My Top 7 Reads in 2025

Hello, and Happy 2026!

It feels good to be writing here again.

As many of you know, I spent last fall in a full-out sprint through my book’s presale campaign. While exciting, the combination of my high-pressure day job and the demands of a book marketing effort pushed me to the brink. I needed the end of 2025 to sleep, recharge, and get my mind right over the holidays.

But despite not posting here, I did not stop writing. On the contrary, I’ve been hard at work since mid-November — deep in the trenches of refining my manuscript for its April publication.

Before we dive into my top reads from last year, I do have two quick updates regarding my work:

With the housekeeping out of the way, let’s get into the core of today’s post: the best books I read last year.

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In his memoir, On Writing, Stephen King wrote: “If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.”

I’ve taken this advice to heart these past few years. In 2024, I read 79 books. If you’d like to check out the top nine I read from that list, click here.

Determined to beat that output, I pushed that number to 91 last year. While I missed my stretch goal of 100 due to my chaotic end-of-year, I’m happy with the final total.

For a list of all 91 books I finished last year, click here.

Below are the seven books that left the biggest mark.

I made my way through a few of King’s books this year, and several could have easily made this list — It, The Long Walk, and 11/22/63, to name a few. But The Stand was the first one I consumed and is still my favorite. It also marks a personal milestone: it was the first audiobook I ever listened to. I had long held an aversion to the medium, feeling that it was somehow “cheating.” But after some nudging from my friend Andy, I took the plunge. I’m glad I did — audiobooks have proven to be the perfect companion for my daily walks.

The story begins with a terrifying premise: a deadly, government-engineered super-flu known as “Captain Trips” leaks from a lab and wipes out over 99% of the world's population. King throws us into the chaos from the start, chronicling the terrifying spread of the virus and the swift collapse of civilization. From there, the narrative shifts to the survivors — their coping, realization that the world has changed forever, and desperate journeys to find others to rebuild society. All the while, a classic battle between good and evil unfolds toward an ultimate showdown.

The Stand is a monster of a book — the 47-hour audio production took me almost a month to finish, but it was worth every minute. King’s attention to detail, world-building, and symbolism are incredible. The character development is deep. I found myself near tears several times as I followed the journeys of Stu Redman, Fran Goldsmith, and Tom Cullen (M-O-O-N, that spells awesome). It is rare for a thriller to elicit that kind of emotional response, but King earns it.

I discovered that with a compelling story and a great narrator, audiobooks are an awesome way to consume fiction (though I still prefer physical copies for nonfiction). The Stand didn't just entertain me; it hooked me on the medium and solidified my appreciation for King. If you are looking for an epic tale that explores the fragility of society and the resilience of the human spirit, I highly recommend this book.

I read this book over the summer, fittingly while I was on vacation. From the very beginning, I knew I was in for a treat. The opening pages discuss how Herodotus “will appear and just as quickly vanish,” reminding me that we often live on through the studies of others. It struck me how books often find us exactly when we are ready for them. Kapuściński was introduced to Herodotus early in life but wasn't yet ready for the connection; later, the timing was perfect. It makes you wonder how many different paths our lives can take and how it feels like destiny when we are reintroduced to something vital at the right moment.

Kapuściński, a legendary Polish journalist, weaves his own experiences as a foreign correspondent with the ancient writings of Herodotus. In doing so, he illustrates that writing is an act of time travel. To truly understand an author’s ideas, you have to understand their perspective and context at the time they wrote it. The Stoic idea of having “conversations with the dead” comes to mind. Kapuściński converses with Herodotus across millennia, finding that while the technology has changed, human nature has not. As he notes, “The past does not exist. There are only infinite renderings of it.”

The book is deeply concerned with the concept of the other. Kapuściński writes that “what was important was not the destination... but the almost mystical and transcendent act. Crossing the border.” Whether it was the “Great Wall of Language” or physical borders, he portrays the fear and uncertainty that rise up when we encounter the unknown. Yet, he fights against the tribalism that divides us. In a moving passage about seeing starving people in India, he realizes that “living skeletons such as these were my brothers, kindred souls.” It is a powerful reminder that we cannot forget our humanity or allow ourselves to become numb to others' suffering.

As a systems thinker, I was particularly drawn to his observations on the complexity of civilizations. Describing India, he notes how castes are divided into subcastes, and sub-subcastes, “into infinity.” It is a world of systems and subsystems, much like fractals. Kapuściński observes that “every distinct geographic universe has its own mystery,” and without learning the language and the system, it remains impenetrable.

Ultimately, Travels with Herodotus is a call to curiosity. Kapuściński laments that “the average person is not especially curious about the world... whereas learning about the world is labor.” He challenges us not to be average, always staying curious and humble in a never-ending quest for knowledge. This book is a beautiful reminder that history is merely an “uninterrupted progression of presents,” and that we must remain humble, curious, and open to the wonders of the world.

Many of the books I read in 2025 were selected to support the research and writing of my own book. While Poor Charlie’s Almanack wasn’t originally on my research list, I found myself returning to it constantly throughout the writing process. Munger’s insights figure prominently in my chapters on incentives, mental models, and human psychology. Why? Because Munger was an incredible thinker — a true polymath who knew a lot about a lot.

Munger never sat down to write a traditional book, so this volume — compiled by Peter Kaufman — is the closest thing we have to a codified record of his philosophy. The book is a collection of eleven talks Munger gave at various venues, capturing his wit and wisdom in his own words. The title is a homage to one of Munger’s heroes, Benjamin Franklin, the author of Poor Richard’s Almanack. Like Franklin, Munger was a lifelong learner who believed in adopting the best thinking from others.

Munger’s influence on my thinking is so profound that I actually feature him in the hook of my chapter on Mental Models:

Poor Charlie’s Almanack is the definitive guide to building that latticework. It is full of timeless wisdom that goes far beyond investing. I loved this book, and I am certain it will be a resource I revisit for the rest of my life.

I love books and Ancient Greek and Roman history, so I was already eager to read Papyrus. However, after reading the first 25 pages, I was blown away. It was not the book I expected, in the best of ways. While Vallejo packs the text with the history of how books evolved over time, she masterfully weaves her own experiences throughout. It is full of passion, wonderful thoughts, and quotes — a true love letter to books. I enjoyed this book so much that I wrote a lengthier post about it earlier this year.

Vallejo takes us on a journey through books, how they influenced culture, evolved, and spread ideas throughout history. Much of it focuses on the civilizations of Ancient Greece, Egypt, and Rome. While writing was invented long before the Greeks and Egyptians, and books evolved significantly after the Romans, they took hold during this period and cemented their place as one of the greatest inventions in history.

Papyrus opens in Alexandria, home to the Great Library, one of the wonders of the ancient world. Vallejo writes of Alexander the Great and his conquests, noting that he was a lover of books and slept with a copy of The Iliad along with a dagger under his pillow. Alexander wanted to live through eternity — a mission accomplished, as his legend persists in memory today. After he died, one of his generals, Ptolemy, became the first king of Egypt and built the Great Library and the Museum of Alexandria in Alexander’s honor as a way to “bring together all existing books in a symbolic, intellectual, and peaceful way of possessing the world.”

That was just the first 50 pages; I was hooked for the rest. It was such a beautiful read that I can’t recommend it enough.

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas; they exchange images.”

Reading this quote, you might think it was pulled from a recent viral essay in The Atlantic about the state of social media. Instead, Neil Postman wrote these words in 1985. Who would have thought that a book written forty years ago about the impact of television would be so remarkably prescient today?

Postman’s central argument is that the medium of our communication shapes the content of our culture. He warned that the shift from a print-based to an image-based culture was leading to a slippage in serious public discourse. If that was true of television in 1985, it is much truer in 2026 in the era of TikTok and YouTube. We live in a world where complex issues are dumbed down into tiny clips and digestible pictures. As our ability and desire to read and understand complex text diminishes, our politicians have ceased to make sense; instead, they simply play to the cameras.

The most striking part of the book is Postman’s distinction between two dystopian visions: George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Postman argues that while we were busy guarding against Orwell’s vision of state-imposed oppression and book banning, we failed to notice that we were slipping into Huxley’s nightmare. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information; Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity.

This book is about the possibility that Huxley was right. Reading it forty years after publication, it is hard to argue otherwise. Postman doesn't offer a concrete solution to the problem — and I admit I don't have one either — but he clearly diagnoses the illness. Amusing Ourselves to Death is a sobering read that helps explain why our modern world feels the way it does.

I’ve read a lot of books on Stoicism. I have covered the original texts — Meditations, Letters from a Stoic, and The Enchiridion — and I’ve devoured the modern works of Ryan Holiday and the academic rigor of Ward Farnsworth. At this point, it is rare to find a book on the subject that spurs genuinely new thoughts. So, when I picked up How to Be a Stoic a few months ago, I was skeptical. I didn't think it would offer much I hadn't seen before. But boy, was I wrong.

Like Holiday, Pigliucci’s work is a modern guide to Stoicism, but with a unique narrative twist. He centers his exploration entirely around Epictetus, using the ancient philosopher as a main character and holding imaginary conversations with him throughout the text. Pigliucci explores how to apply Stoic principles to modern challenges — love, money, anxiety, and loneliness — recognizing that these are problems common to humanity across time. The Ancient Stoics struggled with them 2,000 years ago, just as we do today.

For those who appreciate structure, the book is organized around Epictetus’s three disciplines:

It was a wonderful look at the philosophy and how one can attempt to integrate it into their daily life. Pigliucci is refreshingly honest and vulnerable, showing that Stoicism is a lifelong journey rather than something we learn once. It is not something we ever fully master; rather, we must show up and practice every single day. Even if you think you have read everything there is to read on Stoicism, I recommend adding this one to your shelf.

I picked up this book in March, shortly after signing my publishing contract. I was wandering the aisles of a bookstore in New York, looking for inspiration, when the title jumped out at me. Part of my own problem statement is that we are slowly atrophying our thinking abilities, so this book seemed relevant.

While Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow is the gold standard for deep academic work on our cognitive shortcomings, Dobelli’s book is perhaps the best practical summary I have found. It is not as dense as Kahneman’s, but it covers more ground, detailing 99 specific cognitive biases. From the Sunk Cost Fallacy (persisting in a mistake because of what you’ve already invested) to Survivorship Bias (overestimating success because failures are invisible), Dobelli makes these concepts accessible to a broad audience. With each chapter running only three or four pages, the book packs a huge punch and serves as an incredible reference guide for our fallible human minds.

What I learned is that none of us are immune to these errors. Our brains evolved for a hunter-gatherer environment, not for the complexities of modern finance or social media algorithms. However, we can combat these biases simply by being aware of them. As Dobelli notes, “We need no extra cunning, no new ideas, no unnecessary gadgets... all we need is less irrationality.”

The book concludes with a powerful concept that resonates deeply with my Stoic roots: Via Negativa. We cannot always say exactly what brings us success, but we can pinpoint what blocks or obliterates it. Negative knowledge (what not to do) is often more potent than positive knowledge. By focusing on eliminating the downside — our clear thinking errors — the upside often takes care of itself. Reading this book will make you smarter, or at the very least, significantly less dumb.

For 2026, I am not trying to beat my total of 91 books. Instead, my goal is to be more purposeful with what and how I read.

If you’ve read any books recently that changed your perspective, I’d love to hear about them. Reply to this email or leave a comment below.

Please stay tuned for more posts in the coming months as we approach the launch of The Stoic Systems Thinker.

All the best,
Mike