of the human person is illuminated by the revelation of the Triune God. This truth of man is made manifest in Christ and sacramentally encountered in the Church’s worship. He highlights the family as the primary place where this truth is lived, the locus where human relationships are formed according to the Creator’s design. He stresses that genuine pastoral care must always be faithful to doctrine, since only the truth can free and heal. His reflections on ecclesial authority portray it as a service ordered to communion rather than domination, and his treatment of evangelization grounds the Church’s mission in the worship of God, the integrity of doctrine, and the beauty of a life lived in holiness. Across all these themes, he diagnoses modernity’s crises, echoing St. John Paul II, as distortions of the truth of the person and calls for a renewed confidence in the Church’s witness to God’s plan for humanity.

Atonement, Margaret M. Turek

Each year about this time my bishop, Steven J. Lopes, gifts his clergy a book he thinks would profit our ministry. Last year’s book by Margaret Turek was a profound work in which she presents and portrays the mystery of the Atonement as the Father’s work of restoring the communion for which humanity was created, accomplished through the Son’s filial self-offering and made effective in the Spirit. She presents sin as a rupture of relationship, above all, the loss of filial communion with the Father, and Christ’s sacrifice as the relational act that heals this wound from within our humanity. By uniting us to His perfect return of love, Christ draws us back into the life of the Trinity and thereby renews our relationships with one another within the Church. The Eucharist becomes the living extension of this mystery, inserting believers into the Son’s self-gift and forming them into a communion of persons shaped by His Paschal love. In this way, Turek understands the Atonement as the restoration of relationships at every level—divine, ecclesial, and human—so that those who are reconciled may share in the communion that is their true destiny.

Faith of Our Fathers, Joseph Pearce

Joseph Pearce presents English Christianity as a deeply rooted Catholic heritage whose spirit endured through persecution and cultural upheaval, preserved in the sanctity of its martyrs, the resilience of its recusants, and the enduring witness of its great writers. He highlights how pre-Reformation England saw itself as Our Lady’s Dowry, a nation entrusted to the Mother of God in a unique way, and how this Marian identity shaped its devotional life, its culture, and its sense of Christian mission. Pearce shows that the renewal of faith in the English-speaking world must draw from this ancient patrimony—its monastic spirituality, sacramental imagination, and Marian fidelity—because these constitute England’s true spiritual DNA. This heritage, once obscured, now stands as a providential gift for the Church: a source of beauty, reverence, and cultural coherence capable of deepening evangelization today. In this light, the Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter in which I am incardinated, is dedicated to recovering and living this patrimony which Pearce so eloquently describes. This is especially found in the liturgy and devotional life of the English-Benedictine patrimony, by which we participate in offering Our Lady’s Dowry back to the Church for the strengthening of faith in our time.

Deacon Delaney is the founder of the Mother of the Americas Institute, where he serves as the Director and a Senior Fellow.

 

Conor Dugan:

I returned this year to Edwin O’Connor’s The Edge of Sadness, which did not disappoint. O’Connor’s whiskey priest is a recovered one, Fr. Hugh Kennedy, whose interactions with the larger-than-life Carmody family provide a window into the human soul. I reread The Edge of Sadness after my father died in June. The relationship between Fr. Kennedy and his father is a beautiful one that reminded me of my dad’s goodness and the unfairness of this vale of tears.

I also reread another fictional account of a priest, Georges Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest. Or, I should say, in reality, I read it for the first time. It turns out that the original translation we’ve had for nearly a century excised whole sections of Bernanos’ masterpiece. What it did translate was uneven. Ignatius Press has done us all a service by issuing a new, full translation. The book is haunting.

As long as we are on priests, let me mention one about a formidable Episcopalian priest and school founder, The Rector of Justin by Louis Auchincloss. Auchincloss’ novel tells the story of a fictional boarding school’s aging founder, Francis Prescott, and the world he inhabits through a series of six different narrators. It is a window into a dying, Waspy-world.

A good biography can keep company like a good novel, and I finally tackled Peter Brown’s magisterial Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. Brown’s narrative is powerful, and his obvious affection for Augustine lends him credibility in those rare times he offers criticism. Make sure you read the edition with Brown’s epilogue, written in 1999. In the epilogue, Brown reconsiders some of his youthful conclusions. Watching Brown work through places where he may have been hasty or wrong is an impressive example of intellectual humility.

l was also able to finish Peter Seewald’s biography of one of the 20th century’s great Augustinians, Pope Benedict. Seewald’s two-volume Benedict XVI: The Biography is well-researched and offers an expansive overview of the great theologian and pope.

Father Uwe Michael Lang’s Signs of the Holy One: Liturgy, Ritual, and Expression of the Sacred and The Voice of the Church at Prayer: Reflections on Liturgy and Language nourished me greatly. Fr. Lang is a great scholar and incredibly balanced. In a world that seems drawn to extremes, Fr. Lang’s careful and sober scholarship is a great gift. On the same theme, I read Bishop Mariano Magrassi OSB’s Praying the Bible: An Introduction to Lectio Divina, which really opened the scriptures to me in a new way.

Dana Gioia again enchanted me with his 99 Poems: New & Selected. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Gioia is a national treasure who is equal parts playful and deep.

Finally, let me mention two of my best nonfiction reads of all time. First, Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, is a must-read for anyone facing aging and/or terminally ill family or friends. Gawande, a surgeon, shines a light on medicine’s keep-people-alive-at-all costs approach to the end of life and asks whether it can approach these things in a better way. Second, I could not put down Adam Higginbotham’s Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. Higginbotham, who wrote a well-researched book on the Chernobyl disaster, exceeds himself with this comprehensive overview of the Challenger disaster. The narrative is compelling; the research is deep. For anyone whose childhood was marked by Challenger—and by anyone else—this is a must-read.

Conor B. Dugan is a husband, father of four, and attorney who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

John Echaniz:

I am a sucker for books about baseball, so when my friend Kevin O’Malley directed my attention to Perfect Eloquence: An Appreciation of Vin Scully, I ordered as quickly as my home internet could carry the bits and bytes out the door. Vin Scully is the gold standard of sports broadcasters—like so many other baseball fans, I wanted to be him. This collection of essays captured not just Vin’s singular genius for storytelling, but his gift for touching the hearts of all he encountered.

Speaking of touching hearts, three more volumes hit home for me this year:

While working on a writing project, I was grateful to happen across A Man for Others: Maximilian Kolbe. Patricia Treece presents a rich portrait of this great saint through the words of contemporary eyewitnesses. Love is in the details, and there are so many to discover in this wonderful book. I even love the cover; Kolbe is normally (and understandably) depicted with somber expression, but the first edition of this book is emblazoned with a rare photo of him smiling from ear to ear, bursting with joy.

God’s Wounds by John Clark delves deeply into the miracle that is the stigmata, starting with a study of the wounds of Jesus, then their various manifestations in the stigmatists throughout history. This book drew me closer to those who bore these wounds, and through them to the wounds of Jesus on the cross, through which we all find salvation.

Of all the marvelous books by Fr. Jacques Philippe, I’m not sure how The Eight Doors of the Kingdom: Meditations on the Beatitudes escaped my attention until this year, but I count the time spent reading this beautiful book among the many blessings of 2025. True to form, Fr. Philippe’s economy of words is unparalleled as he plumbs the depths of each of the beatitudes. You don’t just read this book—you marinate in it. Each one should ship with a ladle.

John Echaniz is a freelance writer, speaker, IT executive, basketball coach, and music festival emcee based in Front Royal VA. He and his wife, Sharon, have seven children and two grandchildren.

 

John M. Grondelski

Sophia Institute Press published a lot of great books this year. Three especially stood out for me. Edward Habsburg’s Building a Wholesome Family in a Broken World should be standard fare in marriage preparation as well as put into the hands of young people before they get engaged. It is an orthodox presentation by a Catholic husband and father (and part of Austria’s fabled Habsburg family) about what Catholic marriage and parenthood mean. Fr. T.G. Morrow’s Achieving Chastity in an Unchaste World, is a solid and sober discussion about a forgotten virtue: chastity. Like Habsburg, it should especially be given to young people. Stacy Trasancos, author of IVF Is Not the Way: The False Promises of Artificial Procreation, addresses an issue that is gaining traction with the public, even among Catholics: in vitro fertilization (IVF). IVF even manages to masquerade as being “pro-life” but trades in that illusion because, beyond “it helps couples have babies” most people have no clue what “test tube baby” making involves. Trasancos can be sometimes dense (she is an academic), but hers is a readable defense of why IVF is “not the way”—certainly not the Catholic way. It merits readership.

Such books are serendipitous because there’s a growing non-Catholic movement recognizing that Catholic sexual ethics are not some esoteric and weird dogmas but make human sense. That should not surprise us, given that Catholic sexual ethics primarily rest on natural law, i.e., on principles applicable to every man, and not just on some revealed truths. “Restorative reproductive medicine” is a very new trend in the larger medical community (though it’s been active in Catholic circles for some time) that recognizes IVF “heals” nothing: it’s a workaround. Restorative reproductive medicine seeks, rather, to restore normal body function. Well, normal body function includes fertility, which calls into question the popular idea that fertility is neutral at best, sometimes bad or even “pathological.” Dr. Sarah Hill’s This Is Your Brain on Birth Control points out the medical and scientific problems of artificial hormonal birth control. It is a groundbreaking vision adjustment for generations of women propagandized to think their fertility was something “bad” to be “handled.” Although the author does not say it, it shows scientific compatibility with what Pope Paul VI wrote in Humanae vitae.

Speaking of Humanae vitae, Grzegorz Ignatik’s Communicating Life: Karol Wojtyła and Humanae Vitae assembles in one place important texts and a discussion of how and why Pope St. John Paul II supported that important papal teaching in the pre-pontifical phase of his life.

Anticipating Lent, Fr. Edward Looney’s Praying with the Church through Lent offers a seasonal guide to reflection and spiritual growth built around the Collects (Opening Prayers) of the Masses for each day of Lent. It’s a good guide for meditation in that holy season.

Finally, as a point of ethnic pride: Ewa Barczyk’s Footprints of Polonia is a state-by-state (plus Canada and some other countries) guide to the “material culture” Polish-Americans have given America. The well-illustrated book, designed as a niche travel guide, documents the churches, monuments, and sites important to the history of the ten million-strong Polish-American community. Episcopal propensities to “renew” the Church by closing churches, ethnic parishes have been hit particularly hard, so this book is also a useful compendium of what that Catholic community contributed to the United States. At their apex, there were about 1,000 Polish parishes in America.

John M. Grondelski (Ph.D., Fordham) is the former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University, South Orange, New Jersey.

Ronald L. Jelinek:

The peaceful arrival of the last new year provided some time to read and consider Andrew Abela’s new book, Superhabits. As Dean of the Busch School of Business at Catholic University, Dr. Abela has spent considerable time thinking about the development of virtue. His latest book offers great insight and practical tips for anyone, young, old, or in between, looking to renew purpose and live joyfully.

Concerned by what appears to be our culture’s troubling re-fascination with socialism, my wife and I enjoyed revisiting George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Mayors and congresswomen from cities near you may promise free rent and equity, but nothing more succinctly captures the revolution’s inevitable conclusion than Orwell’s sober reminder: “all animals are equal—but some are more equal than others.” For a dose of levity, I followed up Orwell with P. G. Wodehouse’s The Code of the Woosters. Bertie Wooster and his butler Jeeves never fail to make me laugh. This time, the pair takes to the English countryside to chase down an 18th-century cow creamer and succeed in serving up plenty of fun.

In response to two separate recommendations, I finally got around this past year to reading Captains and the Kings. Taylor Caldwell’s epic novel traces Joseph Armagh’s life from penniless orphan to powerful tycoon, taking us from pre-Civil War America to the 1920s. Engaging and oddly haunting, the book is soap opera-esque at points but pulls you in for all of its almost 800 pages.

My Catholic men’s book club provided some page-turning of its own. The Man Who Was Thursday was our first of the year. One part adventure story, another part allegory, G.K. Chesterton’s classic is mind-twisting and thought-provoking up to its very last passage. We then moved on to Muriel Spark’s The Girls of Slender Means. Set in post-war London, “The Girls” prompts readers to wrestle with suffering, the randomness of fate, and our tragic obsession with the sometimes trivial over the eternal.

We then read two books which are widely considered to be their author’s masterpieces: Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory and Myles Connolly’s Mr. Blue. While totally different, each was compelling. Greene’s centers around one highly imperfect priest’s effort to prevent the state from snuffing out the last vestiges of Catholic practice in 1930s Mexico. Connolly’s Mr. Blue follows J. Blue’s life from rags to riches back to rags again and motivates the reader to think about what it means to live differently as a Catholic. For me, the best club pick this year was Michael O’Brien’s The Sabbatical. When an Oxford professor travels across Europe to attend a small academic conference, he encounters a series of seemingly odd coincidences. Or are they? Amidst real confrontations of good and evil, the reader is prompted to ask deeper questions about spiritual warfare, fatalism, and divine providence.

The club is currently wrapping up the year with an outstanding selection for Advent, Scott Hahn’s Joy to the World. A renowned biblical scholar and prolific author, Hahn’s “Joy” takes the well-known story of Christ’s birth and offers new insights about everything from the birthplace itself to Mary and Joseph, and provides some fascinating perspective on angels, shepherds, and Magi. Joy to the World is a joy to read and a great gift this season.

Happy Advent. Merry Christmas.

Ronald L. Jelinek, Ph.D., is a Professor of Marketing at Providence College. The opinions expressed here are his own.

Christopher Kaczor:

After his death in May, I published “Remembering Alasdair MacIntyre (1929-2025)” about the author of After Virtue, the scariest teacher I ever had, and the man who broke up the Beatles. I also revisited a number of his books including After Virtue, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, A Short History of Ethics, Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry, and Dependent Rational Animals. MacIntyre was even more insightful and provocative than I had remembered.

In Follow Me: Walking with Jesus through the Gospels, Notre Dame theologian William Mattison offers Ignatian reflections on key Gospel stories written imaginatively from the perspective of someone in the stories. What did Peter think when Jesus called him to be “fishers of men”? What did Zaccheus experience as Jesus saw him in the tree and asked to come to his house? What went through the heart and mind of Mary Magdalene as she saw the risen Jesus for the first time? In reading Follow Me: Walking with Jesus through the Gospels , I had the repeated experience of having my rather stale and superficial interpretations upended by Mattison’s fresh and profound readings.

Alphonse Gratry’s book The Well Springs inspired the much better-known book, A.G. Sertillanges’s The Intellectual Life. Gratry notes, “While you are meditating, write. Write slowly, speak to God whom you know to be present, write down what you say to him, ask him to inspire you, to dictate to you his wishes, to move you with those inward stirrings, pure, delicate, natural, which are his voice. … Write for God, and for yourself. Write that you may better harken to the Word speaking within you and that you may preserve his words. Write as though you believed no man would see what is thus dictated to you.” Had I known about them, I would have included Gratry’s insights in my book Praying Like Saint Augustine: A Guided Prayer Journal.

I also read or reread:

Gorgias by Plato
Light of Faith by Thomas Aquinas
Biblia cum Glossa Ordinaria: Genesis, The Great Medieval Commentary on Sacred Scripture translated by Samuel J. Klumpenhouwer
Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious by Ross Douthat
Diary of a Young Jesuit: All This Beauty Blooming by Fr. Barry Martinson SJ
Can We Trust the Gospels? by Peter J. Williams
Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves edited by Helen M. Alvare
That Nothing May Be Lost: Reflections on Catholic Doctrine and Devotion by Paul Scalia
Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
The Ethics of Precision Medicine: The Problems of Prevention in Healthcare by Paul Scherz
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation by Bryan Caplan
God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World by Stephen Prothero
The Happiness Files: Insights on Work and Life by Arthur C. Brooks
On Speaking Well: How to Give a Speech with Style, Substance, and Clarity by Peggy Noonan.
Surprised by Oxford: A Memoir by Carolyn Weber
Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Beliefs in a Secular Age by Brian Harrison
Witness: Learning to Tell the Stories of Grace that Illuminate Our Lives by Leonard DeLorenzo
Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House by Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes.

Dr. Christopher Kaczor is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola Marymount University, Honorary Professor in Bishop Barron’s Word on Fire Institute, and President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association. His most recent book is called Is Belief Believable? Reasoning About God from Plato and Aquinas to C. S. Lewis and Jordan Peterson.

 

James Kalb:

Here are some books I thought worth comment from this year’s reading:

The Leopard, by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. It was published posthumously in 1958—the Italian literary world hadn’t been ready for a sympathetic portrayal of an aristocrat by a first-time author writing in a non-modernist style. It’s an undeceived account of Sicily, the Risorgimento, and the decline of the Sicilian aristocracy, as reflected in the life of someone very like Tomasi’s great-grandfather. Apart from the fascinating scene and characters, the novel is remarkable for the depth of life experience reflected on almost every page.

Night’s Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story, by Sally Read. A beautifully-written account by an English poet, sometime psychiatric nurse, atheist from a staunchly atheist family, and feminist whose writings had stressed women’s physical experience, of her conversion to Catholicism. It began in earnest when she interviewed a priest for a book she was writing about women’s sexuality, and ended nine months later when she was received into the Church by a cardinal in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta at the Vatican. So there’s some drama in the book.

The Hobbit, by J. R. R. Tolkien. I hadn’t read Tolkien before, or seen any of the movies, mostly because I like traditional mythology much more than the modern imitations I had read. But his native gifts, religious faith, experience of war, and long study of Anglo-Saxon England enabled Tolkien to do it in a thoroughly convincing way. So I’ve made The Lord of the Rings next on my reading list.

His Reign Shall Have No End, by Peter Kwasniewski. A very useful account of Catholic social teaching, mostly based on the great encyclicals of Leo XIII and others, that shows how radically it differs from other current views, and how it expresses organically the same principles as the Church’s fundamental doctrines, and her classical liturgy, prayers, and devotional practices.

Can We Trust the Gospels by Peter J. Williams. A short summary of the converging lines of evidence that point to the conclusion that their truth is the best explanation for the Gospels and what we know about them. I found it very useful.

American Notes for General Circulation, by Charles Dickens. One of several pre-Civil War American travelogues I read this year. It presents a fascinating picture of American life in the early 1840’s that tried to show both the good and the bad—everything from the politeness and hospitality, and the model institutions and businesses, to slavery and the crudity of manners.

James Kalb is an author lawyer, independent scholar, and Catholic convert who lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Timothy D. Lusch

Now that anti-libraries are a thing, perhaps the books we have not read yet would be a better list. But then Catholic World Report’s annual Christmas feature would break the internet. I swore last year I would buy fewer books in 2025. I failed. Honestly, I didn’t really try.

I kicked the year off in grand style with the purchase of Dom Prosper’s The Liturgical Year, which I have been reading regularly. I never gave much thought to liturgy besides the song choices at Mass and trudging through Ordinary Time to get to Christmas. But, profoundly encouraged by Pope Francis to attend the TLM, I have become an eager student of liturgy, and there is simply no better guide for my money than Dom Prosper. It has been—without exaggeration—life-changing.

As if this adventure wasn’t enough, I finally read Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air. It is a riveting tale of death and survival on Mount Everest, which, however foolish an endeavor it may be to some, raises questions about human ambition and provides some very dark answers. The dark is where the dreams of people reveal the shared anxieties and fears of life under the boot of Nazism. Charlotte Beradt’s The Third Reich of Dreams: The Nightmares of a Nation shows how the rise of Adolf Hitler saturated the sleep of many and left them little respite from a waking nightmare.

Nightmare must be an apt description for the experience of shipwreck, particularly in the frigid waters of Lake Superior. John U. Bacon’s The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald describes the nightmare lived by the men who lost their lives and the families that mourned them. Like most nightmares, Bacon’s book stays with you. So too does a pair of books on the decades-long war for the West. Nathaniel Philbrick’s The Last Stand: Custer, Sitting Bull, and the Battle of the Little Bighorn and Peter Cozzens’s The Earth is Weeping: The Epic Story of the Indian Wars for the American West are heartbreaking. Something far greater than wars was lost.

War, at least the type that is fought on the sea, is never far from C.S. Forester’s magnificent creation, Horatio Hornblower (a most unfortunate name, according to one admiral). Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is the first installment of a series set in the Age of Sail. I am happy to have started the series, but am sorry to have waited this long.

Scholars have long searched for the origin of Indo-European languages. The combination of linguistic, archaeological, and genetic research is yielding extraordinary results. Laura Spinney’s utterly engrossing Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global tells the story in magnificent detail. It is full of fascinating connections (Lithuanian’s relationship with Sanskrit; the origins of the Roma) and the fascinating methods researchers used to discover them. I have awarded it my coveted Mind-Blowing Book of the Year Award.

On a smaller scale—though still linguistically intriguing—is Mary Dalton’s collection of Newfoundland poems in Merrybegot. The culture and character of people and place are bound up in these charming little poems. But you should have a Newfie dictionary nearby—or a Google machine—to experience the full flavor.

Timothy D. Lusch is an attorney and writer.

Daniel J. Mahoney:

I could not more strongly recommend We Have Ceased to See the Purpose: Essential Speeches of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, edited by Ignat Solzhenitsyn and published earlier this year by the University of Notre Dame Press. As these speeches, thoughtfully edited, translated, revised and introduced by the author’s son, show, Solzhenitsyn was at once the scourge of the totalitarian deformation of modernity, a friendly critic of a West in danger of losing its soul, and the bearer of a spiritually serene message centered around the responsible exercise of human free will (and political liberty) informed by “repentance and self-limitation.” As Solzhenitsyn strikingly remarked in his 1983 Templeton Lecture, “the primary key to our being or nonbeing resides in the heart’s preference for specific Good or Evil…Attempts to find a way out of the plight of today’s world situation will prove fruitless unless we redirect our consciousness, in repentance, to the Maker of all.” Along with better known speeches (such as the Nobel Lecture, the Harvard Address, the Templeton Lectures) readers will discover little-known gems that illumine the spiritually elevating nature of true art and warn against individuals and whole communities succumbing to the temptation of “playing upon the strings of emptiness.”

Anything written by Peter Kreeft, Christian philosopher and man of letters, is bound to instruct and delight. That is the case with The Two Greatest Novels Ever Written: The Wisdom of The Lord of the Rings and The Brothers Karamazov, published a few weeks ago by Word on Fire. Kreeft expertly explores the treatment of good and evil, sin and weakness, truth and heroism, in these two powerful works. In the concluding chapter, he reflects on “The Issue of the Nature of Man” which he rightly calls “the fundamental philosophical issue of our time.” Kreeft reminds us that “As man is dependent on God, anthropology is dependent on ontology, or metaphysics. What we are depends on what is. If matter does not exist, the body is an illusion. If spirit does not exist, the soul is an illusion. If both do not exist, both are illusions.” That is why “man’s primary need is reality, being.” Like Solzhenitsyn, Kreeft fully appreciates that nihilism is the enemy of everything true, good, and real.

For a comprehensive account of a twentieth-century philosopher who combined love of Being (and love of the Real) with faith, hope, and charity in all their manifestations, see Jason L.A. West’s The Christian Philosophy of Jacques Maritain, published this summer by Catholic University of America Press. Maritain’s philosophical concerns were truly capacious, covering epistemology, the philosophy of nature, metaphysics, natural theology, moral and political philosophy, education, and aesthetics. His thought was informed by a deep “intuition of Being” as the French philosopher and Catholic convert called the essential precondition of all philosophizing. A humane man, a critic of totalitarianism of the Left and the Right, a truly faithful Christian, this neo-Thomist was a genuine philosopher in his own right.

For those anticipating essential reading for the new year, I heartily recommend the new edition of Malcolm Muggeridge’s Jesus the Man Who Lives (ably introduced by Peter Hitchens), to be released by Creed & Culture in April of 2026. This beautifully written book allows us to rediscover the Jesus of the Gospels, freed from fashionable ideological postering and all perverse efforts to make the Son of God something other than Himself. For serious but accessible political philosophizing that defends authentic nobility, authentic humility, and authentic love against their humanitarian and antinomian subversions, readers should turn their attention to Ralph C. Hancock’s Love and Virtue in a Secular Age, out from the University of Notre Dame Press in March of 2026.

Daniel J. Mahoney, Professor Emeritus at Assumption University and Senior Fellow at the Claremont Institute.

 

Joseph Martin:

Good things really do come in twos, so this year I sorted my reading life into a personal Best Dozen, six pairings that sometimes seemed compatible and sometimes didn’t.

Music first. Chris Dalla Riva’s Uncharted Territory hit two of my soft spots—pop-culture factoids and the behind-the-curtain chaos of the music biz. Riding shotgun was Clinton Heylin’s Trouble in Mind, which pulled me back in time to Bob Dylan’s very real Gospel detour, complete with an unexpected shout-out to The Late Great Planet Earth. (Hal Lindsey was “not exactly on my 2024 bingo card,” as the Twitter commentariat would say.)

I cracked open Samuel Eliot Morison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Admiral of the Ocean Sea and was carried off by the old-school sweep of its take on Christopher Columbus. At the opposite end of reading level and cultural vantage point stood another prizewinner: Daniel Nayeri’s off-kilter Newbery story The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller of Dreams.

Pope Leo is still too new to quite get, but two earlier papacies earned their shelf space. Testimony to the Truth collected the wisdom of Pius XII, and Robert Cardinal Sarah’s He Gave Us So Much—a floridly titled but surprisingly stirring tribute to Benedict XVI—reminded me that, even through Rome’s fog of procedural opacity, the Vatican still produces theologians of substance and style.

Novels, unexpectedly, held their own. Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members delivered some laugh-out-loud framings of faculty culture. Ditto for Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man, the story of an adjunct professor less interested in giving lectures than lifting weights.

Books by visual virtuosos cast their own spells. Mark Elwood’s two-volume The Glass Looker tapped directly into my long-standing fascination with Joseph Smith, while Jean Charlot’s An Artist on Art followed the strokes of a creative Catholic working with happy nonchalance among the pagans. (It would wreck the math to add The Penguin Modern Classics Book, so I shan’t.)

By December, reading felt like homework—so I turned to screens for my last pairing. First came a newly restored cut of DeMille’s silent The King of Kings, which I discovered via Nathaniel Bell’s terrific write-up in Christianity Today. And then there was Radical Wolfe, the Tom Wolfe documentary that captured the careening, exclamation-point-loving writer who somehow made me reconsider a lifelong punctuation prejudice.

That list complete, I’d be remiss not to name-check two commentaries that commanded my admiration. Though G. K. Chesterton once quipped that “St. John saw no creature more wild than one of his own commentators,” Darrell Johnson’s Discipleship on the Edge proves the exception—a devotional reconnaissance into the implications of St. John’s Book of Revelation. And then there’s The Great Commentary of Cornelius a’ Lapide—carried forward in Michael J. Miller’s great translation of a once-renowned Jesuit scholar. This year’s installment—Titus, Philemon, & Hebrews, issued in Loreto’s trademark red hardback—continues the recovery of a voice marked by its confidence in “the dignity, majesty, and usefulness” of Scripture.

And one final digression. A different sort of resourcement comes not from the library but from the turntable. 2nd Chapter of Acts was a 1970s vocal trio that emerged from the Jesus Movement. Their most obscure album, The Roar of Love, was their Sgt. Pepper’s moment—a musical paean to C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Think Jesus Christ Superstar, but with Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy in the starring roles. It should be cringe; it is not. I first heard it in college, and on rediscovery, it has aged quite gracefully. Yes, Virginia—there really was a time when CCM was this crazily appealing. Merry Christmas.

Joseph Martin is Associate Professor of Communication and Graphic Design at Montreat College.

 

Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ:

I’ve been told, quite confidently, by someone who knows a lot about the book business, that “No one wants to buy an anthology of essays—unless the author is Chesterton.” (I think that might have surprised my friend, Jesuit Father James Schall, an accomplished essayist himself, whose anthologies of essays sold rather well.) In a spirit of agere contra, I will focus on four especially fine anthologies of essays I have enjoyed in 2025.

The first is from a relatively new voice in Catholic letters—Sarah Cain (known in social media as “The Crusader Gal”). Her Failing Foundations: The Pillars of the West Are Nearing Collapse was released last year. British-born and a recent convert, she follows in the footsteps of other literary converts from her homeland, wielding her pen at once as a scalpel and a bludgeon. She deftly reveals Christendom’s enemies and then applies the cudgel of English dry wit against them. Her faith in Christ is evident throughout her writing, and I look forward to reading more of her work as she becomes better known.

I’ve long been a fan of the essayist and raconteur writing under the pen name of Theodore Dalrymple. He has a keen eye for describing both human nobility and human venality, and has written of these for many years. Recently, he has been writing collections of reflections on his latest reading. The depth and breadth of his reading is astonishing. His latest is entitled, On the Ivory Stages. At the risk of mixing metaphors: reading this book is akin to going for a long walk through the English countryside with an old friend, while simultaneously pulling books off the shelf of his home library and asking, “What about this one?” As a result of reading this book, I found myself with even more books added to my “To Be Read” list.

The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays, by Simon Leys, was recommended to me by Theodore Dalrymple during our last conversation. Taken together, the array of the many dimensions of Leys’ interests and competencies is dizzying. French literature, Chinese culture, the challenges of translation, insights into life as a reader and writer, observations about life at sea… After reading any one of his essays, you will resolve to pay close attention to whatever else he has to say. As an author, he has the gift of stoking in the reader a desire for more.

I read with gratitude and hope Torches Against the Abyss by brother priest and fellow philosophy professor Father John Perricone. With both erudition and passionate intensity, he cries out in mourning and horror at the depredations the Church has suffered during the last 60 years. Even so, he is also a happy warrior, relying not on his own strength, but on the strength of Christ the King, who calls all to fight at His side beneath the banner of His Cross. Perricone, in this volume, affords us the opportunity to articulate our grief and to find the will to fight another day.

Fr Robert McTeigue, SJ, is a member of the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus and professor of philosophy and theology.

 

Filip Mazurczak:

In 2025, I enjoyed The Wonder of Creation: The Most Famous Christian Biologists in History by biologist Niels Arboel, who as a Danish Catholic is an unusual combination. The work is intellectual history at its finest, providing biographical background on twenty Christian biologists and their ideas. Richard Dawkins famously wrote that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist; Arboel demonstrates that only thanks to theistic thinkers like Gregor Mendel and Theodosius Dobzhansky can one be an intellectually fulfilled neo-Darwinist (i.e., accept the synthesis of evolutionary biology and genetics). Arboel argues that his subjects’ faith was not incidental; it is no coincidence that the Scientific Revolution took place in Christian Europe, unlike in great civilizations where pantheistic explanations were used to account for the laws of nature. I did not know that some of Arboels’ protagonists, such as the late primatologist Jane Goodall, were believers; a pioneering scholar of chimp behavior, Goodall believed that apes will never achieve human free will and morality, undisputedly an insight of Christian anthropology rather than the dominant materialist interpretation of Darwinism.

As I write these words, exactly seven months have passed since Pope Leo XIV stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. However, I probably speak for many when I write that I still don’t know our new Holy Father very well. Indeed, he received much less media coverage than other papabili in the spring. Matthew Bunson’s concise but well-researched book Leo XIV: Portrait of the First American Pope was a fine primer on Robert Prevost, chronicling his life from growing up in Chicago’s South Side—at a time when people routinely introduced themselves to strangers by identifying their home parish—to the future Pope Leo’s service as a true shepherd who smells of his sheep in Peru, and finally his time spent in Rome as prior general of the Augustinians and prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. I look forward to reading more detailed biographies in the coming years.

Before 1945, Ferdynand Ossendowski was the second most-translated Polish writer after Nobel laureate Henryk Sienkiewicz. The reason you’ve never heard of him is political: for decades, Poland’s communist regime confiscated all copies of his novels from libraries and bookstores and denied permissions for translations as well as new editions of his work. This is all because of his 1931 novel Lenin (published in English with the subheading God of the Godless), which brilliantly shows how the revolutionary’s creation of the Bolshevik regime directly resulted from his Lucifer-like rebellion against God. I read the original Polish text and hope new English editions will appear in the future.

Another work of fiction I enjoyed in 2025 was Tim O’Brien’s American classic The Things They Carried. Like Michael Cimino’s classic film The Deer Hunter, it movingly yet painfully depicts how devastating the Vietnam War—or any war, for that matter—was to those used as pawns.

Among the history books I read this year, I greatly appreciated Nikolaus Wachsmann’s compellingly written KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps. Most literature on this topic focuses on the Holocaust. Wachsmann does not overlook the destruction of Europe’s Jews, unparalleled in its thoroughness except for perhaps the Armenian genocide, but nevertheless provides a complete account of the camp system, from its establishment for German political prisoners through its expansion and use to annihilate Jews, Poles, Gypsies, Slavic citizens of the USSR, and other “subhumans.” Wachsmann also destroys convenient myths such as that German society was unaware of these camps, which functioned not only in the occupied East but also in the outskirts of German cities.

Filip Mazurczak is a journalist, translator, and historian.

 

J.C. Miller:

My top read of the year was the seven-book Sun Eater series by Christopher Ruocchio. Set in the distant future where humanity is slowly losing a war against menacing aliens, the series (and its protagonist) grows more religious as it moves along. The main character starts with fedora-wearing-atheist vibes to become an agent of the true God, though it never crosses into outright Christianity. The plot seems craftily engineered to slowly move a secular audience in the right direction while featuring excellent world building and fun nods to other popular science fiction works. This could be a work of Catholic fiction that still gets talked about decades from now, particularly if it influences impressionable readers. The first book in the series suffers from intolerable pacing; I would not have finished it if the series had not come so highly recommended to me. Some people choose to skip that first book, which is a testament to how enthusiastically fans recommend the series. The end of the series, though, justifies reading it all. One unfortunate aspect is the unnecessary R-rated material in the books, which keeps me from sharing it with my teens.

Veteran author Eric Sammons answered the need for more Catholic fiction with his debut novel Shard of Eden. An entertaining and quick read bound to delight Catholic audiences, this book is set in the not-too-distant future where the Vatican came out on top in a global war between A.I. and humanity. The Pope sends humanity’s first faster-than-light spaceship out to investigate a mysterious and possibly alien signal from deep space. One nice thing about this book is that it is also appropriate for younger audiences. One of my teens devoured it in a single day.

I thoroughly enjoyed Pilgrims by M.R. Leonard, another work of Catholic science fiction with a fun premise: aliens arrive speaking Latin and ask to meet the Pope. Our main character faces spiritual and personal development over the course of the events, but the underlying science fiction points are also enjoyable. The steps humanity in general and America in particular take to prepare for an alien arrival are very believable, down to small details like hyperinflation.

I thoroughly enjoyed Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, which is a secular science fiction book with a movie coming out in 2026. If possible, read the book before watching any of the trailers to avoid a key spoiler.

J.C. Miller is an attorney and father of six (soon to be seven) from Michigan. Follow him on X at http://www.x.com/JCMillerEsq.

 

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson:

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen: This year, as I embarked on my nearly annual re-reading of Jane Austen’s anti-romance, I was able to introduce the novel to our two eldest children. The girls felt and thought everything just as they ought, and were full of strong opinions about the perfidious charm of the Crawfords, the contemplative goodness of Fanny (though with need for growth, as is appropriate for every Austen heroine), and the monumental brilliance of Sir Thomas Bertram. It was an experience to delight the heart of a homeschooling mother. Worth special mention: No film adaptation, audiobook, stage performance, or radio drama I’ve experienced has achieved what I heard in the audiobook performed by Frances Barber: the successful expression of Fanny’s quiet complexity. Barber must love Fanny, for she truly understands her.

That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis. When I was a highschooled homeschooler, I made my way through a master list of great literature. I read nearly everything on it, with a handful of exceptions. The Space Trilogy was one of those exceptions. I’ve been diligently reading them by way of correction, enjoying Out of the Silent Planet sufficiently to continue, and valuing much (and disciplining myself much) in completing Perelandra. That Hideous Strength blew my mind. I spent weeks eagerly asking friends if they’d read it so I could discuss it with them. The two most enthusiastic conversation partners in my post-reading analysis were the novelist Tim Powers and the drummer of the Hillbilly Thomist band. Somehow this fact captures how much depth Lewis packed into the novel.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. As usual, I spent a great deal of time re-reading in preparation to teach for Homeschool Connections. This year, I was able to revisit one of the greatest Gothic novels over a five-week period, studying the Romantic Poets. Revisiting Milton and Blake as a foundation, then turning to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Shelley, Byron, and Keats, made for a fantastic summer. Frankenstein was the highlight. It’s such a remarkable and strange work, both a manifesto of Romanticism, and an explosion of it. Coming back to it from the vantage point of many decades of Gothic study made it all the richer. (Why anyone with an ounce of Romantic angst would travel anywhere near the Alps without being armed to the teeth, I really don’t know.)

Brat Farrar by Josephine Tey. With an infant in the house, I turned to one of my favorite outlets for midnight nursing sessions: classic murder mysteries. The British Library Crime Classics series has been a terrific resource, with many decent titles, though nothing remarkable. Thus, I have been driven a few times to return to the Greats, as with this most unusual of impersonation novels. Tey, though with less output than the other Queens of Mystery Fiction, still deserves her place in their ranks.

Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz (Translated by W. S. Kuniczak). I hemmed and hawed before I added this title. This, too I read as a teenager (during my Biblical historical novel phase). Re-reading it, I found the depiction of Neronian Rome as gripping as ever. I’m still wrestling, though, with elements of the depiction of Apostolic Christianity. Nevertheless, it was a high point of my year’s reading.

Last but not least, I would have included The Lord of the Rings and Treasure Island, which my husband read aloud to the boys, but I will leave full treatment to his own list.

Eleanor Bourg Nicholson is an award-winning novelist, scholar, literature instructor for Homeschool Connections, and a homeschooling mother of six.

 

Sam Nicholson:

Immortal Souls by Edward Feser: I reviewed this book for Catholic World Report in December 2024, and I found myself revisiting it throughout 2025. Feser’s extended brief for the Aristotelian-Thomist conception of the human person is densely argued and extraordinarily comprehensive, and it became for me a reference point as I did research on other topics in the philosophy of mind, from artificial intelligence to twentieth-century phenomenology. This book also makes an ideal one-volume “FAQ” for educated laypersons struggling with skepticism about the reality of free will, the immortality of the soul, or the uniqueness of human intelligence. The arguments presented here suffice to dispel the widespread illusion that materialism is rationally obligatory.

Declare by Tim Powers: A riveting amalgam of historical fiction, cold war spy thriller, and the preternatural. Powers blends the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of the spy novel with the menacing world of the occult, recasting twentieth-century geopolitical machinations so that they run together seamlessly with the dark designs of biblical powers and principalities. Many supernatural thrillers do a fine job of intimating the numinous reality of the other world, but then devolve into a mere spectacle once the author attempts to render it as a manifest reality. Power’s bracing articulation of the demonic, by contrast, remains just as gripping in delivery as it does in anticipation.

The Mass of the Early Christians by Mike Aquilina: Aquilina fills a valuable and underappreciated niche, writing short, readable, scholarly but non-academic books on a variety of topics related to Christian history. As an OCIA volunteer, I am constantly looking out for books that give the reader a representative look at the worship and practice of the early church without presuming upon any detailed historical background knowledge. I pick out the Mass of the Early Christians, but other works of his, like How the Church Fathers Read the Bible and Signs and Symbols, are also worthy of mention.

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien: I confess up front that I was loathe to include this on my list, as affinity for Lord of the Rings has become something of a Catholic cliché, but after re-reading it with my two eldest sons this summer I can confirm that it is indeed worthy of the adulation heaped upon it by Catholic literati. This was my first read-through of the trilogy since high school, and my first serious reading of Tolkien since converting to Catholicism. Tolkien’s power to convey through story the essential contours of the transcendent made this an especially pivotal milestone in my sons’ literary formation.

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson: This is another book I read to and with my eldest sons, looking to engage their imagination with a classic adventure tale while filling a lacuna in my own literary formation. The book defied my expectations in many regards, because it is a much darker and grittier tale than its “adventure stories for young lads” reputation would prepare one for. The pacing is varied, and between the episodes of swashbuckling action, Stevenson spins much of his tale slowly and patiently—from the steady alcoholic deterioration and paranoid revelations of the fugitive pirate Billy Bones in the early chapters, to the slow and creeping sense of impending misadventure aboard the ship Hispanola, to the patient, long-winded scheming of the villainous Long John Silver.

Dr. Sam Nicholson is a former Professor of Philosophy. He teaches high school Logic and Philosophy for Homeschool Connections. He and his wife, Eleanor Bourg Nicholson, homeschool their five children.

 

Carl E. Olson

Per my long-standing practice, I’ll not mention Ignatius Press titles here; there are others here who do mention them, so pay heed!

The Nicene Creed: A Scriptural, Historical, and Theological Commentary (Baker, 2024) by Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating, was just as good as I thought it would be: erudite, thoughtful, informative, and—most importantly—spiritually challenging. A masterful study that is catechetical, educational, and edifying.

Mere Christianity (orig. 1952), by C.S. Lewis. I first read it decades ago in Bible college, as a young Evangelical. As a Catholic, I have quibbles (his ecclesiology is lacking), but there is no denying the clarity and brilliance throughout. A classic for a reason.

The Faith Unboxed: Freeing the Catholic Church From the Containers People Put It In (Catholic Answers Press, 2025) by Andrew Petiprin and The Way of Heaven and Earth: From Either/Or to the Catholic Both/And (Word on Fire, 2025) by Matthew Becklo. These books are linked together for me, in part, because I read them back-to-back, but also because both writers (who are contributors to CWR) are skilled writers and thinkers who move easily and effectively from theology to current events to philosophy to literature. And do so with real purpose, both defending and explaining the Catholic Faith with a winsome style and without needless polemics.

Leo XIV: The New Pope and Catholic Reform (Bloomsbury, 2025) by Christopher R. Altieri. The author, whom I count as a friend, is a stellar journalist, a true theologian, and a wonderful writer. Furthermore, he’s not given to sensationalism, hyperbole, or hagiography. This book is both sober and insightful, rooted in years of on-the-ground experience in Rome and a comprehensive understanding of the ins-and-outs of the Vatican.

To Change All Worlds: Critical Theory From Marx to Marcuse (B & H Academic, 2025) by Carl R. Trueman. This is yet another exceptional work of intellectual archaeology, featuring the sort of research and nuance that one has come to expect from Trueman. Rather than pick fights, he seeks to shed light—a rather rare attribute these days. The clarity and calmness of this fine work are commendable; the insights and information are invaluable.

Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America (Oxford University Press, 2025) by Christian Smith. Perhaps I’ve missed it, but this book has not received the attention it deserves. The monthly reading group that I attend spent three months discussing this remarkable book, and we could have spent another three doing so. I’ll put it simply: if you want to understand the challenges we face today in evangelizing, witnessing, and proclaiming the Faith, you must read this book. The scope and research are remarkable, while the astute observations and often startling connections may well cause you to rethink quite a bit about the current landscape. Book of the Year for me.

Jared Ortiz:

Having officially reached middle age, I realized that I needed to do something I’ve never done before: exercise. To make this tolerable, I decided that I would listen to audiobooks and I could only listen to them if I were exercising. To my surprise, the results were a rousing success, both in terms of regular exercise and listening to a lot of good books. So, leaving aside other things I’ve read, this list will survey the audiobooks I enjoyed this year.

The Chronicles of Narnia (Complete Audio Collection), by C.S. Lewis. Well, Narnia needs no more recommendations, but let me commend this truly superb seven-for-the-price-of-one collection which includes such delightful readers as Kenneth Branagh, Alex Jennings, Michael York, Lynn Redgrave, Derek Jacobi, Jeremy Northam, and (somewhat less persuasively in this context) Patrick Stewart. Lewis is the master of the Christian image and I found myself arrested mid-exercise many times.

Ransom Trilogy, by C.S. Lewis. These books are so important, theologically, but also prophetically. Out of a Silent Planet works best as a novel, and Perelandra is most interesting theologically. That Hideous Strength is prescient and, like Abolition of Man (which I also listened to several times this year), is more timely today than when Lewis wrote it.

Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien. When exercising, it is helpful to think that Frodo, too, had to suffer a long time for his goals. Seriously, though, these novels are so compelling and beautiful and inspiring that they bear listening and re-listening. In fact, their epic nature lends itself well to listening. People love the new Andy Serkis version, but Rob Inglis is truly wonderful, and I enjoyed all 60+ hours listening to him.

The Iliad, by Homer. I have loved Homer since college, but was always an Odyssey man. That changed on revisiting The Iliad this year, twenty years later. Perhaps because it is a book that deals primarily with mortality, The Iliad gripped me from start to finish. Indeed, I think there is no greater poem, perhaps no greater literary work than the Iliad, which has such a unity of form and purpose and meaning that I found myself spellbound day after day. Charlton Griffin reading the Lattimore version is just perfect.

The Odyssey, by Homer. I still tear up at all the reunion scenes. The Fagles translation is shockingly odd in places, but moves at a decent clip, and Ian McKellan is a solid reader.

Dr. Jared Ortiz is Professor of Religion at Hope College and author of You Made Us for Yourself: Creation in St Augustine’s Confessions (Fortress Press, 2016).

Rhonda Ortiz:

Several good books graduated from my TBR pile this year, including a few I read for endorsement: Abigail Favale’s Our Lady of the Sign, LuElla D’Amico’s Wonderous Reading, and Peter Kreeft’s forthcoming An Ocean Full of Angels.

My favorite book from 2025, however, was a novel I edited for Chrism Press: Jamey Toner’s The Fight, a fast-paced, kick-butt, philosophical-religious fantasy about a swordsman-for-hire who agrees to kill a demon lord in exchange for drinking money. Imagine that Peter Jackson had asked Hayao Miyazaki, Quentin Tarantino, Silvester Stallone, and St. John of the Cross to help write, direct, and produce his adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, and you’ll have an approximation of The Fight. The novel’s third part is titled “Apotheoses All Around,” and just when you’re wondering what the heck he’s doing with this strange, violent story, Jamey Toner delivers on the apotheoses and more. Definitely worth reading; definitely not for children or anyone with a sensitive imagination—see comment about Quentin Tarantino above.

Rhonda Ortiz is a novelist, a founding editor of Chrism Press, and editor-in-chief of Dappled Things. Find her online at rhondaortiz.com.

Joseph Pearce:

I read books vocationally and recreationally. The former I read while following my vocation as a writer, teacher and editor; the latter are books that I read for the pure pleasure of the exercise. Since, however, there is also much pleasure to be gained in vocational reading, I’m going to include and begin with those books that I’ve read or reread vocationally.

I regularly teach online courses which offer the opportunity to return to classic literature. This year, teaching for Homeschool Connections and Rosary College, I’ve taught no fewer than eight Shakespeare plays, affording me the opportunity to revisit and reread The Merchant of Venice, Antony and Cleopatra, As You Like It, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth and Othello. I’ve also taught The Lord of the Rings for Homeschool Connections, enabling a return to Middle-earth.

For Rosary College, in addition to Shakespeare, my students and I have read Beowulf in Seamus Heaney’s glorious translation; Dante’s Divine Comedy in Dorothy L. Sayers’ translation, with her wonderful annotation and commentary; selections from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Tolkien’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; a selection of verse by the Metaphysical Poets gleaned from the anthology that I selected and edited for TAN Books, Poems Every Catholic Should Know; and Milton’s brilliant but heterodox Paradise Lost.

I’ve lost track of the books that I’ve read this year with Fr. Fessio and Vivian Dudro for the weekly Off the Shelf Book Club, but the standout title was indubitably The Wedding of Magdeburg, a simply superb and symbolically charged historical novel by Gertrud von le Fort.

In the “Poem of the Week” podcast, which I record for the Inner Sanctum of my personal website, I’ve been reading selections from The Oxford Book of English Verse, the classic anthology chosen and edited by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.

This brings us to this year’s recreational reading.

Whereas I devoted much time last year to the reading of contemporary Catholic fiction, I’ve been rectifying sins of omission this year by reading classic works I should have read years ago. In this respect, highlights include Diary of a Country Priest in the new translation by Michael Tobin, published by Ignatius Press, The Heart of Rome by F. Marion Crawford, and new translations by Christopher Adam Zakrzewski of two classic works of Polish literature, Pan Tadeusz and The Fair Folk and Little Orphan Mary.

I’ve also managed to finally read the seemingly impenetrable “fragments of an attempted writing” by David Jones, The Anathemata, much admired by T. S. Eliot and now much admired by me. I discovered in the reading of it that it is best read out loud. The sheer beauty of Jones’ word choice reminds me of Dylan Thomas, whose Child’s Christmas in Wales I’ve recently reread with much pleasure as preparation for writing the introduction to a new limited edition published by St. Gregory’s Academy. Another classic I’ve reread is Longfellow’s Evangeline as preparation for a talk at this year’s Chesterton Conference.

The one standout work of non-fiction that I recall reading is Tolkien’s Modern Reading by Holly Ordway.

I’ll conclude with a book that I’m currently reading and will probably finish before Christmas, which is surely destined to qualify as being amongst the best books I’ve read this year. This is The Mills of the Gods, the latest and newly published novel by Tim Powers, which the author was kind enough to send me. It’s as weird and wonderful as his other works!

Joseph Pearce is the author of numerous literary studies, including Literary Converts, The Quest for Shakespeare, and Shakespeare on Love, as well as biographies on Oscar Wilde, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. He is the general editor of the Ignatius Critical Editions series.

S. Kirk Pierzchala:

Once again, it was hard to narrow the list down to my absolute favorites, but here’s what stood out to me in 2025:

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

This is a breathtakingly exquisite and dreamlike story in which the titular hero, a good-hearted but ignorant young man, is trapped in the House, a vast, enigmatic structure filled with statues and inundated by the waves of an endless, primordial ocean. Clarke skillfully creates an unforgettable, magical world that is both realistic and transcendent, guiding a mystery to a clever, beautiful climax that is especially satisfying to hardcore C. S. Lewis fans.

Laurus, by Eugene Vodolazkin

Fans of Russian literature and Orthodox spirituality will enjoy this harrowing tale of a medieval Russian healer and mystic who is traumatized by the death of his wife and child and undertakes a penitential journey. The masterful prose slips in and out of a traditional timeline while addressing deep issues of suffering, faith, and love.

Riddley Walker, by Russell Hoban

Nearly 2,000 years in the future, following a nuclear holocaust, Riddley Walker undergoes trials that take him from boyhood to manhood. As he seeks to uncover the great mysteries of the tribal peoples of a fragmented Britain, he comes face-to-face with both human and supernatural forces beyond his comprehension. Related first-person in a broken dialect based on a fanciful form of English, this short but challenging novel is one of the more imaginative and disturbing books I’ve ever read—a violent and enigmatic glimpse at the mysteries of reality seen through truly pagan, almost animalistic eyes.

The “Flicka” books (My Friend Flicka, Thunderhead, Green Grass Of Wyoming), Mary O’Hara

Not just ‘boy and his horse’ tales, this trilogy is the story of a marriage and family struggling to make a go of a horse ranch in Wyoming. Excellent characterizations, good pacing, lovingly crafted nature descriptions, and unexpectedly deep reflections on God make it an accessible and refreshing adventure for readers of all ages.

The Good Earth and Sons, by Pearl S. Buck

The Good Earth is the classic tale of a farmer, Wang Lung, and his wife, O-Lan, in rural late-19th/early-20th-century China. Buck writes in an eloquent, deceptively simple style that often slips a knife into the reader’s heart without warning as she depicts the universal hardships of the poor, especially women and children. Sons, while a sequel, works as a standalone tale. It follows the exploits of Wang Lung’s sons, focusing on the youngest, known as the Tiger, and his all-consuming desire to become a powerful and respected warlord. Although set in the early 20th century, it reads like a high adventure from the distant past, yet it is gripping and compelling in its keen, poignant scenes of human longing, disappointment, and heartbreak.

Jayber Crow, by Wendell Berry

This one got off to a slow start for me, but I had heard such good things about it that I was determined to stick it out. I was eventually captivated by the intimate picture of the narrator’s life in 20th-century rural Kentucky.

The homey scenes provide fodder for deep spiritual insights, and the simple plot threads and memorable, often all-too-familiar characters paint a beautiful story of hidden love and humility.

S .Kirk Pierzchala is a lay Dominican and novelist living in the Pacific Northwest.

Matthew Ramage

I’m going to reflect here on how this shaped up to be a banner year of reading new works that wrestle with the growing crisis of disenchantment in our technology-saturated age and the urgent question of how true fulfillment can be found through a renewed sense of awe and reverence before the mystery of God’s good creation.

Rod Dreher’s Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age proved to be a standout. Dreher argues that recovering enchantment is essential if Christianity is to speak convincingly to our increasingly fractured, volatile, and adrift culture. His case is that “WEIRD” society is disoriented because it has lost the capacity to perceive reality with the eyes of wonder. As Dreher contends, “The world is not what we think it is. It is far more mysterious, exciting, connected, and adventurous.” His call to encounter the world as charged with God’s presence is pastorally urgent, and his concrete proposals for recovering a sense of wonder are genuinely helpful.

A similar and complementary voice is Paul Kingsnorth, whose reflections appear in Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity. Informed by his family’s experience living in rural Ireland, Kingsnorth’s insistence that authentic Christian spirituality must be local, ascetic, and rooted in sustained contact with the natural world is a provocative challenge to Western Christianity’s lingering rationalism. Kingsnorth’s conviction that we’re not disenchanted but rather enchanted by the wrong thing (the techno-capitalist “machine”) struck me as one of the most incisive claims I read all year.

If the above approach creation through critical cultural commentary and are sobering, yet punctuated by glimpses of hope, the following titles shift gears to a more positive account of how nature works, relates to God, and manifests his beauty.

I also found myself devouring several superb new books on evolution and Catholic theology. Daniel Kuebler’s Darwin and Doctrine: The Compatibility of Evolution and Catholicism stands out as one of the very best accessible yet thoroughgoing introductions I’ve seen for Catholics anxious about the supposed conflict between faith and evolutionary science. Kuebler articulates with remarkable clarity how evolution can be understood as a participation in divine providence rather than as a rival ideology to faith.

Closely related is Creation through Evolution: New Perspectives from Thomistic Philosophy and Theology, edited by Dominican biologist-theologian Nicanor Austriaco. A kind of sequel—or better, an advanced companion—to Austriaco’s outstanding introductory volume on the subject, this collection is among the most theologically sophisticated treatments of Thomism and evolution currently available, with ten penetrating academic articles from different experts on controverted topics in this arena.

I also benefited from Matthew Becklo’s The Way of Heaven and Earth: From Either/Or to the Catholic Both/And, a rewarding meditation on the unity of truths—faith and reason, grace and nature, contemplation and action, and many more—that our polarized age seems to relish in tearing apart. Becklo traces the long history of false “either/or” dichotomies in our society and teaches readers a good deal of history along the way. In the end, Becklo demonstrates that Catholicism does not collapse tensions but holds them in a fruitful harmony that is attained only in Christ.

For something not entirely different but carried forward through first-person narrative experiences, John Nepil’s To Heights and unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail was a delight. These meditative reflections on pilgrimage, creaturely dependence, and finding joy and awe before the created world will deepen anyone’s appreciation of creation as a school of humility. Its combination of nature writing, metaphysical realism, and first-hand insight makes it a refreshing companion for anyone seeking sanity in our overstimulated age.

Matthew Ramage is a professor of theology and co-director of the Center for Integral Ecology at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas.

 

Paul Seaton

With the election of Robert Prevost of the Order of St. Augustine to the see of Peter, his Order’s patron saint, St. Augustine, once again has come to the forefront of Catholic consciousness. This is particularly timely, given the sentimental humanitarianism that too often characterizes contemporary Church pronouncements about the things of the world. The saint’s combination of tough-minded realism and impeccable orthodoxy shows that there is another way, a more Christian way, of dealing with the world and its problems. One can draw from this perennial Christian wisdom in The Essential City of God: A Reader and Commentary (Baker Academic, 2025), edited by Gregory W. Lee. Along with judicious selections, there are fine introductions, annotations, and accompanying short essays on a variety of Augustinian themes. Augustine and the reader are well served by this first-rate work of scholarship.

Augustine confronted proponents of pagan Rome; we face other challenges. One of the contemporary world’s major problems is Islam, especially as the Ummah continues its expansion into the West. With very few exceptions (e. g., Cardinal Sarah), the official Church plays the ostrich before what is unfolding in Europe and elsewhere in the name of Allah. Hence, the need for laity to educate themselves. Fr. James V. Schall’s collection of essays, On Islam: A Chronological Record 2002-2018 (Ignatius Press, 2018), continues to be a fine primer.

It is not just the official Church that fails to provide necessary guidance about the Islamic threat—secular elites aid and abet the enemy as well. Indeed, many of them hate the West and actively seek its demise. Among the good books on the ongoing battle between elites and populaces for the soul of nations, the British sociologist David Goodhart’s The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics, recently reprinted by Hurst & Company and updated by the author, is a deeply illuminating guide, first of all to Great Britain, in many ways ground zero in the battle.

Closer to home, the American left continues its assault on all things Western, Christian, Jewish, liberal democratic, and decent. In so doing, it displays a truly remarkable power of transmogrification, with Marxism (economic and cultural), multiculturalism, and wokeness now joined by settler colonialism and so-called Democratic Socialism. Daniel J. Mahoney’s The Persistence of the Ideological Lie: The Totalitarian Temptation Then and Now (Encounter Books, 2025) expertly dissects modern Ideology’s nature and historical permutations, while more positively laying out the goods that it threatens and what is at stake in the battle with leftist Manicheanism.

In the midst of the travails of the Church and the West, one must still attend to one’s soul. Pierre Manent’s book on Pascal, Challenging Modern Atheism and Indifference: Pascal’s Defense of the Christian Proposition (University of Notre Dame Press, 2024), is a brilliant reading of the 17th-century Christian thinker who, at the dawn of the modern world, addressed new forms of atheism and powerfully re-articulated the ancient Faith. This book is a feast for both intellect and spirit.

For those who want to learn more about the man and his times, Graham Tomlin’s Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World (Hodder & Stoughton, 2025) is a learned and often gripping read; while for those who become hooked on Pascal and want to pursue the depths of his thinking on grace, theologian Paul Griffiths’s Translation with an Essay on Pascal’s Writings on Grace: The Complete Écrits sur la grâce (Catholic University of America Press, 2025) is the place to go. When the world is “too much with us, late and soon,” as many of the books listed above bring home, the reminder of the Lord’s sovereignty, mercy, and grace is the eternal antidote to discouragement and despair.

Paul Seaton teaches philosophy at St. Mary’s Seminary & University in Baltimore, MD. He works mainly in political philosophy and has translated a number of works by French philosophers.

 

Piers Shepherd:

One of the best historical books I read this year was The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 by Christopher Clark, an extremely detailed and well-researched history of the origins of the First World War. This fascinating book examines, among other subjects, what was going on in the foreign ministries of the various belligerent powers in the twenty years or so before the war, the background to the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Balkan Wars of 1912-1913, and much more. This book may change your thinking about the war and its causes.

St Bede’s A History of the English Church and People is generally considered the earliest work of English history, published in the 8th century. Bede chronicles the history of England from the invasion of Julius Caesar to his own time, when the conversion of all England to Christianity was only a few decades old.

The Strange Death of Marxism: The European Left in the New Millennium by Paul Gottfried. This is an interesting work of political analysis which reveals that the modern European left is far more influenced by American racial and sexual politics than by the thinking of Karl Marx.

Froissart’s Chronicles. This famous work of medieval prose history covers a broad range of subjects, including the Hundred Years War, the Avignon papacy, the English Peasants Revolt, and much more.

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope. The fourth of Trollope’s Barsetshire novels, with his usual combination of humor, combined with the examination of the serious issues of his day.

The Hollywood History of the World by George Macdonald Fraser. As someone with a lifelong interest in cinema, I first read this book when I was 16 and still love it. Written by a popular novelist and historian, the book is an entertaining survey of how Hollywood films have dealt with history from ancient world epics, to medieval and Tudor extravaganzas, from films about the British Empire to westerns and gangster movies.

Piers Shepherd is a freelance writer currently based in Colombia.

 

Edward Short:

My reading this past year was rather miscellaneous, though, to prepare for America’s 250th Birthday, I tried to read more books than usual on American history. Here is a list, followed by a brief commentary on some of the liveliest books.

American History

John Adams: Revolutionary and Other Writings (3 volumes, Library of America)

John Quincy Adams: Speeches and Writings (2025)

H.W. Brands: Founding Partisans: Hamilton, Madison, Jefferson, Adams and the Brawling Birth of American Politics (2023)

Ron Chernow: Mark Twain (2025)

Jospeh Ellis: The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of America’s Founding (2025)

Andrew J. O’Shaugnessy: Republic and Empire: Crisis, Revolution, and America’s Early Independence (2025)

Ron Chernow: George Washington

Bernard Bailyn: To Begin the World Anew: The Genius and Ambiguities of the American Founders (2003)

Henry Adams: The History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson 

Richard Brookhiser: Glorious Lessons: John Trumball: Painter of the American Revolution (2024)

Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy: Jefferson’s Idea of the University: The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind (2021)

Benjamin Franklin: Autobiography and Other Writings

Edward Geoffrey Stanley: A North American Tour Journal ed. Lisa A. Francavilla and Caroline Derby

George Wilson Pierson: Tocqueville in America (1938)

American Antislavery Writings: Colonial Beginnings to Emancipation (2012)

English History

The Marquess of Crewe: Lord Rosebery 2 volumes (1931)

Andrew Roberts: The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III (2021)

James Grant: Friends Until the End: Edmund Burke and Charles James Fox in the Age of Revolution (2025)

Paul Bew: Castlereagh: A Life (2012)

David Knowles: Saints and Scholars: Twenty-Five Medieval Portraits (1962)

Verse and Literary Criticism

Richard Wilbur: Collected Poems 1943-2004 (2004)

Richard Wilbur: The Catbird’s Song: Prose Pieces 1963-1995 (1997)

C.S. Lewis: A Preface to Paradise Lost (1942)

Biography

James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson edited by David Womersley (Penguin, 2008)

Susan Brigden: Thomas Wyatt: The Heart’s Forest (Faber, 2012)

Zachary Leader: Ellmann’s Joyce: The Biography of a Masterpiece and its Maker (2024)

Letters

Horace Walpole: Selected Letters edited by Stephen Clark (Everyman, 2017)

Samuel Johnson: Hyde Edition of Letters of Samuel Johnson ed. Bruce Redford (Princeton, 1997-8)

De Tocqueville: Letters from America edited by Frederick Brown (Yale, 2010)

T.S Eliot: Letters of T.S. Eliot, Volume Ten:1942-1944 (Faber, 2025)

Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs and Letters (Library of America, 1990)

Catholicism

Saint Thomas Aquinas: Selected Writings, ed. by Ralph McInerny

Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Personal Writings translated with introduction and notes by Joseph A. Munitz and Philip Endean (Penguin, 1986)

Women of the Catholic Imagination, edited by Haley Stewart (2025)

Matthew Levering: Newman on Doctrinal Corruption (2022)

Painting

Laurence Kanter and Pia Palladino: Fra Angelica (2006)

Fiction

V.S. Pritchett: Complete Stories (1991)

William Trevor: Collected Stories (2003)

Anton Chekhov: Collected Stories ed. Ronald Hingley 6 vols. (1965-80)

Music

Harvey Sachs: Toscanini: Musician of Conscience (2017)

Johannes Brahms: Life and Letters ed. Styra Avins (1997)

John Quincy Adams’ Speeches and Writings released this year in the Library of America series, shows how vital the series is for American history. John Quincy is never dull and often incisive, and proof that dynastic sons can prove fair matches for their more famous fathers.

James Grant’s book on Burke and Fox is a tour de force—well-researched, well-written, discriminating and full of the gentleman scholar’s trademark wit.

Paul Bew’s Castlereagh is a must for anyone fond of diplomatic history or keen on seeing Byron’s aspersions nicely refuted.

Richard Wilbur’s Collected Poems makes for sublime bedside reading, though its riddles will also fascinate the Nursery.

Grant’s Memoirs are even better on the second and third-time round. His English style is so impeccable.

T.S. Eliot’s Letters–brilliantly edited by John Haffenden–are delightful, especially the ones in Volume 10 to John Hayward, which show the poet’s playfulness & wit at their best.

Matthew Levering is the best scholar now at work on Newman—and Newman on Doctrinal Corruption shows why. Scholarly, discerning, just, and true, it is a model of what good Newman commentary should be.

For anyone fond of Johannes Brahms, Styra Avins’ edition of his letters is a joy.

David Womersley’s edition of Boswell’s Life of Johnson is worth getting for its index, which nicely complements the one R.W. Chapman compiled for the Life’s Oxford edition.

Women of the Catholic Imagination, edited by Haley Stewart, includes good essays by Amy Fahey on Sigrid Undset and Eleanor Nicholson on Josephine Ward, the wife of Wilfrid Ward, one of Newman’s better biographers, and the mother of Maisie Ward.

Lastly, if any reader cannot make the current Fra Angelico show in Firenze, Laurence Kanter’s and Pia Palladino’s catalogue published in conjunction with the Fra Angelico show held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2005-6 is a worthy substitute.

Edward Short, the Executive Director of the Chesterton Academy of Vero Beach, is the author, most recently, of What The Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews as well as Newman and his Critics, the final volume of his trilogy on Newman.

Carl R. Trueman

This year, I revisited the novels of Graham Greene, including his four Catholic novels. It reinforced my opinion that The End of the Affair, while at points powerful, is still contrived and rather spoiled by the triteness of the conversion narrative. The Power and the Gloryis far superior, wrestling with the specific theological point, first raised in the Donatist controversy of the early church, of whether the sacraments depend for their efficacy on the moral caliber of the priest. But Greene does so much more, reflecting too upon martyrdom, hagiography, and the moral dilemmas created when pastoral duty meets personal betrayal. And as always when I read it, I came away wondering why it is that a man of catastrophic personal morality and with such an ambiguous, even contentious, relationship to the Christian faith could yet produce such a great Christian novel.

In terms of non-fiction, I enjoyed—if that is the right word—Eric Cohen’s In the Shadow of Progress. He published the book in 2008, long before smartphones, AI, and transgenderism had become routine parts of American culture. The book is prescient, dismantling the ideology of progress and raising the question of what technological developments, unhindered by any larger ethical framework, would do to the question of what it means to be human. He also engages in dialogue with Christian thought, most positively with that of Catholicism, in his quest to find some positive vision for the future. It is one of those books that is, sadly, more true and relevant today than when it was first published.

Finally, I ended the year reading Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine for a forthcoming review at Public Discourse. In an age when good prose style seems to have been seriously wounded by the sloppy idioms fostered by social media, Kingsnorth writes beautiful and engaging prose. He is also one of the latest to address that issue raised by Cohen, of how to be human in an age not just dominated by but almost entirely mediated through advanced technology. I was skeptical when I opened the book, expecting another righteous diatribe by some anti-technology poseur who brags about not owning a computer but who conveniently forgets to mention that he can only do so because his literary agent, his publisher, and Amazon all own computers on his behalf. But no: Kingsnorth is an honest man, acknowledging that he is himself unavoidably embedded in this technological society but seeking to make his reader aware of how this shapes us all and suggesting ways to offer moments of resistance. I would describe the book as “delightful,” but the content is too disturbing for that. So perhaps “sublimely terrifying” is more appropriate.

Carl R. Trueman is Busch Family Visiting Research Fellow, Center for Citizenship and Constitutional Government, University of Notre Dame; Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center, D.C.

 

John Tuttle

2025 is a great year, one for the books! Ellen and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary and discovered, on Easter Sunday night, that we were expecting our first child. We continue to await our daughter’s arrival this month. As the responsibilities of one’s vocation pick up speed, one is pressed for time to read. I can still squeeze it into my morning and evenings, along with prayer.

I finished reading Aristotle for Everybody this year and enjoyed it. As someone who has not widely read Aristotle’s texts themselves, this is a helpful read. Two points the author makes that I struggle with: 1) Every human being needs to reach a certain financial status as part of the recipe for happiness. 2) When there is little or no expertise to weigh in on a matter, it’s probably safe to follow the majority opinion. I may be misconstruing Adler’s points, but I would respond this way: 1) The examples of many who live below their means by necessity and are happy and of many saints who have abstained from worldly goods and experience heavenly ecstasies, lead me to deny that people need to have a certain amount of money in order to succeed at happiness. 2) The majority opinion may be able to accurately weigh in on matters of simple observation, such as eyewitness testimony in a court. But the majority opinion cannot be trusted in matters of morality. There are many grave evils that are legal in this country right now, which meet the very low bar of the approval of the majority of the public.

My brother lent me a copy of a book of several Leo Tolstoy stories. I appreciated The Death of Ivan Ilyich, a novella that offers a cautionary tale to those of us who wish to avoid considering death, the reality that all of us must face. The story also softens the heart to be sympathetic to others who may struggle with a terminal illness. Like Ivan’s servant Gerasim, we can be a calm, supportive presence to those nearing the end of life, instead of dismissing them.

Child of These Tears by Molly McNett is a wonderful novel of Catholic flavor. I can’t recommend it enough.

I’m almost done with Paul Krause’s Dante’s Footsteps, a slender volume comprised of poems and essays. In his essays, Krause examines the works of Homer, Dante, and the Romantic poets through the lens of love, a love that can forget itself to the point of forgiving the wrongs one receives from others. Krause shows a love for the poets and an affinity to the teachings of St. Augustine.

Thanks to James R. Walters, I’ve been reading and journaling with his book A Dad Is Born. It is spiritually rewarding and the brief glimpses into his fatherhood are realistic and heartwarming.

Dr. Charles Camosy’s new book, Living and Dying Well: A Catholic Plan for Resisting Physician-Assisted Killing [CWR review], tackles the ongoing push toward a culture that normalizes assisted suicide. Camosy opts for “physician-assisted killing” or PAK to refer to the deliberate ending of a patient’s life, since those who ask for it are coerced in a number of ways. This environment of coercion inhibits a patient’s decision-making.

With a baby on the way, I have an excuse to seriously consider children’s literature. In that vein, Shadow of a Bull is a wonderful book for middle-schoolers and young teens about courage and purpose.

John Tuttle has a BA in journalism & mass communications and theology from Benedictine College.

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap.:

Having obtained my doctorate from King’s College, London, in the early/mid 1970’s and having later lived and taught at Oxford for thirteen years, I gradually came to love England—the food became remarkably better over the years. So, with great interest and anticipation, I read Joseph Pearce’s Faith of Our Fathers: A History of True England. The history of the Catholic Church in England is filled with heroic and saintly men and women, including kings and queens. It is also known for its love of Mary and so came to be called Our Lady’s Dowry. However, not all was well in merrie England. The reigns of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I saw many Catholic martyrs. It was also a time when many faithful lay Catholics hid courageous priests, many of whom were Jesuits and became martyrs themselves. With the rise of the Church of England as the state religion, the Catholic presence declined. However, that was not to last. Pearce also chronicles the Second Spring with the Oxford Movement and the time of Manning and Newman. Then there is the literary revival with such authors as Belloc and Chesterton. If one is drawn to the history of true England as a Catholic country, Pearce’s book is a good place to start, for there does abide the faith of our fathers.

One of the books that had a rather profound influence on me when I was a high school seminarian was G. K. Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I especially appreciated the chapter “The Paradoxes of Christianity.” Chesterton is noted for his love of paradoxes, and while such paradoxical insights may be perceptive and fun, they can become over-employed, and Chesterton may fall prey to this fault. Nonetheless, Chesterton noted all the ways in which Christianity is criticized. With great humor, he narrates how it was condemned for being too gloomy and for being too joyful. It was disparaged for being anti-intellectual and noted for its great philosophers and theologians. Thus, Chesterton concluded: “This began to be alarming. It looked not so much as if Christianity was bad enough to include any vices, but rather that any stick was good enough to beat Christianity with. What again could this astonishing thing be like, which people were so anxious to contradict, that in doing so they did not mind contradicting themselves?” While I admire Chesterton as an apologist for the truth of Christianity, I can only take him in small doses—that may be the paradox of Chesterton.

I have great admiration for the French philosopher Etienne Gilson. Over my years as a student and later as a theologian, Gilson has taught me much—particularly, the primacy of “being” as “act” within the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas. While Gilson was part of the Thomistic revival in the early mid-twentieth century, his philosophical influence has diminished, which I find somewhat troubling. He was a much better philosopher than his romantic contemporary J. Maritain. His Gifford Lectures of 1931-1932, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, is a classic rendering of the intellectual thought of the Middle Ages. Likewise, I also found his two small books helpful–God and Philosophy and Being and Some Philosophers. The first is an excellent analysis of how God is perceived in Greek philosophy, in Christian philosophy, and in Modern and Contemporary philosophy. The second treats the notion of “being” as “esse” in relationship to “substance” and “essence.” Although I do not anticipate a Gilsonian revival, I do want to acknowledge his philosophical acumen and recommend his many works to those interested in Thomistic Philosophy. I may be old-fashioned and a Thomist of a bygone age, but I proudly consider myself a Gilsonian Thomist.

Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, OFM, Cap. is a noted American theologian and the author of several books.

Amy Welborn

Before I could share the titles of the best books I read this year, I had to actually remember what books I’d read, period. The fact that I was so fuzzy about it all might be evidence of age, but it also might be evidence of a less-than-stellar year of book encounters—confirmed by what I found when I combed through my blog, where I write about much of what I’ve read, as well as my library records. Lots of contemporary fiction, most mildly enjoyable in the moment, but unfortunately, also forgettable. Obviously.

But we’re here to talk about the best! So let’s do that!

Some non-fiction titles, first:

Magic in the Cloister: Pious Motives, Illicit Interests, and Occult Approaches to the Medieval Universe (2013) by Sophie Black is a monograph with a very specific focus. It’s not a general introduction to magic in the Middle Ages, but rather a deep dive into magic-related materials contained in a large English monastic library. It provided helpful context for wading through some of the current discourse about “magic” and re-enchantment happening Catholic world.

The Medieval Womb: Hildegard of Bingen’s Views on the Female Reproductive Body(2025) by Minji Lee examines how Hildegard took the concept of “porosity,” which medieval saw characterizing the female body in a negative way, and turned it on its head—making it a locus for reproductive creativity, strength, and then a metaphor for the way God fashions and saves the human soul.

Holy Tears, Holy Blood: Women, Catholicism, and the Culture of Suffering in France, 1840-1970 (2004) by Richard D.E. Burton was a look at spiritualities focused on expiation and atonement, with an intriguing exploration of the ways Thérèse of Lisieux and her Little Way diverged from that tradition.

When it came to fiction, a great deal of my reading time, especially in the late summer and early fall, was spent re-reading Graham Greene in preparation for the annual “Graham Greene Festival” in his childhood home of Berkhamsted, a bit northwest of London. All of those—as well as a great deal of re-reading of Waugh and Walker Percy for other purposes — would have to take top place in my fictional “best books” list. But when it comes to new-to-me, here are the standouts:

Kafka’s In the Penal Colony, which I read, among other Kafka works, in preparation for seeing a Kafka exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City early this year.

(Yes, I’m a good student. I always prepare!)

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee. I saw a pretty good local production of the play, which led me down various rabbit holes of reading and viewing, and ultimately to read the play itself. I am thinking a lot about narratives, illusions, and authenticity these days, and Albee’s play is a painful, raw expression of the price paid for the artificial comfort found in avoiding the truth.

And now for a change of pace: The Ladies’ Paradise by Emile Zola. I love big, fat 19th and 20th century novels that explore a particular social setting—Trollope and Collins, sure, Dickens if you insist—and what does Zola serve up if not that?

This is the story of the rise of Parisian department stores, and as such, then, the story of the rise of consumerism. A little misogynist, I’d say, as Zola frames much of what he says by suggesting—more than suggesting—that the rise of the department store is mostly due to women’s suggestibility and pliability. The analogy is clearly of a seduction.

That aside—or just accepted as part of the landscape—I found it fascinating. And timely—for the issues are much the same as those we grapple with today: the impact of mass marketing and large-scale commerce on smaller, independent businesses, the shape of the economy and markets, and the community.

Finally, speaking of substantial novels that explore a particular moment—this present moment—we’ve got Glenn Arbery’s Gates of Heaven, published this fall by Wiseblood Books.

It’s the third volume of a trilogy, but you don’t need to have read the first two books (although you should!) in order to understand, appreciate, or enjoy this challenging, important novel.

The present-day setting is the strangeness and dislocation of the Covid Era, but woven into that landscape is the past: specifically, the life of William Tecumsah Sherman, and his March to the Sea. The heady richness of Gates of Heaven confronts us with Covid fever dreams, the weight of trauma and abuse, strained and broken souls and families, the rationalization and cost of all kinds of violence, but in the end, a vision, painfully won, that sees all of this, takes it all in, past and present, and shows a way to healing and wholeness.

Amy Welborn is a freelance writer. Her blog is Charlotte was Both. 

 

Chilton Williamson

Decades ago, while preparing for my oral examinations in American history at Columbia, I read Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, by Richard Hofstadter—a book I had reason to return to over the summer while reading up for a future project. It made an impression on me at the time, and an even greater one this time. Education is a subject that has commanded great interest in the United States since the early colonial period, mainly on account of the public importance it has in a democratic society and a democratic politics and never more so than today, when the contradiction between social and political egalitarianism, intellectual distinction, and educational integrity has again become a national issue, as much almost as it was at the beginning of the 20th century, following World War II, and the 1950s. As of this writing, the most recent national scandal in American education is the inability of a significant proportion of students in the University of California system to cope with mathematics at the grade-school level, owing to the appalling state of public elementary and secondary education, an inflationary grading system, DEI, and degraded admission standards currently set by American colleges and universities.

American educators have historically designed public school curricula with a practical education in mind, one suitable for pupils expected to graduate back to the farms, to apprenticeship, to the trades, later to the factories, and, in the case of girls, to the household and to motherhood, which, until the late 1940s, was the vast majority of them. In the early 1900s, what Mencken called “the pedagogues” conceived the idea of preparing students for “life,” which meant subjects such as “life adjustment” and included mysteries such as dental hygiene. And, shortly thereafter, the educational theories of John Dewey seduced the teaching profession with notions like the idea of the schoolroom as a microcosm of daily life outside the school, freed more or less from narrow “intellectualism” and dedicated to the development of the “normal” citizen. Following the war, in response to the Cold one, the arms race, and Sputnik, public education—and private too, at the university level—was directed toward “science” and technology. In the 1960s, students and their educators went left to concentrate on reimagining and revolutionizing society, where the majority of them have remained ever since.

Hofstadter’s thesis is that “intellectualism”—the life of the mind, more or less for its own sake—has historically been undervalued, if valued at all, in favor of practical utility, making money, reforming society, winning wars, building the Great Society, achieving racial equality, and so on and so forth. Richard Hofstadter, one of the few academic historians who has ever been able to write, was an eminently gracious stylist, whose work—sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, is an excellent vehicle for his many and disparate historical insights. In the case of this book, the unstated question to which he points is whether American political, social, and intellectual standards agree with the classical notion of civilization at all.

Chilton Williamson, Jr. is the author of several works of fiction, narrative nonfiction, and “pure” nonfiction, including After Tocqueville: The Promise and Failure of Democracy, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! A Novel and The End of Liberalism (St. Augustine’s Press, 2023). He has also written hundreds of essays, critical reviews, and short stories.

 

Tod Worner

It is always my pleasure to contribute to Catholic World Report’s “The Best Books I Read This Year” column, and an even greater joy to read what others have read. So here you go!

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

I try to read this one every year and each time I am awestruck by Dickens’ mastery of the artistry of words. The first time you read it, you comprehend what happened. Every time thereafter, you dive deeper into just what it means. Dickens is simply brilliant.

Fr. Gregory Pine’s Your Eucharistic Identity

A theological exploration of the Eucharist and our relationship to it is an absolute necessity in a world thick with warped concepts of self and fractured identities. As a one-time Protestant who didn’t quite “get” the Eucharist, I am now (as a Catholic) drawn more deeply into it thanks to Fr. Pine’s books (look for our conversation on a forthcoming Evangelization & Culture Podcast).

Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace

Well, I have to tackle it again. The sweeping narrative, the gorgeous prose, and the stunning apprehension of human nature that flows from Tolstoy’s pen is simply hard to match. Sink into that oversized chair and imbibe a monumental Russian novel this winter.

Albert Camus’ The Plague

I am re-reading The Plague as I teach it to my fourth-year medical students on my rotation, The Wisdom of Literature in a Time of Plague. The cast of characters (Rieux, Tarrou, Rambert, Grand, and Cottard) who populate this quarantined and plague-afflicted French Algerian town offer a dramatic unfolding not of what plague does to us, but of how we react to plague (and any massive trials of life). Camus, to my eyes, is God-haunted and a pleasure to read in his earnest struggles.

Thomas Albert Howard’s Broken Altars

Religion is the source of most modern violence, right? Religion fuel’s unmatched hatred, yes? In certain quarters or historical periods, this may have been the case. At this point in our world of “progress,” however, secularism has brutalized the world exponentially more than religion ever could. Rooted in Communism, Fascism, National Socialism, and certain forms of Socialism, Howard shows secular movements involved in a lot of violent egg-breaking, but no omelets to boast.

Adam Tomkins’ On the Law of Speaking Freely

A vital treatise on the history behind free expression and the fearsome appetites despots and movements have to crush it. A must-read for our modern ideological era.

Fr. Thomas Joseph White’s Contemplation & the Cross

Flannery O’Connor’s line about faith being misperceived as a big electric blanket, when, “in fact, it is the cross,” is captured in this thoughtful consideration of the suffering that twins grace in our faith. Fr. White is an intellectual giant whom I have been pleased to host on The Evangelization & Culture Podcast.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet

Literary critic Harold Bloom calls Hamlet, at once, “quintessentially human,” and “a mortal god in an immortal play.” I read Hamlet as a ninth-grader, received an “A” on my blue-book essay, and I had no idea what was going on. Since then, I have read it a dozen times and am utterly floored by the genius of Hamlet’s brokenness, his genius, and his erstwhile hope for immortality in his avenging act. Hamlet is a true masterpiece to be returned to again and again.

David Cayley’s Northrop Frye In Conversation

A fascinating jaunt into the mind of a brilliant literary critic. In addition to reading the works of bright minds, read the insights of bright minds about bright minds. Good stuff.

Fr. Michael Casey’s Balaam’s Donkey: Random Ruminations For Every Day of the Year

Fr. Casey, a monk at Tarrawarra Abbey in Australia, has his finger on the pulse of human nature, navigating clumsily through God’s Creation. A good friend pointed this work out to me and I have been endlessly pleased.

Tod Worner is a practicing internal medicine physician and serves as Editor-in-Chief of Bishop Robert Barron’s Evangelization & Culture, the Journal of the Word on Fire Institute, Evangelization & Culture Online, and hosts The Evangelization & Culture Podcast.