2025 Book Reviews

Mad Enchantment

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Ross King
Rating: 4.0 / 5

Another great biography by Ross King of a singularly great individual in an extraordinary time, this time following Claude Monet as he works on his final masterpiece during World War I. Other than some over-tedious recounting of finances and some tangential visitors, King presented this narrative in an engaging and informative manner. Reading this was an inspiring start to 2025.

The Man With the Golden Gun

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Ian Fleming
Rating: 3.75 / 5

Another fun original novel, the last of Fleming’s James Bond series. I feel no need to provide much commentary on this classic, but I will note for my future retrospection that it was a nice, simple read while under evacuation for the Eaton Canyon Fire in January 2025. Specifically, it felt appropriate that this be the book I read in my childhood bed with just my flashlight as a distraction from the anxiety and powerlessness.

Operation Mincemeat¹

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Ben Macintyre
Rating: 4.25 / 5

This is my first of what I can only hope will be many of Macintyre’s espionage biographies. He masterfully organizes the multi-pronged story into a novel-esque thriller. Full of detail and background, it was easy to keep the characters and plot organized in my head. This famous story is worth reading by anyone who enjoy’s spy-thriller novels, fiction and non-fiction, alike. (Funny enough, having just gotten into the Bond series, Ian Fleming plays a role in the real Operation Mincemeat.)

Depth Charge

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Jason Heaton
Rating: 4.0 / 5

Overall, this book delivers on the promise of a dive-themed thriller. It’s not the world’s greatest thriller, but you definitely get what you paid for. The plot is intriguing and fun, the characters are well-defined (though I had difficulty telling some of them apart at the beginning). It was a quick read and I enjoyed it.

I came to this book as a fan of the author, Jason Heaton’s, podcast The Grey Nato, curious to read his first novel. He clearly took to heart the “write what you know” advice – diving, watches, Sri Lanka, Land Rovers and Land Cruisers, winter in the MidWest, and even being left-handed. While perhaps distracting at times, as a fan, it was fun to get these little “shout-outs” sprinkled throughout the novel. Yet, while I generally enjoyed the writing style, there were places where the prose was a bit clunky, particularly when the author needed to provide technical background information (e.g., on saturation diving). The style would jump from a narrative to a non-fiction, informational tone and back. I look forward to reading Heaton’s follow-on novel, Sweetwater.

The Nazi Conspiracy

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Brad Meltzer & Josh Mensch
Rating: 2.5 / 5

I am somewhat torn on how to review this book. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t what was advertised by the subtitle “The Secret Plot to Kill Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill.” Of course, the Nazi plot was discussed, but most of the book was about the scheduling and running of the meeting of the Big Three Allied Forces leaders in Tehran. The authors provided good background on the war (though there were some miscellaneous tangents on various battles and events in WWII) and the decisions made leading up to and at the conference, but the assassination plot was really a minority of the book. In fact, there was very little information on the conspiracy at all, mostly a spattering of pieces of the puzzle without a primary narrative. So while it was a fairly quick and engaging read, I felt like it didn’t deliver on the promise of the title, subtitle, summary, and many many cliff-hanger and foreshadowing statements. And that brings me to another annoyance I had with the book: it’s a series of short (1-3 pages) chapters with a paragraph of lead-in and lead-out, usually a not-so-subtle foreshadowing of great intrigue to come. I’m not against using short paragraphs, but it is a style that requires great skill that I think the authors were unable to capture. Also, the foreshadowing was very aggressive in promising incredible tales of espionage and plot-twists with very little follow-through. In fact, it may be in part while I feel like this book under-delivered – almost every paragraph ended with such great expectations.

Overall, I would recommend reading this if you are interested in the meeting of these three WWII leaders and some of their interplay, but if you come in expecting a tale of espionage of the likes of Ben McIntyre, you will be disappointed.

Undaunted Courage

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Stephen Ambrose
Rating: 4.5 / 5

This vivid and engrossing account of one of history’s greatest adventures was exactly what I needed to escape the bitterness of a New England winter. Ambrose’s meticulous research and masterful storytelling strike a fine balance between detail and momentum, sustaining a spirit of exploration and adventure across nearly 500 pages – without a dull or unnecessary paragraph. The author’s insights into the thoughts and motivations of the captains, crew, and Indians add depth to the narrative. When the historical record is silent, he offers well-reasoned conjecture, always distinguishing it as such. These moments feel like the informed musings of a seasoned professor, filling gaps where primary sources fall short. Ambrose’s criticism is measured and fair. He acknowledges the moral failings of figures like Lewis, Clark, and Jefferson without resorting to the reductionist labels so common of modern authors. His portrayal of interactions with Indians is equally nuanced, presenting acts of generosity and cruelty on both sides. For anyone interested in U.S. history, exploration, or adventure, Undaunted Courage is an exceptional read.

The Founding Fish

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John McPhee
Rating: 4.25 / 5

McPhee’s gift for transforming a single subject into a fascinating book never fails to impress. This time, a fish. Not a brilliantly colored fish, nor an anatomically bizarre one. Not poisonous, not venomous. Just a fish — a shad. A species most people will never think about, let alone know in great detail. Yet McPhee crafts a compelling narrative around the American shad, blending natural history with his own experiences fishing for and studying the species. With characteristic precision, he explores its anatomy, behavior, and life cycle, while also tracing its notable role in American history. I’m confident in predicting that if you like McPhee or fishing, you’ll like this book.

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Live and Let Die

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Ian Fleming
Rating: 4.0 / 5

Another quick read of a classic Bond novel. I’m not a greater reviewer of fiction and, given the popularity of this series, I don’t feel I would add much value in attempting to do so. I will say that I enjoyed the faster pace after two longer biographical tales.

The Obstacle is the Way

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Ryan Holiday
Rating: 3.0 / 5

This is the first book in Holiday’s trilogy on practicing Stoic philosophy. While it aims to be quick and practical — distilling key Stoic tenets into actionable advice — the writing is too simplistic. It reads like a high-school essay on ethics and hard work: repetitive, lacking nuance, and overly straightforward. The book offers some useful insights, but most come from quotes or anecdotes about historical figures. Holiday adds little original value, instead padding key ideas with analogies, famous stories (sometimes tenuously linked), and restatements with added overly-intense emphasis. It’s a short read — I finished it in a few days while splitting time with another book — but it could have been distilled further, perhaps into a handful of quotes or a one-hour podcast.

Eight Little Piggies

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Stephen J. Gould
Rating: 4.5 / 5

Another solid collection of essays on natural history by a great writer and thinker of the modern era.

Half Moon

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Douglas Hunter
Rating: 3.25 / 5

Douglas Hunter offers a detailed and accurate account of Henry Hudson’s voyage aboard the Half Moon as he searched the east coast of North America for a route to the Northwest Passage. Unfortunately, few records of the journey—particularly the exploration itself—survive. As a result, much of the book focuses on aspects I found less engaging, such as financial backing and Anglo-Dutch politics. In contrast, the more compelling elements—Hudson’s thoughts, the sailors’ conflicts, and encounters with native peoples—are sparse and largely speculative, pieced together from scattered accounts often written years later. The writing is thorough and of high quality, but the book seems more suited to readers interested in the early era of the Dutch East India Company than to amateurs seeking an exciting tale of exploration. Thus, my 3.5-star rating reflects unmet expectations rather than a flaw in the book’s execution.

Moonraker

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Ian Fleming
Rating: 4.25 / 5

Moonraker is the first Bond novel I can (with some hesitation for fear of sounding elitist) say I genuinely enjoyed — not just as part of the iconic franchise, but as a solid story on its own. The writing feels more polished and engaging, the plot more compelling and less cartoonish, and Bond himself more interesting. The usual flair and exaggerated twists remain, preserving the classic Bond thriller style, but here they feel more restrained and, thus, effective.

The Looming Tower

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Lawrence Wright
Rating: 4.5 / 5

I was in first grade on 9/11, making me one of the younger Americans to remember the attack. I recall understanding the broad strokes of what happened, but of course was unaware of the details of the complicated geopolitics. From there, I grew up with the various wars in the Middle East against a variety of Islamist groups, but never had a clear picture of what really happened. Further, the background on bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban was always blurry, as was the controversy over how such an attack eluded the U.S. intelligence agencies. Over the years, I’ve heard miscellaneous statements about oil, “they hate our freedom,” jihad, etc., from political pundits and commentators but had a very poor understanding of this ongoing, nebulous conflict. Looming Towers is the first comprehensive description of the rise of modern extreme Islamism leading up to 9/11 that I have ever received. The author did well to provide a narrative over the decades, across nations, turmoil in the Middle East, and various extremist factions and leaders. This book seems like a great place to start for an introduction to the battle between the West and modern extremist Islamism, providing a good foundation for further reading and education.

Ego Is the Enemy

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Ryan Holiday
Rating: 2.0 / 5

Another mediocre addition to the trilogy of Holiday’s work on Stoic philosophy (I was given the whole trilogy and so I’ll finish it, still). It wasn’t horrible, I think the teachings are generally good, but it could have been summed up in a pamphlet – so the low rating is more about it just wasn’t worth the time to read the whole thing. In essence: “Ego is the enemy. For everything you do, ask is this for my ego or for my purpose?” My two major gripes don’t change much from before. First, the writing is surprisingly poor. As with the first book, The Obstacle Is the Way, it comes off as a high schooler’s attempt to write inspirational prose. It is incredibly repetitive and excessively emotive. My second issue with this series is that Holiday uses a lot of examples as evidence, but I don’t get the sense that he performs thorough research to support his claim. Generally, Holiday will describe a famous person’s accomplishment and claim it was because he or she avoided succumbing to his or her ego (or the inverse where the antagonist falls to ego), but he doesn’t link the two, he just declares the cause was related to ego. Of course, this style of argumentation is biased towards survivors, too, but even in cases where it goes against his narrative, Holiday just claims that was the exception. So not only is it very simplistic use of “evidence,” he cherry picks the stories. In addition, he uses these examples as evidence or data when they are just selected anecdotes. Again, I don’t disagree with the author’s recommendations, it’s just that the argumentation is weak, silly, and often distracting. My last comment will be that, I understand writing a book on the importance of humility makes one an easy target for criticism, but Holiday does himself no favors by putting his face on his podcast artwork and most Youtube thumbnails and putting up videos of him reading and running – just feels like there are some simple ways to reduce his ego.

Currently reading:

1. The Art and Science of Fly Fishing by Lenox Dick