Summer Reading List 2025

Summer Reading List 2025

R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

July 7, 2025

Hello, I’m Albert Mohler.

Welcome to In the Library.

I’m going to talk about my 2025 summer reading list. And it’s not just for summer. These books would be read for profit at just about any time, but summer is an unusual season for reading for a lot of people. And I just share this from one reader to other readers in the hope that this might be helpful. And I’ll tell you right up front my summer reading list, the books that most interest me, they tend towards the world of history and biography. They tend towards some special interests that have just been a part of my reading life for most of my life. And it’s not so much fiction—I look forward to sharing some fiction lists—but this is mostly nonfiction, and history and biography in particular.

And that leads me to say the first books I’m going to talk about are books that are coming out in anticipation of the 250th anniversary of the United States in 2026. So we’ve got a big anniversary coming and just consider this: for the last few years of a good, many historians and writers have been anticipating this anniversary. It’s a great opportunity for reflection. It’s a good opportunity for revisiting a lot of the big history and also some of the smaller stories of the American Revolution. It’s a good time to put it into context, and it’s a good opportunity to focus attention. and so you’re going to be seeing a lot of books come out.

 

 

Rick Atkinson, The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston 1777-1780: Volume 2 of The Revolution Trilogy (Crown, 2025)

I honestly think the most important publishing event in terms of the American Revolution and the anniversary, the 250th anniversary, is going to be The Revolution Trilogy by Rick Atkinson. And so you look at this particular book and you see that already we have two volumes out. The first volume has been out for a couple of years.

Now we have The Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston 1777-1780. And thus you know that a third volume is coming. And you also know that this is someone who’s accomplished this kind of work in the past. So Rick Atkinson, skilled historian, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, his trilogy on D-Day and the end of the war, his Liberation Trilogy, absolutely brilliant.

And I’ll just share with you that when you look at the first volume and its size, and you know that there are going to be three volumes, you have to wonder if an author can pull this off. That’s an awful lot of work. Those are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. Is the reading going to be worth it? When it came to The Liberation Trilogy, the answer is resoundingly yes. And I’m certain the same is going to be true for this trilogy.

It is already true of the first volume, the second volume Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston. Again, extremely interesting, a lot of historical detail, but incredibly well done. And I think in many ways it’ll be the authoritative work coming out of this anniversary period.

There are other various established American historians doing some excellent work. I was looking forward to this one:

 

 

John Ferling, Shots Heard Round the World: America, Britain and Europe in the Revolutionary War. (Bloosmbury, 2025)

The subtitle in this book kind of gives away its importance. It’s not just about the American Revolution, it is about America, Britain, and Europe in the Revolutionary War. So that leads me to a theme of some of my recommendations today for summer reading. I think it’s good that we be able to step back and put the events of the American Revolution in a larger context.

There are those who have argued that the Revolutionary War as we know it, which of course was tied to a long war between Great Britain and France, which was also tied to other military events, and tied to the fact that both of those European nations had extensive empires, particularly the British Empire and all of that was at stake. There are those who have argued that what we know as the Revolutionary War, the war for American independence was actually one very important manifestation of what was truly the first world war. And that is because the Old World and the New World were very much at war. Now of course, we’re looking at this from the perspective of knowing that the American Revolution ended with American independence, but there are other world shaking stories, a part of that ongoing war.

John Furling, a very, very fine historian and also a good writer, he has written previous books including Winning Independence. This one: Shots Heard Round the World is really important because of the context he gives very well written, drives us through the reading of the book, and you’ll put your understanding of the American War of Independence up a notch and you’ll also have a greater understanding for that context. It’s really helpful.

Now, when you put all this in an even larger context of Revolution, well that points to the importance of this book:

 

 

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made It. (Basic Books, 2024)

Now this book and the author’s intention in the book is to demonstrate that the American Revolution was really a part of a larger age of revolution. Now, I think a lot of Americans miss that point, they miss the larger context and they make very few connections between the American Revolution and revolutions that took place elsewhere. I think most Americans know about the French Revolution that came of course pretty fast on the heels in historical terms, on the American Revolution. I think many Americans would be able to offer at least some contrast between the American Revolution and the French Revolution. The American Revolution was towards order, and the French Revolution was really, I think, towards disorder. But it’s really important to put all this into context and on several continents, and that is what Nathan Perl-Rosenthal does in this book, The Age of Revolutions and the Generations Who Made it, it will introduce you to a lot of revolutionary history you really didn’t know, and the revolutions and places you may never have considered. Like every kind of work that’s of revisionist history, there’s some revisionism here. A part of this is kind of the representation of history from below. So it’s not only about George Washington and George III, it is about figures at just the human level, men and women whose names probably haven’t been in the history books before, but whose lives and whose perspectives on these issues do help us to understand the larger context.

A lot of these books make some judgments, even political judgments, even brought into the contemporary age. Just remember, you can read a book without agreeing with all the judgments. As a matter of fact, you often are a better reader and a better thinker for having to think about some of the judgments that are made. In any event, the age of revolution, the American Revolution, these are important books and I recommend all three. And I would say as you look at the Atkinson book and the trilogy, that’s a major commitment of time. But I’ll tell you those who read The Liberation Trilogy, now it’s time well spent.

Alright, also from the same era sort of and looking at American history in a very focused way, I’m going to recommend:

 

 

Russell Shorto, Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events that Created New York and Shaped America. (W.W. Norton, 2025)

Now Shorto has written about New York before his previous book was The Island at the Center of the World. And if you just take one island, Manhattan, I think a lot of Americans don’t even think of it as an island, but it is. If you take Manhattan, and you take the importance of what we know as the island of Manhattan in the history of North America, it’s pretty massive. It may not be the city which is on an island at the center of the world, but it’s hard to argue against the importance of the city we know as New York. Russell Shorto takes us back in both of these books, but in particular in this book, he takes to the transition from Dutch Manhattan to English New York, a very interesting story. Once again, he does some really good investigative work and once again, he brings to voice some people and some stories we otherwise would not know. He makes some political judgements at the end of the book that I didn’t totally appreciate. But you know what I appreciate his very skillful telling of the story. And once again, his points and arguments really do make me think. And without question, the history of Manhattan and I think particularly in this period, should be of real interest to Americans and not only to New Yorkers. New York is a part of our lives whether we live there or not.

We also know that a good bit of history is about some of the biggest worldview issues, some of the most important battles of ideas. And in recent history there is no battle of ideas more important than understanding the reality, the threat, the history, the context of communism. And that’s why I want to recommend this book:

 

 

Sean McMeekin, To Overthrow the World, the Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. (Basic Books, 2024)

So again, I guess just as a reading hint, let me suggest you pay attention to subtitles because the title’s a way of getting your attention, and certainly the title should convey the meaning and significance of the book. But, the subtitle often tells you what the argument is going to be. So let’s look at that subtitle again, The Rise and Fall and Rise of Communism. So it really is a very interesting book. It takes us back, of course, to the origins of Marxism and the development of communism. It takes us to Russia, but it also takes us to China and it takes us elsewhere. When you talk about the rise and fall and rise, well just think of contrasting stories here. Just think of the Soviet Union, but then think of China and the power of that communist regime and the Communist Party in China even now. It’s a really interesting story, huge worldview dimensions, and it will change the way you look at the world, not only the way you look at say, today’s China.

 

 

Joseph Torigan, The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping (Stanford University Press, 2025)

Speaking of China and communism, I’m going to recommend a book that’s heavy. And by the way, it’s heavy in more ways than one. It’s physically heavy. And that’s another little publishing thing. Sometimes it’s just about the weight of the paper on which the book is printed. So you can have a heavy book and content published on light paper. You can have a light book and content published on heavy paper. This is heavy and heavy.

But I’m recommending it because it is unprecedented and it will offer you an understanding of some of the biggest names in the contemporary world, particularly in China, particularly Xi Jinping, the head of the Communist Party and the head of the totalitarian government under the Communist Party in China, one of the most important figures of our age, I think that should just simply be recognized as a fact, one of the most important figures of our age.

This book is: The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping. So now you have the father, Western sources, Western intelligence, China Watchers, the old China hands have been very familiar with the story of Xi Zhongxun. And that is because he rose in so many ways into the highest ranks of the Communist party, only then to fall. And the story of the Father, in this case, Xi Zhongxun, helps us to understand the story of Son Xi Jinping. Now, I think most of us would agree that when you have a father and a son, it’s extremely helpful if you want to know the son to come to know the father. And in this case, there’s plenty of documentation about Xi Zhongxun and his rise and his fall, and then the unprecedented rise of his son. And by the way, all of this came in ways that reveal how communism works, how the Communist party works. It is at times a fairly horrifying story. I think it’s an incredibly important story. And I think as you think of the importance and the strategic nature of China right now, the worldview challenge of communism, right now, it’s not just the rise and fall and rise of communism, that is an important story. It’s the particular story, the biography of Xi Jinping. But behind that, this historical work concerning his father, and this is a biography, but it’s more than a biography. It really is an incredibly well-researched, and I think it will become an authoritative understanding of China in this period, which is, it’s really important for understanding China now. As I say, without apology, this isn’t really beach reading like a murder mystery. This is heavier work, but I’ll also tell you it’s compelling.

 

 

Dan Jones, Henry V: The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King (Viking, 2024)

Speaking of history, sometimes history can come to us in a way that is written in such a way, it can be picked up and you can read a chapter now, you can read a chapter later, you can put it all together. One of the compelling figures of history, I’m recommending Dan Jones’s biography of Henry the V. He identifies Henry V as England’s greatest warrior king, and thus the subtitle, The Astonishing Triumph of England’s Greatest Warrior King.

Dan Jones has written a lot of popular history, particularly of Great Britain, particularly of monarchs. And this is an example of a kind of book, and this came up recently, on Henry V, a major figure, not only in British history, but I would say in the history of Western civilization. And it’s offered here with all the drama of monarchy. It’s offered here with frankly the violence of monarchy and of the age. You’ll understand the medieval age better and you’ll of course understand the story of Henry the V. You need at times not to apologize for being drawn to a book, which you’re not reading for academic purposes, and you’re not trying to read in terms of someone who comes at this arguing to the scholarly world. Some of the best history is history that is just written for everybody. And there’s a reason why this kind of history is so important.

 

 

Ron Chernow, Mark Twain (Penguin, 2025)

Magisterial biographies, when we use that term, we mean big biographies that are likely to be authoritative. Ron Chernow, who’s a major American biographer and of course won the Pulitzer Prize, he’s written several other biographies and I would say all of them I think are really important. I love his biography entitled Titan on John D. Rockefeller. But this is his new biography on Mark Twain. Again, it’s a big book. You’re not going to just carry this in your pocket. Are you interested in Mark Twain? Well, my guess is that whether or not you are really interested in Mark Twain, you certainly know of Mark Twain’s influence or think you know about his influence in terms of American history. I would suggest that when you look at this particular biography, which is kind of warts and all, it reminds us that we really understand and age through some of the lives that become representative of that age. And so I think in that light, this biography of Mark Twain, which is going to be I think the authoritative, definitive biography of Mark Twain, it helps us to understand America and for that matter of the world. But most importantly America, and American thought, and American life, and American culture, and American narratives—It helps us to understand these things in a very powerful way.

Chernow is I think a particularly skilled biographer. And so I will just say, I’ll just read anything he puts out, but that doesn’t mean I recommend everything he puts out in terms of the subject matter. And so in this case, it is kind of middle ground for me, Mark Twain’s, not someone with whom I have an enormous amount of fascination. But I do understand you can’t understand America, and the American mind, and even much of American history without understanding Mark Twain and his role in that history. So again, I recommend this just incredibly done, skillfully done. And in the end, authoritative.

 

 

Jonathan Horn, The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. (Scribner, 2025)

As I’m sharing this list with you, I’ll also tell you I don’t apologize for certain preoccupations, subjects that have interested me deeply and in many cases since I was a boy. And that’s certainly true of World War II and I think World War II is so compelling to us. And just consider this: every month, several titles are published on World War ii, and that has been true ever since World War II. So ever since World War ii, there have not just been a couple, there have been several, sometimes many books published on World War II every month since the war itself ended. That tells you something about its significance. It’s significant in my life. I wasn’t alive during World War II. My parents were, my grandparents were. I had an uncle who was a mustang fighter pilot there in the war to liberate Europe. And I had so many other relatives who were part of the war. The war greatly impacted every American life. And when I grew up, I grew up around a lot of men who were veterans of World War II. Every one of them seemed to have an incredible story to tell.

I will tell you that my life experienced just a remarkable moment when my Sunday school teacher, when I was a seventh grade boy, took an object to our class and teaching seventh grade boys is by any measure, not the easiest thing to do in the world. But he certainly had our attention when he told us the story of what it meant to be a Nazi prisoner of war during World War II, I was surrounded by those stories. I always wanted to know more. I wanted to know how to connect the dots. And so you do that sometimes by reading big, authoritative, big tapestry histories of World War II. You do that knowing that it was the largest world war in terms of its reach of human history. And you understand there are two theaters: the European Theater, which has received most of the attention, the allied effort against Nazi Germany has received most of the attention, the allied effort against Imperial Japan, less attention, but also some giant figures.

One of those figures was Douglas MacArthur. And from the very beginning, there were people who loved Douglas MacArthur and people who hated him, and they’re historians who like him and historians who don’t like him, but an incredible amount of attention is but given to Douglas MacArthur. And you can understand why he lived one of those giant lives on the cloth of world history, and especially the history of the 20th century and especially World War II, but frankly also before and also after. But that means sometimes other lives are eclipsed. And that’s why I appreciate this book, Jonathan Horn’s book: The Fate of the Generals: MacArthur, Wainwright, and the Epic Battle for the Philippines. The battle to liberate the Philippines was a massive, massive story of World War II. It’s a bigger story I think, than most Americans who know something about World War II understand.

Just about everyone who’s understood in World War II and understands that context, you know that it was Douglas MacArthur who famously said, “I shall return,” meaning to the Philippines.  He had left it to General Jonathan Wayne Wright, to hold the Philippines. It was not only a daunting task, it was an impossible task. And so it fell to Wain Wright to basically surrender to the Japanese and one of the highest ranking American general officers ever to be a prisoner of war. A horrifying story. By the time the war was over, by the time the Philippines were liberated, Wayne Wright was an emaciated man. He looked like a skeleton with skin, and he had to deal with the fact that Douglas MacArthur really poured out his wrath on Jonathan Wainwright and frankly his condescension. And so it was MacArthur who in one sense lived on free to fight another day. It was Wayne Wright who had to take the experience of being a POW to the forces of Imperial Japan, horrifyingly enough.

When the Philippines were liberated, when Wainwright was liberated, MacArthur was kind in what he said.  But it continued to be a very difficult dynamic. In this book, you’re going to see these two different men, and I want to tell you, I think you’re going to like Jonathan Wainright. Those who really, really admire Douglas MacArthur, you’re going to have that admiration tested in this book. On the other hand, Jonathan Horn recognizes the greatness of MacArthur. It raises all kinds of interesting questions about men who make a difference, individuals who make a difference in world history, and every one of them is complicated. And that complication, those complications, are also part of the story.

Another way of trying to understand something as big as World War II is to look at a work that takes one unit, one front, one battle, one dimension of the war, and takes us into the story of those who are involved with it. That’s exactly what this book is:

 

 

Shannon Monaghan, A Quiet Company of Dangerous Men: The Forgotten British Special Operations Soldiers of World War II. (Viking, 2024)

I think it’s really interesting, we think of special forces and they have existed ever since modern warfare has existed, but they become more and more important in the history of warfare. And World War II was one of the testing grounds for the development of so many of the techniques and strategies and uses of groups of special operations. And you know what makes special operations special? It is the fact that it is outside the boundaries of just the normal command armed forces. There are special forces that have a special designation, they’re useful and in fact vital for a special missions. And so even the cover of the story showing paratroopers landing, that tells you it’s going to be an interesting story.

And you look at this and you think this kind of history could be written about just about any unit in World War II, but there are particular units that have historical significance. And when it comes to British Special Operations, there’s one of them.

When you’re thinking about World War II, it’s just impossible to ignore the fact they’re just Titanic personalities in terms of the political leaders and the military strategists. And so I just want to put you in at least the knowledge of two of these books I read just about every one of them I can get my hands on. And as a student of leadership and a teacher in the area of leadership, an author in the area of leadership, military leadership is just one of those crucibles that’s absolutely vital and the varied personalities of World War II, particularly the leaders of the nations on both sides. So you think of: Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, you think of Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union, Winston Churchill and Great Britain, Franklin Roosevelt in the United States of America, just to invoke those names is to mention some of the biggest names on the canvas of world history. And so every one of them was a personality. Every one of them was a worldview. Every one of them was an individual that comes out in two books. This one is:

 

 

Tim Bouveri, Allies at War: How the Struggles Between the Allied Powers Shaped the War and the World (Crown, 2025)

So there you have Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin, there on the cover. Well, that just tells you all you need to do is see the picture of Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin to know you’re dealing with Titanic personalities. And sometimes they were at odds with each other. And of course, how natural could that be? When you think of the Soviet Communist, Joseph Stalin, the American president, Franklin Roosevelt, the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, there were epic struggles behind the Allied victory and the allied effort, a very good telling of the story.

Similarly, you have this book:

 

 

Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler:How War Made Them and How They Made War. (Dutton, 2024)

By the way, a great subtitle. This book looks at these five figures and Churchill style and Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler. And so you have certainly something of a biography of all five. You have the historical context for all five, and you have World War II told through the strategists, these five. And once again, a very interesting way of getting at history.This is not unprecedented, these two books they follow in a sequence of other books that I’ve recommended in the past.

And you say, well, why would you read more than one of these? Or why would you read more than two or three of these? Because I learn a lot because every one of the authors, the historians, the writers, finds different aspects of these Titanic personalities and the events they made and the events that made them in a different way. So maybe it says something about me, but I’ll tell you, I am fascinated by all of these. I found both of these books to be compelling reading.

Alright, while we’re talking about strange preoccupations, I’ll just tell you that I like to know about espionage and spycraft. It’s been a fascination ever since I was a kid, ever since the James Bond movies, and ever since I first came to know anything about spycraft and espionage and that entire world, I’ll admit, I’ve just been really interested. And also crime and the criminal underworld. When I was a teenager, the Godfather movies came out, or at least I was a teenager when the first came out. They reshaped the way Americans even thought about organized crime. And that’s not an accident. It is because an awful lot of documentation of the story, the reality of organized crime came out just in the 1950s, but particularly in the 1960s. So that’s why a lot of these epic stories emerged and there’s a fascination with them.

But before turning to espionage by craft and organized crime, I want to mention another book I found very interesting:

 

 

Cita Stelzer, Churchill’s American Network, Winston Churchill and The Forging of the Special Relationship. (Pegasus Books, 2024)

Cita Stelzer is a pretty well established scholar of Winston Churchill in his times. And this particular book looks at the network of American friends that Churchill had been putting together ever since he was a very, very young man and made his very first visit to the United States. But there’s more to it than that because Winston Churchill was of course the son, the first son of Lord Randolph. And then Lady Churchill, who was Jenny Jerome, an American before she married Randolph Churchill and the daughter of an American financier. And so on both sides of the Atlantic. Winston Churchill’s mother had an extensive social network. And here’s the thing, she played that network for her son. She was one of the best placed women in terms of the social context of Britain having been the wife of Randolph Churchill and therefore the wife of the second son of the Duke of Marlborough. And it’s just a very different life than most would live. Jenny Churchill, fascinating figure in her own right, as Randolph Churchill, a fascinating figure in his own right, she really invested a lot in opening doors for Winston Churchill, and some of those were American doors, they were relationships with Americans. And then Churchill skillfully developed his own relationships and they became so crucial, particularly during the war, but also thereafter. So this is really, really interesting. It’s the American network that Churchill put together, Churchill’s American Network, Cita Stelzer, I think it’s really interesting. I have such an interest in Winston Churchill. Honestly, I’ll find almost anything about Winston Churchill interesting.

Next I want to talk about a book that connects Churchill with espionage:

 

 

Thomas Maier, The Invisible Spy: Churchill’s Rockefeller Center Spy Ring and America’s First Secret Agent of World War II. (Hanover Square Press, 2025)

This is about Ernest Cuneo, who was a very interesting figure and just looking at the title of the book, you would think this was Churchill Spy, and in some ways he was, but he really was working as an American and largely with the knowledge of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the American president. So in one sense, you could say he operated in the intelligence world on behalf of both Britain and the United States. But the crucial thing is that he really was instrumental in getting the right information to Winston Churchill when Britain was at war with Nazi Germany. And most importantly during this crucial period, the United States was not at war. And so in one way, you can just see Ernest Cuneo as someone who really was a necessary bridge between Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt through their officers and military personnel, through the intelligence networks that began to develop. And already at this time, it’s life or death for Great Britain. And I think FDR very clearly understands it soon going to be life or death for the United States.

This is one of those historical works where someone goes back and really unearth a big story. And the story of Ernest Cuneo is a big story. He’s identified as America’s first secret agent of World War II, and that’s basically what he was. And there are people who are going to debate the story of Cuneo for decades to come. But this is a major work that really tells you a great deal about the story. And it reminds you also that had the war gone differently, we’d be talking very differently about many of these figures, not to mention our own lives.

 

 

Shaun Walker, The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West. (Knopf, 2025)

When it comes to espionage and spycraft, I think a lot of Americans watch The Americans that television multi-series on embedded illegal Soviet agents in the United States. And the strangest part of the story is it was basically true. And I’m not saying all the events in that special series turned out to be true, but the fact that there were such agents, and frankly even the stories of how they came about in the Stalinist era and beyond.

So here you have: The Illegals: Russia’s Most Audacious Spies and Their Century-Long Mission to Infiltrate the West. The use of these illegals, well, it’s a real spy thriller to tell you the truth. And by the way, it doesn’t always turn out that for every spy there was anything thrilling. One of the things you learn from reading a work like this is how much a spycraft ends up being basically worth nothing. But there are huge issues at stake. And sometimes the kind of information, the kind of espionage that comes through spycraft, it can make a determinative difference. So this is really a book that focuses on the illegals.

The most interesting thing about this from Shaun Walker is that it’s not just about, say the 1970s and the eighties even into the nineties, it’s about Putin’s Russia as well, and the ongoing threat that is represented, the use of these illegals comes down to headline news that broke just in the last couple of years on both sides of the Atlantic. So this is history, yes, it’s history, but it is also, I hesitate to say, it’s also something that could burst into headline news tomorrow.

 

 

Louis Ferrante, Borgata Trilogy. Volume 1 & 2. – Borgata: Rise of Empire: A History of the American Mafia. (Pegasus, 2024); Borgata: Clash of Titans: A History of the American Mafia. (Pegasus, 2025)

This is two volumes of three volume work. The two volumes are out. And let me just say they’re about the mafia. You would think that a definitive history of the mafia in the United States would exist and there’s some very important works, but once again, this is something that’s been shrouded in mystery for a long time. The title is Borgata: Clash of Titans: A History of the American Mafia by Louis Ferrante. And it is a three volume work and two volumes are out now. And honestly, I think with the second volume, things get even more interesting because we’re a lot closer to contemporary history. But it was really interesting to read that first volume and just see how now what was basically a Sicilian mob model, began to take root in New York City and some other major American cities.

And by the time of course you reach the midpoint of the 20th century, it’s a huge, huge story. And there are debates right now as to how invigorated the same criminal organization is, but there’s no doubt that it played a major role in American history, certainly in many of America’s big cities and biggest crime stories in the 20th century. So I recommend it because I found it really interesting and I’m waiting for that third volume.

Alright, well that’s a lot of books, more than I would usually put into a summer reading article, but I just thought it is likely that some of you’re going to find some of these books to be particularly interesting. Some are going to be interested in espionage and Churchill. Some are going to be interested in organized crime, some are going to be interested in the American Revolution and the entire historical context. Some are going to be interested in Mark Twain and Henry V.

But I’m going to end you with a hint of things to come, because I think the most important biography published in this year, and frankly for many years around it is likely to be this one. It is the biography of William F. Buckley Jr.:

 

 

Sam Tanenhaus, Buckley: The Life and Revolution that Changed America. (Penguin Random House, 2025)

Let me just tell you, it’s not light reading and it’s about 900 pages long, just short of that. Tanenhaus has been working on this for decades. And as a matter of fact, many people thought they might never see the book. Well, the book is out, and I can just guarantee you it is going to cause controversy. William F. Buckley Jr. had a big impact on me and on so many others, one of the biggest lives of the 20th century in the United States, and frankly with impact far beyond a fascinating person.

And all I’m going to tell you is that there are people who are going to love this book. There are people who are going to hate this book, and I think I understand both responses. And I just want to say you can stay tuned. We’re going to have a very lengthy consideration of this new biography of William F. Buckley Jr. That’s going to have to wait for another day. But you know, this summer you might want to start reading. It is 850 pages long, so it may take more than an afternoon in the hammock. It’s worthwhile.

Okay, I hope this has been helpful to you. I love books and I enjoy talking about books. And as one book lover to another, I just want to share this with you in hopes that maybe some of you will find some of these books really, really interesting. And I hope you’ll let me know if you do. And if you get a chance, let me know what you’re reading. I might want to read that too.

Thank you for joining me for In the Library.

Until next time, I’m Albert Mohler. And you know what I got to say here, and that is just keep reading and read for enjoyment, read to honor the Lord, read to see things and know things and to understand stories you otherwise would not know and read to infect others with the joy of reading as well. God bless you.

This transcript has been mildly updated to improve readability.