52 Books for 2026

Someone asked me about a reading list from my House InHabit post yesterday. Here are the books I would recommend. One book for every week of the year.

I love to read. I think it’s the best thing for the human mind. I have a goal each year of reading at least a book a week, and if I can, I try to get to 60. Given my job and the amount of time I spend behind the wheel, it’s relatively easy to achieve with audiobooks. The more time I have spent in politics, the more I realize how important it is to understand long-form discourse about a subject. Books are the best method. Even if the book isn’t the most well-written, the time I spend reading it is far better than any time I spend on social media. For what it is worth, Substack is the best version of a pseudo social media. The amount of writing that is here is the best form of free speech I know of. Even the most undiscovered of people can discuss incredible ideas here and build an audience for their writing and philosophical writings. But, while it is an incredible innovation in the lineage of social media, it does not substitute for a good book.

In my latest post at House Inhabit I mentioned that people should read more books and that they should spend less time on X. That prompted a conversation about a reading list. So I thought I would put together a list of books I think are worth reading that add to the intellectual discussions about Western civilization. I would love to see people read these books — I think they all add depth and context to the moment we live in, even if they were written thousands of years ago. So, if you are so inclined, save this list and give it a try. I think you will find the exercise worth it. Since the advent of the glass portals to hell, I have found reading to be a necessary salve to cure the angst that those hyperventilating machines cause. Let me know if you are reading these; maybe there is something here for subscribers where we can create a chat to discuss them and the ideas that they hold. If that is of interest, just comment below, and I’ll see if there is a good format for those discussions.

These books are listed in no particular order; they all have incredible value to the mind and national discourse.

1. After America - Mark Steyn. I read this book every new year, and now, 15+ years later, it still holds incredible truth. Mark is funny and filled with precise opinions that, in hindsight, seem prophetic.

2. The Real Lincoln - Thomas J. DiLorenzo. If you want to understand why there has become such a divergent departure from the original interpretations of the Constitution, look no further than Abraham Lincoln and the outcome of the Civil War. This book is earth-shattering to the mythology of America and the myths of the most atrocious war ever to take place on American soil.

3. The Secrets of The Federal Reserve - Eustace Mullins. Our money is ruined, and it all started with the creation of this monster.

4. Shall Liberty of Empire Be Sought - Patrick Henry. A short read from a speech by America’s most famous orator. The warnings of what might come by ratifying the Constitution were seen by Henry. Of all the founders, he was the most prescient and the one worth understanding.

5. Merchant Kings - Stephen R. Brown. An understanding of the mercantile interests of the pre-American Revolution is eerily similar to our moment. What causes a revolution? Crony capitalism and government heavy-handedness.

6. A Philosophical Enquiry - Edmund Burke. Dismissed for pre-woke era words and ideas, Burke has been cast out. But he should be understood if we are to restore any ethics remotely close to the ones the country was based upon.

7. Tariff Wars - William K. Bolt. The turmoil that sparked the Civil War started with tariffs. The North used its political weight to strangle the South, and Jackson, as president, and John C. Calhoun as legislator, worked to stop the abuses. It is worth understanding in our era of tariffs and the strength of the modern government.

8. Suicide Of A Superpower - Patrick Buchanan. Buchanan called the demise early. He saw war and graft as the undoing that sat prominently on the horizon. It is worth understanding all of his predictions, particularly as Buchanan is looked back upon as one of the early voices of the America First doctrine.

9. Embattled Rebel - James M. McPherson. This book is about Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. His long misunderstood positions and his dedication to creating an independent Confederate nation have put him in the dark category of history, but he’s worth understanding, and in turn understanding the motivations of the South. You cannot understand the modern version of America without understanding the Civil War. Davis is a key component to having any depth of knowledge about what happened and why we have what we have as a nation now.

10. The Color of Law - Richard Rothstein. This book is about how governments used their power to segregate America through planning and zoning. To understand why cities suffer from their plight and racial frustrations, one must realize that most of the issues were created by the government.

11. The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self - Carl R. Trueman. The best philosophical breakdown of our self-centered culture and the reasons we are flailing as a society.

12. The Money Men - H.W. Brands. How the 19th century set the stage for the Federal Reserve and the Income Tax.

13. The Death of Democracy - Benjamin Carter Hett. The crumbling ground of the Weimar Republic and how Hitler captured the minds of troubled people for a political, democratic victory.

14. The Russian Revolution - Sheila Fitzpatrick. How an ideology grabbed the attention of young men and upended one of Europe’s oldest monarchies.

15. The Jeffersonians - Kevin C. Gutzman. To understand the only time that the American republic lived by the doctrines of the Constitution, Jefferson and his disciples, Madison, and Monroe must be studied. This is a fantastic look into a nearly 30-year uninterrupted dedication to a small government philosophy.

16. The Last King of America - Andrew Roberts. How King George III lost the American colonies, and how the British saw the conflict.

17. I Am Murdered - Bruce Chadwick. George Wythe was the intellectual leader of the Virginian revolutionaries. Late in life, after Jefferson had moved the capital to Richmond, Wythe moved from Williamsburg and established a life in the bustling new center of power. A wealthy man, Wythe, was murdered by a member of his family. This great historical fiction is a fun read and gives insight into the justice system of the early 19th century.

18. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The most incredible book about the internal conflicts of human nature and society.

19. Frankenstein - Mary Shelley. How do we deal with our internal temptations to be “like God”? Shelley asks the hard questions through her characters. A far cry from the silly movies about a monster, Frankenstein deserves to be a classic for the depth of discussion the ethics of the book provides.

20. View of the Constitution Of The United States - St. George Tucker. An argument from a Virginian’s perspective. If you want to undo the myth of the divinity of the Constitution, this book is the most intellectual dissection of what will happen under the new structure of Government that the Constitution was creating.

21. The Autobiography of Calvin Coolidge - Amity Shales and Matthew Denhart. The last president to serve as if the Constitution limited the power of the federal government, rather than creating a mechanism to rule a continent. Coolidge is worth knowing and loving. He should be admired as a president rather than scorned as most modern historians do.

22. John Tyler, Accidental President - Edward P. Crapol. Tyler was the first Vice President to assume the office after the death of William Henry Harrison, who died just a few months into his presidency. Tyler is always dismissed by modern historians, but his presidency defined how the president related to the other branches of government until the Civil War. He is among my favorite presidents for his reliance upon solutions that diminished the role of the federal government.

23. Discovery of Freedom - Rose Wilder Lane. Laura Ingalls Wilder, of Little House on the Prairie fame, had a much more prolific writing daughter, who brought her prairie sensibilities to her philosophy of government.

24. Reminiscence of Peace and War - James Madison Page. A memoir of Southern Women before, during, and after the Civil War. A humanization of war that is better than most.

25. Heirs of the Founders - H.W. Brands. The generation that followed the founders was filled with interesting characters and political giants like John Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster. These were the sons of the founders, and yet in one generation, the troubles that the founders had overcome were back on the table, disturbing harmony and governance between the states.

26. Tyranny Unmasked - John Taylor of Caroline. The best breakdown of frustrations fomenting in the South and how the federal government was abusing its power over the states.

27. How Alexander Hamilton Screwed Up America - Brion McClanahan A far cry from the dancing and singing of the play, Hamilton created a system so woven upon itself financially that no matter what the philosophy of government that occupied the White House or the Congress, it could not be undone.

28. The Unprotected Class - Jeremy Carl. What our current young men are facing after decades of being ignored.

29. Confessions Of An Economic Hit Man - John Perkins. How the CIA and NGO’s run the world through violence and extortion. A confession from someone on the inside.

30. 1956 Suez Crisis - Major Jean-Marc Pierre. The first pre-emptive strike after the Second World War was met with the shaming of Britain out of its empire and a realignment of the entire Western world. 1956 has to be understood if the post-war world we live in is to be made sense of.

31. The Whiskey Rebellion - Charles River Editors. Even the founding generation struggled with the supremacy of the Federal Government. Washington, under the advice of Hamilton, decided to exercise force on its citizens. The only time that the army has been turned upon its people in non-war time.

32. The Illusion of Victory - Thomas Fleming. World War I dismantled the Western order. Wilson believed himself to be the fixer of the hell that the war had wrought, and he thought his League of Nations would be the fix. Ultimately, all of it was an illusion and a temporary pause in the war. Worth understanding the early 20th century to realize why the men who came home were dedicated to building a world that would never see the atrocities of such travesty again.

33. American Secession - F.H. Buckley. A primer on what America would look like broken into smaller states with more aligned interests.

34. The Iliad - Homer. If you want to understand what the world looked like before the ethics of Christianity dominated civilization, the Iliad is a great look into the nature of man. All of the atrocities, the power, the lust of humans who know no restraint. Pair it with the Odyssey if you want the full epic.

35. White Noise - Don DeLillo - The closest proximity of the moment we live in. Dystopic in tone, but poignantly predictive of what happens when a culture is absorbed in an always available quantity of media, drugs, and vice.

36. Rebel Yell - S.C. Gwynne. Stonewall Jackson was a model American who loved the United States. When war required him to choose between Virginia and the Union, he felt he could only serve his state. Dismissed because of his siding with the South, there is still so much to learn from this era of Americans, and Jackson is an incredible human and an amazing warrior who should be considered the greatest general the United States has ever produced. Rebel Yell gives deep insight into the man himself.

37. The Great War - José Delgado. A chronology of the war, its origins, battles, and ending.

38. Francis Bacon: The Essays - Francis Bacon. No philosopher had more impact on the American Revolution than Bacon. Each discussion is a breakdown of natural law and how it applies to the creation of government and society.

39. The Real Watergate Scandal - Geoff Shepard. No modern historical moment is more misunderstood than Watergate. Shepard was an insider in the Nixon White House, and insists that what happened was not as it seemed.

40. The Ethics of Aristotle - Aristotle. The basis of Western Society comes from Aristotle. His writings form Jefferson, Adams, and Henry. The original essays are all incredible and still hold up against the tyranny of modernity.

41. All This Marvelous Potential - Matthew Algeo. A book about RFK and his 1968 tour through Appalachia. A heartbreaking look at what was lost at the hand of an assassin’s bullet.

42. The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky. A classic. No one better describes the Russian conflict than Dostoyevsky. Torn between two cultural worlds and holding together a massive empire, Russia struggles to know where it sits in the hierarchy of the Globe. The underlying themes in The Idiot address Russian cultural conflicts, embodied by the good prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin and his nemesis, Parfyon Rogozhin.

43. Calhoun - Clyde N. Wilson. Calhoun is a statesman who needs to be understood in the 21st century if there is any hope of staying unified as a republic. Dismissed by our moment, Calhoun was long considered the model political mind. He’s worth understanding.

44. Natural Law - Lysander Spooner. I quote Spooner all the time. He was an abolitionist who believed the Constitution had failed the country. An anarchist at heart, he believed government was designed to preserve itself, not be the voice of the people.

45. Sing Down The Moon - Scott O’Dell. A beautiful story about the Navajo people and Canyon de Chelly.

46. Epic of Gilgamesh - Unknown. The oldest literature known to man, the book was written 2000 years before Christ. It is filled with allegory and the conflicts of the human soul. Set in what is modern Iraq, the story weaves between self-interest and service to the stranger.

47. The Machine Stops - E.M Forester. What happens when the machine that runs the world breaks?

48. Greenmantle - John Buchan. A mystery novel about murder in Africa. Many parallel themes to the world in turmoil today.

49. The Fixed Period - Anthony Trollope. What happens if society says that your usefulness runs out at 75 years old? Does society rebel? A thriller and a deep look into the human spirit of resolve and authoritarianism.

50. Time Machine - H.G. Wells. What does the future look like? A bifricated species, one filled with rage and strength, and another softened by laziness and over sexualization. Wells nails the future. The only thing he got wrong was how far in the future it all would happen.

51. George Washington’s Rules of Civility - George Washington. How the leader of America saw behaviors and duty as the cornerstone of a good nation and culture.

52. Grapes of Wrath - Steinbeck. America has a lot of structural issues in its economy. Steinbeck captured the struggles of the last major crash that evaporated the wealth and livelihood of millions. It would be good to understand the human resilience that occurs in hard times. No one gets at the essence of that better than Steinbeck in his classic novel.

Hope that spurs on some discussion! Please let me know if you want to discuss any of these. I think it would be so interesting to dig into these with you!