My 10 Favorite Books of 2025
Over the past year I read whatever I felt like, and a lot of it was history and philosophy.
My conclusion: I deeply agree with Durant's famous line:
Most history
is guessing,
and the rest is prejudice. It's not that those who came before us were incompetent; it's just that the "facts" we humans can take in are so limited. That's exactly why we have to read a lot of history, from all kinds of angles, if we're to have any chance of shaking off the prejudice and narrowness that follow us like a shadow.
My 10 favorite books of 2025, in no particular order:
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Dedao Quality Control Handbook 11.0
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How to Know a Person
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The Lessons of History
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The State of Affairs: Rethinking Infidelity
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Going Global: The Checkpoints and Breakthroughs of Chinese Manufacturing's Worldwide Expedition
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Rockefeller's Autobiography: If You Never Concede, You'll Never Lose
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I Carry the Universe with Me: Poems of Fernando Pessoa
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Principles for Navigating Big Debt Crises
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Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track: The Letters of Richard P. Feynman