My Top 5 Books of 2025
Well, I only managed to read 50 books this year. That’s not bad, especially considering that one of them, Diarmaid MacCulloch’s Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, clocked in at whopping 1,016 pages (so, that’s like four books right there). Several others eclipsed the 500-page mark. And I am not counting in that number journal articles, magazine articles or blogs. Thus, for this end-of-the-year post, I will create a kind of literary inclusio, having written an article about books in January of 2025 after reorganizing my library. So now I will start 2026 writing about my top 5 books of the past year. These are in order of least to most interesting (i.e. in countdown fashion). I will also list a few honorable mentions at the bottom. That said, drum roll please!
Starting with #5
#5. Arnaldo Momigliano, On Pagans, Jews and Christians (Wesleyan University Press, 1987)
I had never heard of the Italian classicist before but, given my current research into Paganism, the book’s title caught my eye. And although the essays in Momigliano’s book may be a bit dense for the non-specialist, the questions that he raises about ancient texts, or even the lack therefore, are ones that could only emerge from a scholarly mind of the highest rank.
This book has got me thinking about many things that had never crossed my mind before, like why Roman polytheism never translated into more egalitarian political structures, or, better said, why Roman political theorists did not “relate the structure of the Roman Empire to the structure of the divine world,” (145) as later Christian theologians attempted to do. Or, as to early polemics between pagan Rome and the emerging Christian religion, how much and to what extent was the pagan literature of the 2nd-4th centuries affected and shaped by Christian or Jewish writings or preaching? One well-known example may be Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana, but, one asks, what else in the world of pagan literature might have been an adaptation of or response to Christian narratives about Jesus? It’s a provocative research question to say the least.
Momigliano’s book is an erudite and incisive series of essays into ancient Pagan (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Babylonian), Jewish and Christian texts, examining how the worldviews as well as the economic and political realities affected both reception and interpretation of those text. For those who enjoy reading “Historical Background” commentaries to the New Testament, like this one, Momigliano’s book is the next level of inquiry.
#4. Simon Critchley, A Very Short Introduction to Continental Philosophy (Oxford University Press, 2001)
I love Oxford University Press’ Very Short Introduction series. For a quick hit of solid information and good analysis, it’s hard to beat these little books, which usually come in at around 150 pages (with one, notable exception). I have only read about a dozen of the over 750 titles, but of those dozen or so Simon Critchley’s entry on Continental Philosophy has been the best so far. Concise, of course, but also insightful and constructive, Critchley does a masterful job of elucidating this unique event in the history of philosophy: the split between the Analytic and Continental modes of philosophizing.
For anyone interested in the history of philosophy, this is a great analysis of the last 200 years of western thought. Critchley’s very reasonable conclusion about the two traditions is that Analytics deals primarily with knowledge (epistemology), while Continental philosophy wrestles with wisdom:
My contention is that what philosophy should be thinking through at present is this dilemma which on the one side threatens to turn us into beasts, and on the other side into lunatics. This means that the question of wisdom, and its related question of the meaning of life, should at the very least move closer to the centre of philosophical activity and not be treated with indifference, embarrassment, or even contempt. The appeal of much that goes under the name of Continental philosophy, in my view, is that it attempts to unify or at least move closer together questions of knowledge and wisdom, of philosophical truth and existential meaning.
Excerpt From
Continental Philosophy
Simon Critchley
#3 Mircea Eliade, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashion (University of Chicago Press, 1976)
I tackled three of Eliade’s books this year for research related to the longer version of my book on Neopaganism. Those three were his massive treatment of Asiatic shamanism, Shamanism, his small masterpiece on myth and reality, also appropriately titled, Myth and Reality, and his even shorter set of essays on comparative religion, Occultism, Witchcraft and Cultural Fashions. While I enjoyed all three, although Shamanism was a far more focused text than I needed for my purposes, Occultism was the most fascinating.
In the book, Eliade brilliantly applies his knowledge of folk religion and pagan religious practices to modern cultural fashions and trends: from Parisian magazines, to the musings of “Catholic” theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, to the contemporary reading of horoscopes. In this short series of essays (originally given as lectures) Eliade demonstrates that the magic of the enchanted world has never really left us, it has only been translated into other cultural forms: the arts, architecture, and literature.
Religion is still the most fundamental feature of man, of homo religiosus. This book, or any of Eliade’s books, is also a must read for all the Jordan Peterson fans out there.
#2. Steven D. Smith, Pagans & Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac (Eerdmans, 2018)
This book, endorsed by top-notch, legal scholars as diverse as Robert P. George and Anthony Kronman (the former a Roman Catholic, the latter an avowed Neopagan) is as good as the Booklist review makes it sound: “As engrossing, lucid, and jargonless a scholarly book as has ever been written.” Steven D. Smith (Professor of Law, UC-San Diego) has written a book that, one could argue, explains our contemporary culture wars with greater erudition and deeper historical perspective than any other of its kind.
Smith’s knowledge of Ancient Rome and early Christianity, and his grasp of the intellectual, moral, and political conflicts that emerged as Christian theism spread throughout the empire are authoritative. His demonstration of how this ancient conflict continues today is both valid and compelling.
Starting with a premise formed by T.S. Eliot in his 1938 Cambridge lectures, namely, that the West was reverting back to pagan religion, Smith extrapolates Eliot’s claim with historical precision and philosophical acumen. This is a book that Christian political scientists and legal theorists will definitely enjoy. The unfortunate bottom line: Paganism and Christianity simply do not mix when it comes to law and governance, and one of the two will have to give.
#1. Eric Kurlander, Hitler’s Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (Yale University Press, 2017)
A paradigm shifting book. How many books, articles, movies, video games, and TV shows have we read or watched about World War II and the Nazis? How many cultural references, in politics, the arts, and entertainment have we engaged with? Even for the casual historian or cursory reader, at least a handful of books, if not dozens of films, and thousands of social media posts have been digested about Hitler, his SS henchmen and their combined human atrocities. Yet how many of these have explored the fundamental religious and spiritual beliefs of Der Führer and his closest companions? By my count, hardly any.
Kurlander’s incredible, scholarly look at the spirituality of Hitler, Goebbels, Hess and Himmler (oh yes, Himmler!) will do two things for any reader: 1) open their eyes to the spiritual realities that always underlie man’s most barbaric acts, and 2) disabuse skeptics of their woefully distorted view of early 20th-century Germany as a “Christian” nation. This detailed introduction to the explicit Neopagan and occult beliefs of Hitler and his top leaders, derived from a eclectic mix of nordic mythology, racialized theosophy, and earth-based religion, is a powerful corrective to the common understanding of Hitler and his ilk as Christians, or even as atheist materialists.
Kurlander’s treatment of the history of the Thule society, his articulation of the strange ariosophy of Madam Blavatsky that the Nazis appropriated and used against the Jews, and his careful description of the intellectual convulsions made by Nazi theorists to connect East and West via the theory of “root races” (which included a revived version of Plato’s fictional “Atlantis”), will stun readers. But this is no fiction, it is historical scholarship at its best.
Hitler’s Monsters is the kind of book that will remind Christians that what we ultimately fight against is not “flesh and blood,” but “the powers of this dark world and the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (see Ephesians 6:10ff). When the 101st Airborne Division discovered Hitler’s personal library near Berchtesgaden, it was not a trove of political texts or philosophical works they found, but “many books ‘on popular medicine, miraculous healing, cooking, vegetarianism and special diets’ and dozens ‘about Wotan and the gods of German mythology . . . magic symbols and the occult’.”
Thus, Kurlander argues:
Based on this evidence, I argue that no mass political movement drew as consciously or consistently as the Nazis on what I call the ‘supernatural imaginary’ – occultism and ‘border science’, pagan, New Age, and Eastern religions, folklore, mythology, and many other supernatural doctrines – in order to attract a generation of German men and women seeking new forms of spirituality and novel explanations of the world that stood somewhere between scientific verifiability and the shopworn truths of traditional religion. Certainly no mass party made a similar effort, once in power, to police or parse, much less appropriate and institutionalize such doctrines, whether in the realm of science and religion, culture and social policy, or the drive toward war, empire, and ethnic cleansing. Without understanding this relationship between Nazism and the supernatural, one cannot fully understand the history of the Third Reich.
Excerpt From
Hitler’s Monsters
Eric Kurlander
Is it any wonder that a pagan nation like Hitler’s Germany attempted to snuff out the people of the one, true God? This book will make you rethink everything you thought you knew about the war. There is even a bonus feature to the book for Indiana Jones fans, as Kurlander’s addresses the real history of Hitler’s (actually Otto Rahn’s) quest for the holy grail.
The Honorable Mentions:
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Penguin, 2009)
As many issues as I had with MacCulloch’s biases against early Christianity, the book is recommendable on sheer scope and historical knowledge. A tome in the most literal sense of the word.
Gary Dorrien, In A Post-Hegelian Spirit: Philosophical Theology as Idealistic Discontent (Baylor University Press, 2020)
Although I disagree with Dorrien on pretty much everything, Dorrien’s book is the best work on Progressive Christianity I have yet read. For those who really want to understand Progressive Christian, and develop orthodox arguments against it, Dorrien’s book is a must read.
David F. Noble, The Religion of Technology (Penguin, 1999)
If I did a top ten list, David Noble’s Religion of Technology would probably be number 6 on the list. A fascinating, “romp” through history, arguing for technology as the direct result of particular Christian theological claims (cf. Lynn White Jr’s 1967 “The Historical Roots of Our Current Ecological Crisis”).
In short, there has been an ongoing project, thanks mainly to Francis Bacon, of trying to undo the curses associated with mankind’s fall from grace, the curses of sin, through the development and application of technology. Noble’s book is faulty in places, but it is a rich text for Christian theologians and philosophers to mine as he explores how technology has been thought of in redemptive terms, if not in terms of the doctrine of theosis. For those working on the current problem of Transhumanism, this is a good read.
Peter Berger, Any of the Following: The Sacred Canopy, The Heretical Imperative, A Rumor of Angels, and more)
I read The Sacred Canopy, A Rumor of Angels, The Heretical Imperative, A Far Glory, The Other Side of God and The Desecularization of the World in January of 2025. All good, all fun to read, and all thought provoking. Berger is simply delightful, and, unbeknownst to me at the time, also quite funny.
For anyone interested in the entire list of all 50, click here.
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