Indy Editors’ and Staff Writers’ Picks: Recommended Good Reads from 2025

Compiled by Art Keene and Jeff Lee

This is the sixth year that we are offering recommendations from our editors and staff writers of some of our favorite reading from the past year – not necessarily books that were published in 2025 – but books that we read  during the last year that we can recommend with enthusiasm. Feel free to share your own best reading experiences from the past year in the comments section below. And following our own recommendations, we offer a compilation of links to other “best of” lists for good reads from 2025 further below.

If you’d be interested in writing book reviews for the Indy, please drop us a note at amherstindy@gmail.com.

Here you can check out our favorites from, 2024,  2023, 2022,  2021, and 2020.

Michael Greenebaum
Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (Graywolf Press, 2019)

The most important and moving book I read in 2025.  A book of poems, a two-act drama, a shriek, a plea, a parable.  A prayer. Best if read out loud perhaps in a group.  And then re-read.  To hear the voices.

Art Keene
One Day, All of Us Will Have Been Against This by Omar El Akkad (2025, Knopf)  

A heartfelt, sobering meditation on the Gaza genocide and of the failures of the press in its coverage. Winner of the 2025 National Book Award. I can also recommend El Akaad’s  novel American War (2017 Knopf), a story of a second American civil war set in the not-to-distant future.

Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future by Jason Stanley (2024, Atria/One Signal)

There is much to read about the American descent into fascism and it’s hard to choose one book that can best help us grasp the rapid and profound transformation of our system of governance (and hence we have added recommended reading lists on fascism below).  I have chosen to highlight this book because it centers the writing of history, its cooptation by fascist forces, and the ongoing efforts by the American Right to dismantle public education, silence teachers, and use taxpayer money to undo a century of work that has been done to advance social justice action on race, gender, sexuality, and class.  Stanley, author of the best selling, book How Fascism Works (2018 Random House) was the Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale before leaving for Canada last year. Stanley cited the assault on academic freedom in the US as one of his reasons for leaving.

Pioneer Valley Almanac by Stephen Braun (2025, Levellers Press)

Readers who have enjoyed Steve Braun’s Almanac columns in the Indy over the past four years can now purchase a collection of all 78 articles in a soft cover book, chock full of beautiful photographs. A Pioneer Valley Almanac is available at Collective Copies and from Levellers Press and from Amazon. In this volume you can revisit all of Braun’s previous columns from the ever popular “Black Squirrels” to the locally intriguing “Carnivorous Plants”. Personal, often humorous, and filled with interesting scientific details, these reports from trails, waterways, and back roads are what happens when a curious mind interacts with the surprising diversity of the local natural world.

The Ministry of Time by Laliane Bradley (2024, Avid Reader Press)

Time travel, spy thriller, romance novel with lots of twists and turns. I’m not generally a fan of the time travel genre, but this was a page-turner. I didn’t read much fiction in 2025 but this was a welcome escape. Reputed to be Obama’s favorite book from 2024.

Maura Keene
Sons and Daughters by Chaim Grade (2025, Knopf) 

I was skeptical about reading this because of its subject (Jews in a small Polish village between the World Wars), but it received such a good review in the New York Times that I thought I would give it a try. Surprisingly, it held my interest for the full 600+ pages and was beautifully written with quite an interesting and humorous cast of characters. The book tells the story of the extended family of the village rabbi as times are changing and his five children no longer want to live the secluded traditional Orthodox Jewish life. This is also the time of rising antisemitism in Eastern Europe. In his May 2025 review in the Times, Dwight Garner writes: “Sons and Daughters” is a melancholy book that also happens to be hopelessly, miraculously, unremittingly funny. Chaim Grade only wrote in Yiddish, even though he lived in the US and Canada for 32 years. He died in 1982, but this novel was just translated into English this year. I highly recommend this work.

River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard (2006, Anchor)

This 2006 book tells of the harrowing journey by canoe taken by Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit, along with Brazilian guides, down a previously unexplored river in the Amazon rainforest shortly after Roosevelt lost his bid for reelection to the presidency in 1912. The men suffer unbelievable hardships: starvation, hostile indigenous populations, dangerous wildlife, malaria, and river rapids that destroy several canoes. Several crew members die, and Roosevelt comes close to death. The adventure is told by Millard in vivid detail that holds the reader’s attention from beginning to end.

Middlemarch, by George Eliot (public domain, multiple publishers. Available free on Kindle).

As a former English major, it is hard to believe that I never read “Middlemarch” until this year, but it is easy to see why this classic is on many people’s list of favorite books. The novel is set in Victorian era England and gives a comprehensive tableau of life of the inhabitants of the fictional village of Middlemarch. But what I was really taken by is the quiet courage and compassion of one of the main characters Dorothea Brooke, who despite an unfortunate marriage to the stuffy, arrogant Edward Casaubon, never loses her idealism and goodness. I may even read this novel again.

Jeff Lee
Far from Home: An Alaskan Senator Faces the Extreme Climate of Washington, D.C. by Lisa Murkowski (Penguin Random House, 2025).

At a moment when American democracy erodes by the day, and authoritarianism, some argue fascism, is gaining a foothold, this memoir by a Republican U.S. senator offers a glimmer of hope. Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski has resisted blind obedience to her party’s dictates and, as she relates in her book, has aimed to follow her conscience with a grounding in bipartisanship.   Murkowski supports protection of women’s reproductive rights, opposed the nomination of conservative Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, has defended Affordable Care Act subsidies and earned party censure by voting to convict President Donald J. Trump at his second impeachment trial.   She refers to fellow Alaskan and one-time VP candidate Sarah Palin as “an embarrassment” and the prototype for Trump-style populism. Her independence and outspokenness have come at a cost.  In 2010 she improbably retained her senate seat through a write-in campaign after being ousted in the primary by Tea Party nominee Joe Miller.   Lisa Murkowski is no progressive darling.  She cast the deciding vote in the passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” and has been a strong supporter of increased oil and gas production in her home state.  However, in Far From Home she comes across as a voice of honesty and reason calling out from a disturbingly polarized and dysfunctional federal government.

Laura Quilter
We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution by Jill Lepore (2025, Liveright) 

I particularly recommend the audiobook version, which is read by Lepore herself — she’s a wonderful reader, and I always find it illuminating to hear a work read by its author. Lepore’s We the People is not a standard history of the Constitution. Instead, it’s a look at the amendments, the ones that passed, and equally importantly, the ones that didn’t pass and the reasons why. It is thus a history of the US, not just of the US Constitution, including the social and political forces active in the 18th, 19th, 20th, and now 21st centuries. It is also an enlightening look at trends in amendment, and the forces that push or pull the populace away from engaging in particular types of political work. Is our constitution too difficult to amend formally? What are the risks of a constitutional convention? What were the risks of a constitutional convention when previously envisioned? How do the states — which also have constitutions, and have amended them more than the US has — handle these issues? Finally, it’s a look at how judicial “interpretation” is the other pole of “amendment” — and whether that interpretation is called “originalist” or something else, it’s still a political and ideological perspective on not just Constitutional interpretation, but also the substantive values instantiated by the Constitution.

Wings of Fire, series by Massachusetts-based author Tui T. Sutherland (2019-2025, Scholastic)

I’m going to recommend these books to anyone who likes fiction. Yes, they are children’s books — middle-grade books, pitched for readers from approximately third to eighth grade. But they are well-written, well-plotted, and well-characterized, funny, emotionally sophisticated, and politically and ethically resonant — I’m not the only adult who loves these books; in fact, every adult I’ve introduced them to has also fallen in love. If you have a young kid in your life, you might do it as a read-along with them. But even if you don’t have a young kid in your life, give yourself a break and read something different. They will go fast, because they’re kids’ books; but they will keep your attention and you will find yourself identifying with the dragon protagonists. Yes, dragon protagonists — these books are about dragons, and told from dragon perspectives. The dragons are not St. George-style victim/villains; they simply have their own various screwed-up societies, that need interventions and improvements. The series has unfolded in (to date) three five-book series, each following a cohort of young (adolescent, probably) dragons, dealing with abuse, neglect, loss, fear, and all the other kinds of concerns that any person has to deal with. The books do get better, as Sutherland settles into her groove, but each of them is enjoyable, entertaining, and thought-provoking on its own. The first book is The Dragonet Prophecy. Also, again, I can recommend the audiobook versions. The narrator Shannon McManus does a great job of capturing intonation and voice of many different characters, without being annoying in her voices or accents. Enjoy!    Both books are available from the public library (Libby for electronic books or audiobooks), or from Libro.fm, which is an excellent alternative to Audible, which is owned by Amazon. Libro.fm shares profits from its sales with a designated local bookstore, so you can listen to audiobooks and support your local bookstores at the same time!

Other “Best of” Lists for 2025

Lit Hub:
The Ultimate Best Books of 2025 List  (a compilation from all of the best “best of” lists. Really, the best, “best of” list out there.)
The Best Reviewed Fiction of 2025
The Best Reviewed Non-fiction of 2025

Science Fiction and Fantasy:
Arthur C. Clarke Award Finalists 2025
Hugo Award Winners 2025
Nebula Awards for Best Science Fiction and Fantasy 2025
Esquire’s Best Science Fiction Books of 2025

The Atlantic Magazine:
The Atlantic 10: The Books That Made Us Think the Most This Year (2025)

The Booker Prizes:
The Booker Prize Winner and Long and Short Lists for 2025

Goodreads Reads
Goodreads Readers’ Choice Awards for 2025

The Guardian
The Best Books of 2025

The Jones Library
Most Borrowed Books of 2025

Mother Jones Magazine
Everyone Deserves a Break from the News – Best Books We Read in 2025

National Book Awards
National Book Award Winners 2025

The New Yorker
The Best Books of 2025

The New York Times
The Ten Best Books of 2025
100 Notable Books of 2025

The Progressive
The Progressive’s Favorite Books of 2025

Scientific American
67 Books Scientific American Recommends from 2025

Recommended Reading Lists on Fascism
Richland Library Broader Bookshelf: Authoritarianism, Totalitarianism, and Fascism
National Catholic Reporter: A Guide to Books and Films about Fascism
California DSA: A Shortlist of Readings on Fascism
Boston Public Library Fighting Fascism Reading List