November 30, 2025  |  View in Browser

The Best of Books 2025

Foreign Affairs’ Top Picks of the Year

Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers have selected the very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year. Find your next read in our full collection.

The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping

In this prodigiously researched epic, Torigian details the life of Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping—to explain the history of the Chinese Communist Party. Along the way, readers gain a sense of how the younger Xi became the man he is today.

Reviewed by Orville Schell

Zbig: The Life of Zbigniew Brzezinski, America’s Great Power Prophet

Luce, a gifted storyteller, chronicles the personal life and intellectual journey of former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, who played a significant but underappreciated role in opening the United States to China, bringing the Cold War to an end, and shaping the world that came after. In writing this gem of a book, Luce has rendered a genuine service to history.

Reviewed by Tom Donilon

Our Dear Friends in Moscow: The Inside Story of a Broken Generation

Soldatov and Borogon, two Russian journalists, tell the story of their one-time group of friends and colleagues—young Russians who, over the course of the Putin years, steadily drift toward nationalist and illiberal ideas and end up as supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Reviewed by Joshua Yaffa

Tomorrow Is Yesterday: Life, Death, and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel/Palestine

In this elegiac and confessional work that reflects on their decades of trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Agha and Malley argue that the two-state solution was fatally flawed from the start. Neither Israelis nor Palestinians can be satisfied by the reduction of their historical and religious claims to technical quibbles over borders and diplomatic recognition.

Reviewed by Lisa Anderson

Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

Among the dozens of books that have attempted to identify the forces that Donald Trump rode to power, this is one of the most closely reported and cogent. A combination of economic pain and cultural grievance has given rise, in Stewart’s analysis, to a loosely organized but generously funded political movement that would propel Trump back to the White House in 2024.

Reviewed by Jessica T. Mathews

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