The Best Books Seth Read in 2025

How advice about murderous dads explains the difference between the U.S. and China

In 2025, I read about 35 books, slightly below my targeted pace of 40. Here are some superlatives and books I highly recommend:

Best Pairing: Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future by Dan Wang and
Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism by David B. Wong

How and why do China’s and the U.S.’s political cultures differ? This pair of books, each by a leading D. Wang/Wong, comes at the question from two very different directions.

Breakneck says the divergence is due to China having a leadership/political culture focused on engineering, while the U.S.’ is focused on law and lawyers. Dan Wang argues that the excesses of the one-child policy and lockdowns, and the failure of the US to build infrastructure, can all be understood as downstream of this decision. Dan has good conversations about this take at Conversations with Tyler and on the Sinica podcast.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the thesis and the anecdotes used to illustrate Breakneck are excellent. But in both the book and his podcasts, Dan doesn’t engage with what I see as the spiciest question prompted by this theory. Namely, when and why is it that the two cultures diverged?

If China is just on the standard Solow growth path, with a US 1950s need for engineering leadership, and will naturally converge to US 2020 levels of lawyerly leadership, this is a VERY different hypothesis than the two countries having fundamentally different moral and political inheritances. If the latter is the case, Tyler’s objection that (paraphrasing) “Chinese lawyers might just make autocracy more efficient” has purchase.

Isn’t it plausible that a mythic canal king, irrigated rice farming, and a unified empire make a society different than one downstream of Greek philosophy, chivalrized barbarians, and protestantism?

In David B. Wong’s “Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism,” this deep divergence in culture between the US and China is a central theme. D. Wong argues for a form of moral pluralism he calls “pluralistic relativism”. Under this view, dramatically different moral systems can be equally moral without descending into anything-goes moral relativism.¹

IMHO, this is a very attractive move for two reasons: (1) It’s more plausible than natural law theories of “absolute morality”, while still being able to make the obvious point that some social systems are better for human flourishing than others. And (2) It’s a step towards a vision of how universalizing Westerners can have constructive dialogue with Oriental moral systems -- an essential need in a century that will be defined by East vs. West rivalry.

This brings me to why Natural Moralities is such a valuable pairing with Breakneck. According to Wong, but in my own words, the divergence between Confucian and Western moral theories -- at a deep level -- is that Confucians are shape rotators while Plato and the Judeo-Christian philosophers are wordcels (“In the beginning was the word…”).

How What You Should Do When Your Dad Murders Someone Explains the Difference Between the U.S. and China

To illustrate this, David Wong brings up a story from Mencius, which I’ll contrast with one from Plato. The question both philosophers are faced with is “What should you do if your dad kills someone unjustly?” Before I give their answers, maybe think for yourself what you’d recommend.

Mencius’ Answer:

(Note: Gu Sao is Shun’s dad)

桃應問曰：「舜為天子，皋陶為士，瞽瞍殺人，則如之何？」

Tao Ying asked, saying, ‘Shun being sovereign, and Gao Yao chief minister of justice, if Gu Sou had murdered a man, what would have been done in the case?’

孟子曰：「執之而已矣。」

Mencius said, ‘Gao Yao would simply have apprehended him.’

「然則舜不禁與？」

‘But would not Shun have forbidden such a thing?’

曰：「夫舜惡得而禁之？夫有所受之也。」

‘Indeed, how could Shun have forbidden it? Gao Yao had received the law from a proper source.’

「然則舜如之何？」

‘In that case what would Shun have done?’

曰：「舜視棄天下，猶棄敝蹝也。竊負而逃，遵海濱而處，終身訢然，樂而忘天下。」

‘Shun would have regarded abandoning the kingdom as throwing away a worn-out sandal. He would privately have taken his father on his back, and retired into concealment, living some where along the sea-coast. There he would have been all his life, cheerful and happy, forgetting the kingdom.’

Here we see a classic shape rotator approach to a moral dilemma: The state needs to enforce justice, but a son needs to protect his father. We get a compromise that hopefully leaves everyone somewhat happy -- Shun should abscond with his father, removing him from being able to do more crimes, but still protecting him.

We also get advised that, despite what we’d call a tragic clash of values in the West, Shun should still try to feel good about himself. To your taste, Mencius’ answer is either a nice compromise or a stupidity that fails to satisfy any plausible theory of justice.

Plato’s Answer:

In the Socratic dialogue “Euthyphro”, Socrates runs into a priest who has decided to turn his murderous dad in to the justice system.

Unlike Mencius, who tries to split the difference and make everyone happy, Socrates decides to confuse things further. He questions:

Socrates
But what is the charge, and what is the suit about?

Euthyphro
Murder, Socrates.

Socrates
Heracles! Surely, Euthyphro, most people do not know where the right lies; for I fancy it is not everyone who can rightly do what you are doing, but only one who is already very far advanced in wisdom.

Euthyphro
Very far, indeed, Socrates, by Zeus.

Socrates
Is the one who was killed by your father a relative? But of course he was; for you would not bring a charge of murder against him on a stranger’s account.

Euthyphro
It is ridiculous, Socrates, that you think it matters whether the man who was killed was a stranger or a relative…

Socrates
But, in the name of Zeus, Euthyphro, do you think your knowledge about divine laws and holiness and unholiness is so exact that, when the facts are as you say, you are not afraid of doing something unholy yourself in prosecuting your father for murder?”

In the rest of the dialogue, Socrates proceeds to shoot down every theory of Euthyphro’s about the nature of piety and justice.

The reader is only left with more questions: “Are the gods just because they behave justly, or is justice simply what the gods command?” and “Is piety something different than a commercial relationship with gods?” In classic wordcel fashion, rather than actually contribute to solving a social dilemma, Socrates critiques and deconstructs -- and, of course, his dialogue is much, much longer than Mencius’ answer too!

When framed as wordcel vs. shaperotator culture/morality, I think the Breakneck distinction between Lawyer and Engineer states makes more sense, and is actually a deeper and more interesting thesis. It also puts me closer to Tyler’s view that just adding more lawyers to China’s system won’t actually result in more individual protections and Western-style justice.

I think I can see the unique strengths of either approach, while still feeling secure in the fact that we each have a system that works well for us: A Western system of critique, individual reason, an openness to the idea of tragic conflicts, and an insistence on conceptual clarity and rights vs. a Confuscian system of practical problem solving at the expense of some of that clarity and Western roadbumps to ill-concieved grand plans. I hope that books like these, which attempt to see the logic in each other’s systems, can be an important step to peaceful coexistence.²

Best Non-Fiction: The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost by Cathal J. Nolan

An alluring possibility: What if the real battle is the allies and economic capacity we build up along the way?

The start of this book is not promising. An overlong introduction of the main theme — battles and great generals are overrated; attrition and grand strategy underrated — which bounces between obvious and unsupported claims.

But what comes next is the greatest single-volume history of warfare I’ve ever read. A masterful tour from Marathon to the Marne, his discussions of individual wars are better than many dedicated books I’ve read.

His coverage of the evolution from pike and shot, to line infantry, to skirmishers is excellent — especially because it’s not presented as a series of innovations by great generals. Rather, the author has a fresh take focused on the interaction of generals’ desire for maneuver warfare with changing fortification and siege technologies, as well as a focus on how quickly these technologies and strategies can diffuse through repeated encounters.

The author’s main argument is simple: (1) the relative cumulative economic power of sides is the most important determinant of who wins long wars (2) long wars are expensive also, and therefore (3) Revisionist powers are tempted to plan around short wars because these are the ones that would hypothetically help them. This leads to (4) Revisionist and over-confident powers quickly find themselves in over their heads, leading them to lose long wars.

Decisive, quick, victorious maneuver warfare is the dream of a Frederick the Great, a Von Moltke, a Yamamoto. The author does a fantastic job of explaining this doctrine — the lust for a costless victory, ideally a “cauldron battle” that would exterminate the enemy army in imitation of Cannae.

But then the author makes an amazing, obvious, and yet hugely underappreciated point — why do we idealize the victory at Cannae, when Hannibal’s strategic failures are what determine the course of the war?

The author explains why. We idealize the great army geniuses of the past - in part to get adolescents psyched about war, in part to glorify national genius, but worst of all, to justify irrational wars of aggression by revisionist powers. The Japanese in WW2 wanted to revise the international order, but they weren’t capable (due to internal division in large part & aggressive leaders taking international actions) of aligning themselves on the stronger side of a global conflict (or at limiting the spread of their conflict). Therefore, the only answer was ever more aggressive attacks in the hope of destabilizing, in a series of brilliant campaigns, stronger opponents.

The argument is basically right. I am convinced. Great book. But it is possible to over-learn this lesson. France’s side may have eventually won WW2 - perhaps inevitably due to the network of alliances- but their failure to keep up with Wermacht initiative at the beginning of the war made everything so much worse.

As a child, I fell for the romance of Hannibal. In some ways, the fact that he loses in the end is almost a plus - a heroic standing in the face of the Roman tsunami. But a much better hero is Fabian, the delayer, who, rather than pushing for a quick resolution, showed the patience necessary for Rome’s advantages to inevitably tell.

Where does that leave the US today? I conclude that maintaining the alliance system is more important than ever. No country, including China, can challenge the US + EU + India together. We couldn’t be conquered in decades. Even if these nations cut their militaries to the bone, we could still hold out and win a long war - so long as we remained unified! It also makes me worried for an Israel that, drunk with operational success, may find itself isolated and overextended.

In sum, Grand Strategy>>>>>Operational Art>=Tactics.

Best Sci Fi: The Hydrogen Sonata by Ian M. Banks

I read The Culture series as mainly about two things: (1) What would it be like to live in a utopia? And (2) How did (and should have) the US acted internationally during its 1990s unipolar moment. I had been holding off on reading this, the last in the series, wanting to savor one of my favorite series for longer. But I finally gave in.

I was not disappointed. The book delivers well on both (1) and (2) as well as pointing out interesting connections between them. The core metaphor is the humanoid protagonist’s dedication to mastering playing an impossibly stupid four-arm-requiring string instrument. No spoilers, but if you’re interested in either theme, I highly recommend this series. It can be read out of order, and this is possibly my favorite, so feel free to jump in here.

Best Play/Opera: Salome by Oscar Wilde

I read the play in advance of seeing the excellent Met production. I appreciated how Oscar anticipates the concept of the “male gaze” and how sexual abuse perpetuates itself. The play is ambiguous in a way that leaves “The Dance of the Seven Veils” and related scenes somewhat sexy. Oscar’s language in listing the great gifts offered by King Herod is hypnotic.

Strauss’ music and the Met’s staging illustrate the play well. The Met production renders explicit how fucked up Salome’s abuse was, using seven Salomes at various ages, all dressed in school-girl clothes, to make sure you don’t miss the point, at the expense of sexiness.

Wildcard: The Pine Barrens by John McPhee

If you’re not from New Jersey, you’ve probably only encountered the Pine Barrens through hearing of mobsters dumping bodies there or perhaps the Jersey Devil cryptid. Even as someone from North Jersey, my understanding did not extend much further than that. But I really enjoyed learning more about it in this tightly written exploration of an anachronistic region nestled discretely between Philly and NYC.

The pines have always been sparsely populated, even in indigenous times, because of the sandy soil unsuitable for most agriculture. It has been a haven for Northeasterners who have wanted to get off the grid for centuries: as America’s first Native American reservation, for escaped slaves, and for Loyalists during and after the Revolutionary War. Today, it is known for its excellent blueberries, which were intentionally selected, cultivated, and spread by Rutgers University biologists.

The writing is brisk and respectful while not above pointing out some of the funny or absurd parts of piney life. Truly an underappreciated corner of America!

Most Laughable Economic Theory Joke Award: Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy by Robert A. Johnson

I have to mention this one because I got the best laugh I’ve had of the year out of it -- but that was unintentional, the book is pretty bad.

You may have read about the distinction between the Dionysian and the Apollonian introduced by Nietzsche. Like a D&D alignment table, this chaos vs. order axis is orthogonal to conventional morality, but an important aspect of human psychology. I highly recommend reading “The Birth of Tragedy” by Nietzsche, or “Psychological Types” by Jung, to learn more about this distinction! The idea that we are cut off from our emotive, intuitionistic tools for creating value is a compelling one, but one difficult to balance with our modern virtues of reason and order. It’s a really good big idea!

This book is only sometimes about that big idea, and like many in Nietzsche’s and Jung’s shoes, it doesn’t share their talent for connection and subtlety. Instead, in this book, we get something in between DBT and Jungian shadow-self work.

Some of these ideas are not necessarily bad -- understanding your counter-social impulses and integrating them is great. But some of the ideas advocated are actually pretty bad and scary. The book seems to advocate different pseudo-schizo approaches to emotional healing with the shadow self -- from building a little shrine of your idol, to doing crazy calisthenics your dream-Dionysis tells you to do.

In a very short book of 97 pages, it’s clear the author is running out of steam by the end, with two of the last chapters devoted to reciting not particularly exciting dreams he or a client has had.

The book is at its funniest when the author -- who admits to not being very good at book writing or history -- completely makes up a political-economic history of the suppression of Dionysis and his replacement with the debauched Bacchus.

The peak of this, which I’ll leave you with, is my new favorite theory of the price level. From page 45, on Dionysus as “scapegoat”:

“Sheep represent everything of value in our Judeo-Christian World. The sheep, in fact, is the chief determinant of our currency. Every currency in the Western world -- the shilling, the franc, the deutche mark, the lira, the peso, the Austrian thaler (from which we got our dollar) -- was the price of one sheep. For centuries, there was no inflation in the Western world because one of our money pieces was worth a sheep. You could count on that anywhere, anytime.”

Literally laughed for a solid 10 minutes. Unconstrained by reason, the author gave me a moment of joy. And isn’t that the most Dionysian thing of all?

Honorable Mentions:

Abundance -- Agreed with it too much to find it interesting. But it’s the book I’m “rooting for” the most this year.

Democracy in America part 1 -- Great, but “The Ancient Regime and the Revolution” is better, and more unified in its thinking. This is foxy and hard to summarize, but ofc a deserved classic.

The Fundamentals of Heavy Tails -- Great primer on a topic I’ve launched myself into this year.

Help Wanted -- Read on the recommendation of Jason Furman, a nice little slice of life about minor drama at an upstate NY big-box store and the people who work there. Some good boots-on-the-ground economics about how management, economic incentives, loyalty, and hope play out at a place like this.

Fortune’s Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street -- Good for its discussion of the Kelly criteria and the hilarious fight between gamblers and Samuelson over whether it’s deeply true. (Spoiler: Obviously, it’s only utility maximizing from a single specific perspective, but it’s an awesome and useful heuristic for long-lived institutions.)

1. You might think that this is just Isaiah Berlin-esque Moral Pluralism, but as of this book, D. Wong HATES that term, arguing that Berlin goes full relativist. He argues that Berlin’s system has no resources for calling e.g. Aztec or Molochian worship systems immoral, while he would argue that only moral systems that plausibly contribute to human flourishing (which he thinks is somewhat universal due to our shared biology).

2. This is the second book in the last few years where I’ve run into a weird 1970s UN cybernetics conference giving people disastrous ideas. Here it appears as where China’s architect of the one-child policy got his inspiration. I have also seen these conferences in “Building a Ruin” about late Soviet economic policymaking, as a source for compromise technocratic ideas that gave Soviet leaders a politically useful (but economically inadequate) third option besides the antiquated command economy vs. true liberalization.