It’s once again one of our favorite times of year, when Just Security Editorial Board members and editors share books that they read in 2025 and would recommend.
Whether you’re looking for seasonal gifts or something to enjoy yourself this year — perhaps around a cozy fireplace or on a sunny beach, depending on your hemisphere — we hope that the books listed here might provide some inspiration.
Most of all, as we near the end of another year together, we would like to thank you, our readers, for being a part of the Just Security community. We hope that you will continue to turn to us for resources and analysis in the year ahead. If you appreciate our work, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here.
And now, with wishes for a meaningful season to you and yours, on to the books!
Kate Brannen
Murder the Truth: Fear, the First Amendment, and a Secret Campaign to Protect the Powerful by David Enrich. Under the second Trump administration, attacks on the press seem like a daily occurrence. Enrich’s book not only tells the story of how we got to this dismal state, but previews how much worse it could get if the Supreme Court overturns the New York Times v. Sullivan decision, which made it difficult for public figures to sue for defamation.
The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century by Tim Weiner. In October, Michael Ellis, the deputy director of the CIA, installed himself as the agency’s acting general counsel. One only needs to read a few pages of Weiner’s compelling new history of the CIA to understand what a colossally bad idea this is.
One Day, Everyone Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. This is one of the few books that I plan to read a second time. There are so many lines that I want to reread and spend more time thinking about. El Akkad makes vivid the daily horror from Gaza that has become background noise for so many of us. It is an enormous privilege to travel with him through time as he grapples with his heartbreak over Gaza and what it has revealed to him about the West.
David Cole
38 Londres Street by Phillipe Sands. The twisted tale of the effort to hold Augusto Pinochet, former head of state of Chile, accountable for torture and other crimes. Sands writes like a detective novelist, and his story is filled with surprising twists and turns. The subject matter: holding heads of state liable for their crimes, could not be more timely.
The Director by Daniel Kehlman. Historical fiction based on the true story of an eminent German film director who got trapped in Austria/Germany under Hitler, and had to negotiate a society ruled by terror.
Continental Drift by Russell Baker A book written in the 1980s, but so relevant to what is going on in the United States today. A tale of a working class white guy from New Hampshire and a Haitian refugee, both headed to Florida to live the American dream. Their paths ultimately cross, but in the meantime Banks portrays the desperation of people facing desperate circumstances and the false promises that America (and especially Florida) have to offer.
Megan Corrarino
The Unworthy by Agustna Bazterrica, translated by Sarah Moses. At once beautifully lyrical and deeply unsettling, this work of climate fiction is a story lingers long after you’ve read it. I’d also recommend it alongside the 2021 Michael Nivea short story Dengue Boy (trans. Natasha Wimmer), another piece of climate fiction by a contemporary Argentine author, which I went back and re-read after The Unworthy.
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. I revisited this childhood classic earlier this year while looking at stories that articulate the American experience, thinking in part about how narratives of the United States will likely be contested amidst America 250 events in the coming year. Written in connection with the United States’ bicentennial, this spirited short novel has much to say about the ways in which our shared identities are shaped that I appreciated in a new light re-reading as an adult—and the joy of the characters and the puzzle at the heart of the plot still remain a delight, these many years later.
Viola Gienger
Putin’s Sledgehammer: The Wagner Group and Russia’s Collapse Into Mercenary Chaos by Candace Rondeaux. A meticulously researched and vividly written account of the Wagner Group’s evolution and what it says about Russia and current times.
The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West by Shaun Walker. Astounding detail lays out the secret lives and work of the Soviet Union’s and later Russia’s deep-cover operatives in the United States and elsewhere in the West.
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Last chance to take the opportunity of its 100th anniversary year to read (or re-read). Somehow still relevant and revealing: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
Rebecca Hamilton
Man Up by Cynthia Idriss Miller Fearless Speech by Mary Anne Franks. Idriss Miller’s newly published Man Up (2025) illuminates the misogynistic roots that nurture violent extremism. The relationship between misogyny and the many online and offline harms that societies here and around the world face, is so prevalent as to have fallen into un-remarkability. It takes a book like Idriss Miller’s to render visible something that is hiding in plain sight. I would suggest pairing it with Franks’ Fearless Speech (2024). Both Idriss Miller and Franks are feminist scholars with impeccable academic credentials, who have mastered the tough art of making scholarship accessible to a mainstream audience. Both also use their knowledge to advance real-world change through, in Idriss Miller’s case, the Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL) and in Frank’s case, the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI). Read, engage, and get inspired by what these scholars are accomplishing.
Playground by Richard Powers. As is typical of Powers, you get a gorgeously compelling read that manages to leave you, for weeks in its aftermath, reflecting on some of society’s most pressing challenges: climate change, race relations, and artificial intelligence.
Adil Haque
One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad. Winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Nonfiction. This is not a book about Gaza. This is a book about America. Who are we? What have we become? Why did we arm, fund, and support the killing, maiming, starvation and displacement of tens of thousands of civilians for over two years, under two Presidents of both political parties? How do we live in a country with so much blood on its hands? How do we share political community with people who supported mass atrocities and feel no remorse? Should we withdraw in disgust and resignation? Or stand and fight for a better future, finding allies at home and inspiration from the people of Gaza who refuse to be destroyed?
Shattered Lands: Five Partitions and the Making of Modern Asia by Sam Dalrymple. The British once ruled a vast and varied empire stretching from Aden to Burma. This vivid and gripping book traces its dissolution and the emergence of twelve independent states, not only in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, but also in Myanmar, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Foreign domination receded and violent nationalism spread, leaving contested borders between states and persecuted minorities within them. For the sake of the future, self-determination must belong to the whole people of each state without distinction of race or creed.
Eliav Lieblich
The New Haven School: American International Law by Ríán Derrig. This is a fantastic and fascinating book, which manages to capture both the personal trajectory of those behind one of the most influential schools of modern international law, and the school’s interrelations with American legal, political, and philosophical thought more broadly. If you’ve been educated on the idea that international law is inevitably shaped by policy objectives but also worry about the ways this can be abused, this book will certainly resonate. It also demonstrates well the almost intentional vagueness of the New Haven school, which is simultaneously everywhere and nowhere in international legal discourse. And it’s also open access!
Iran’s Grand Strategy: A Political History by Vali Nasr. This book came out a month before the Israel-Iran-US conflict in the summer of 2025, and I bought it when the war broke out to get a deeper understanding of the players involved. This book is essential for understanding Iran in the most objective way possible, in terms of its ideology, strategy, and specific concerns (and particularly its relations with its proxies); but it also tells us broader things about the world: the ways in which what one perceives as “defense” can be viewed by others as aggression; how states and peoples fundamentally misread one another; the relationship between ideology and realpolitik; and how using force, domestically and internationally, can ultimately backfire.
The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth by J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley. In difficult times there is much comfort in fantasy, and Tolkien is of course the unparalleled master. But this newly edited collection of his writings about the catastrophic decline of the island kingdom of Númenor brings together themes that not only provide escapism, but also lessons applicable today: about how internal divisions lead to disaster; how imperialism never ends well; and what happens when human beings pick up a fight with nature itself.
Barbara McQuade
Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy by Joyce Vance. Part civics class, part history lesson, part how-to manual, this book provides insights and hope during these dark times for our democracy. Writing in a conversational style, Joyce Vance makes our institutions and the rule of law accessible for readers of any background.
The Gales of November by John U. Bacon. John U. Bacon’s recount of the ill-fated final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald in a savage storm on Lake Superior is gripping, even though we know how this one ends, thanks to the famed song by Gordon Lightfoot. This could be a painfully sad story, but Bacon makes it uplifting by focusing on the legacies the men left for their families.
Mark Nevitt
The Outlier: The Unfinished Presidency of Jimmy Carter by Kai Bird. Since moving to Atlanta, GA, I have been fascinated with former President Jimmy Carter, a Navy nuclear engineer who left the Navy to return to his family farm in Plains, Georgia, and later became Georgia Governor and U.S. President. “The Outlier” presents a nuanced and compelling reassessment of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, exploring why this brilliant, principled, and deeply moral leader struggled in the Oval Office yet found unprecedented purpose and impact in the decades that followed. The book moves beyond the simplistic narrative of Carter as a failed president to examine the complexities of his single term—his prophetic warnings about energy and human rights that were ahead of their time, his embrace of environmental issues, and his indefatigable efforts to forge the Camp David Accords. The author, Kai Bird, highlights that the Reagan campaign may well have undermined efforts to bring American hostages home from Iran in an effort to win the 1980 election. By tracing Carter’s remarkable post-presidential career alongside his time in office, the book offers a thought-provoking meditation on what we value in our leaders, how we measure presidential success, and whether history’s first draft always gets it right.
Fionnuala Ní Aoláin
Chasing Shadow: Cyber Espionage, Subversion and the Global Fight for Democracy by Ron Deibert. This has the pace of a thriller and the feel of a crime novel but essentially recounts the origin story and work of the mighty band of human rights advocates based at Citizen Lab in Toronto, Canada. Ron Deibert is Citizen Lab’s founder and director, and this tale is about global digital security, the violence it causes to people, organizations and community, and the impossible task of naming, shaming and holding the companies who practice mercenary spyware and other ills accountable. In a time when we need to affirm the work the “good guys and girls” are doing; this is that book.
The Garden Against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing, which I recommend for sheer beauty and retreat from the world. As someone who discovered my garden during Covid and has learnt that the balm against overwork and fraying is to embrace the natural world, this book offers an immersion in the idea of creating paradise. It melds the literature and poetry of ideas of paradise with the common sense of building a garden. Part memoir, part tract, and part encyclical the book offers insights on democracy, humanity and beauty. The book is many-roomed, exhilarating and bountiful.
Laura Rozen
Enjoying the new William Boyd cold war spy trilogy, Gabriel’s Moon, and The Predicament; and the audiobooks of three Agatha Christie spy novels: Destination Unknown; They Came to Baghdad; Passenger to Frankfurt.
Spy at War by Charles Beaumont is prescient.
Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst is a masterpiece.
Andrew Weissmann
The Hour of the Predator by Giuliano Da Empoli.
Injustice: How Politics and Fear Vanquished America’s Justice Department by Carol Loennig and Aaron Davis.
Porcelain War documentary by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev.
Orwell: Two Plus Two = Five documentary by Raoul Peck on George Orwell.
