2025 in Books
Concise descriptions of the books I read last year
I was pleased with how much I was able to read this year, despite moving my family to North Dakota, starting a new job, welcoming my second daughter into the world, continuing my theological studies, and leading the local parish’s high school formation group. Being a husband and father makes it harder to fit reading in, but it is very important to me. Like drinking water.
I am also glad at how many books there are about safety out there. Carbon markets were pretty bare on that front, and I was glad to engage in the literature behind my day-to-day work. Otherwise my reading fell into familiar categories: the physical economy, environmental law and policy, spiritual reading, the Church and the modern world.
How Things Break
Engineering a Safer World by Nancy G. Leveson
The preeminent work laying out the complex systems-view of safety. Dr. Leveson is a pioneer in the field and her in-depth critique of simplistic views of causation when it comes to life, property, and environmentally damaging accidents strikes home, especially in my work as a safety professional. The key point that safety is an emergent phenomenon of the mysterious workings of complex socio-technical systems that can’t be simply guaranteed by following rules and procedures dictated from on high is a necessary corrective to the standard view in the field.
Trust in Numbers by Theodore M. Porter
A work that dives into the social construction of metrics in all of their forms—whether numbers, graphs, statistics, projections, etc.—and how Western society has come to so deeply rely on them as signals for whether claims should be believed or not. His chapter documenting the origin of cost-benefit analysis in the context of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers needing numbers to justify the civil infrastructure works it proposed to Congress is invaluable.
Deepwater Horizon by Earl Boebert and James Blossom
A fantastic deep-dive into the system dynamics leading up to the Macondo blowout which killed 11 people and released 5 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The story I had always heard about how it happened blamed the faulty blow-out preventer, but this application of the complex systems approach to safety laid bare the human, organizational, and technical factors that led to a BP operational environment in which an accident such as this one was very likely to occur. It reads like a thriller.
Safety First by Mark Aldrich
A useful history of the evolution of workplace injury liability, insurance, regulation, and practice in the United States from the late 1800s to mid 1900s. Aldrich takes factory, railroad, and mine safety as his key lines of inquiry and shows how the rapid technological advancements in each led to dramatic increases in the number and danger of hazards that workers encountered on the ground. Private and public sector actors shifted the liability for accidents from employees to employers, leading to improvements in safety outcomes across these heavy industries and America as a whole.
Energy-Based Safety by Matthew Hallowell
A new book out this year that synthesizes Dr. Hallowell’s academic work which seeks to improve safety outcomes by applying physical science principles. The central premise of this work is that incidents in which 1500 joules of energy or more is transferred to the worker, via whatever type of hazard, be it kinetic, electrical, chemical, etc., are those which result in serious injuries and fatalities. Therefore, the workplace safety community should focus its efforts on eliminating these kinds of hazards instead of lower-energy ones. This is an eminently practical book for those of us working on the ground to help keep workers safe.
The Safety Anarchist by Sidney Dekker
Dr. Dekker is well-known in the safety science community for being unrelentingly critical of the extant compliance-focused approach to workplace safety that is so dominant in industry. This book is informed by the work of James C. Scott in that it proposes that workers know best how to work safely, and that the majority of government and corporate regulations of their work are meant to protect government/employers rather than actually effect positive safety outcomes on the ground. I was inclined to like this book given my former anarchist tendencies, but I ultimately thought it went too far in advocating for total worker liberty.
What Flows
Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon
Perhaps my favorite book of the year that comprehensively documented the rise of the city of Chicago using the lens of its place as the hub of commerce for the rapidly developing Great West of old as the tying thread. He makes a compelling case that Chicago’s position as the interface between the huge demand for natural resources compelled by the industrializing East and the near unquantifiable bounty of the virgin West led to it being the great city that it is today. He digs into the process that led to nature being turned into commodities by digging into the development of markets for timber, meat, and grain as they became centralized in Chicago. This is the book to read if you want to understand how natural resource markets develop from a historical perspective.
Breakneck by Dan Wang
This book proposes that the US is dominated by lawyers while China is dominated by engineers, and that this dichotomy best explains why the US can’t build anymore while China can. I think it is a useful lens to employ, but I think it is overstated as an explanation for why these societies are on such different trajectories. The chapter about China’s one child policy and how the state enacted ~300 million forced abortions alongside mass sterilizations was one of the most horrifying things I’ve read all year. It made me feel very grateful that I live in America where the lawyers keep this sort of outrageous government tyranny at bay. I thought he made the mistake of ascribing the dysfunction of “coastal” America (NYC/SF/LA/DC etc.) to the country as a whole, while saying virtually nothing about the booming South (TX/FL/TN/NC etc.). The prose is masterful. I plan to review it in greater detail at a future date.
The Boom by Russell Gold
A remarkably even-handed exploration of the shale boom as it was taking off in real time (the book came out in 2014). The rise and fall of Aubrey McClendon was utterly gripping. I did not expect the book to be as balanced as it was, given the overall bias of the press against oil & gas, so I was glad that this book was as good as it was.
The Origins of Efficiency by Brian Potter
I enjoyed this historically-grounded approach to understanding how production processes have become more efficient over time. It cites the historical and technical factors relevant to all manner of production processes, from lightbulbs to solar panels to modular buildings, and gives the reader a framework to think about how the modern world came to have so many things. The Toyota production process is a marvel of human thought.
The World for Sale by Javier Blas and Jack Farchy
A journalistic escapade into the hidden world of the commodity traders who provide the world with its oil, coal, iron, aluminum, nickel, lithium, cobalt, grains and other natural resources. I had heard about Glencore, Trafigura, Vitol, Gunvor, Mercuria, and others before but didn’t have a good understanding of what these firms actually do before reading this book. Traders seem like wild people.
Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee
I love all of John McPhee’s work and this was excellent as expected. I particularly enjoyed his travels with Roger Ainsworth, a HAZMAT chemical tanker owner-operator who is quite the character. I was also fascinated by his exploration of coal transportation via rail from mines in Eastern Wyoming. His prose is wonderfully composed and a joy to read.
Air-Borne by Carl Zimmer
An interesting exploration of the scientific history behind our modern understanding of air-borne disease.
Wild Houston by Suzanne Simpson and John Williams
This is a wonderful coffee table book that explores nature in the Houston area. My daughter loves it.
The Rules Humans Make for Nature
Lawyers, Swamps, and Money by Royal C. Gardner
The definitive history of American wetland law as it evolved out of the Clean Water Act. The writing is substantive yet funny.
Pollution, Property and Prices by J.H. Dales
In which an economist formally proposes markets as a mechanism to effectively minimize pollution. It gave me a strong historical basis for understanding how the idea of carbon credits came about.
The Making of Environmental Law by Richard J. Lazarus
This was a useful history of American environmental law. The author’s politics came into the text too much at times, and it was a bit light on detail in some places.
The Case for Nature by Siddarth Shrikanth
Shrikanth is a nature/carbon market insider who strings together a number of vignettes of interesting initiatives going on in the space into this book. The ‘case’ itself was weak.
The Interior Life
The Intellectual Life by Antonin Sertillanges
This book has already changed my life. Father Sertillanges frames the intellectual life in the context of the Catholic vocation to union with God, and proposes many practical ways to bring the two into accord with one another. The biggest thing I took away from it is to take my intellectual work seriously, understand it in the context of the unity of truth, and to make the sacrifices necessary to be a useful servant of it.
Finding True Happiness by Robert J. Spitzer
Fr. Spitzer’s understanding of the four types of happiness, rising from the sensual to the ego-driven to the empathetic-contributive to the transcendent, is one I am applying to my life now. The priest who most thoroughly inculcated me in the mind of the Church uses this framework often, so I was glad to actually read how Fr. Spitzer proposed it himself.
The Wounded Healer by Henri J.M. Nouwen
Nouwen’s understanding that true human healing can only come from the hands of someone who has been spiritually wounded themselves, and is able to transfigure that pain into a soothing balm, is wonderful.
Discerning the Will of God by Timothy M. Gallagher
This practical book explains how the Ignatian rules for discernment can be used for day-to-day decisions in life. It was useful to read as I was transitioning from carbon markets into safety.
The Life of Moses by Gregory of Nyssa
St. Gregory’s understanding of the spiritual life being one of infinite progress, where one can never stand still and must always strive forward to better attain the likeness of God, is very compelling and matches my own experience.
The Church in the Modern World
From Christendom to Apostolic Mission and The Religion of the Day by the University of Mary
These two books make the case that the Church is faced with a strange neo-paganism today, where the vast majority of people in the West have heard the message of Christ and His Church but have rejected it. This situation demands a different approach to evangelization, and brings us closer to the experience of the earliest Christians than at any other time in history. They are beautifully written and contain a lot of practical material about how the Church can engage with this strange new world.
The Vocation of the Catholic University Professor by the University of Mary
A slim volume outlining how Catholic university professors can best serve the Church in their chosen pursuit. It was quite relevant to me given that I will be teaching my first college course this upcoming spring.
Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Think of this like the Catechism, but focused specifically on Catholic social teaching. It is a great summary of the principles and practicalities of how Catholics should think about engaging social, economic, and political topics.
Uniatism by Cyril Korolevsky
This volume argues that the Latinization of Eastern Catholic Churches was largely driven by the Eastern Churches themselves. While it is true that the Apostolic See released many directives telling Roman Catholic clergy to strive to have Eastern Catholics under their jurisdiction keep their tradition unmodified, the on-the-ground reality seemed to bely the orders.
Modernity and Its Discontents
Lord of the World by Robert Hugh Benson
This novel deeply affected me. It was written just before World War One, yet its vision of a world in which euthanasia, atheism, and technological accelerationism are the norm is eerily prophetic. I plan to review it in greater detail at a future date.
After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre
I read this after learning MacIntyre died earlier this year and found it to be electrifying. He compellingly makes the case that discussions of morality in the modern West are fruitless given the lack of shared vocabulary for even discussing the topic. He put into writing things that I have thought for a long time. His style is unique and rewarding to read.
The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis
I am a Lewis fan, but this book didn’t provide me with much beyond what MacIntyre said.
The Artifice of Intelligence by Noreen Herzfeld
I read this as part of my paper exploring the lessons Catholic social teaching holds for how humanity should respond to artificial intelligence, given that it is one of the few Christian book-length responses out there. It didn’t help much.
McCarthy
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
McCarthy gets a category of his own as I couldn’t find a good place to slot this book in. No Country for Old Men is one of those rare books where the movie adaptation may actually be better than the book, even though the book was excellent as well. Fantastic metaphysical thriller.
Feel free to reach out if any of these sound interesting to you.