Here is the list of my top ten favorite books of 2020. The books I read this year that I found most interesting and impactful. Not all of these books were published this past year, but many of them were. The only criteria I have for rating books is did it move me, and did it teach me something? These were books that did both of those things. I enjoyed almost all of the books I’ve read this year, but I found these titles to be particularly interesting, helpful, and in some cases, just plain fun. You can find the full list of books I’ve read this year by friending me on Goodreads.

-Live Not by Lies by Rod Dreher
Expanding on the work of the great Soviet-era dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Dreher explores what it means to live in the truth in an age shaped by lies. With wide-ranging interviews and deep insight into current societal trends, Dreher argues that persecution of Christians may not come to our culture in the way we expect and asks the question how can believers be ready to live in the truth when it carries real consequences?

-A Time to Build by Yuval Levin
Levin looks proffers a diagnosis as to how to build communities and society in an age where outrage and posturing reign and we are often unwilling to work with people who think differently (the last chapter is particularly poignant).

-Educated by Tara Westover
In this moving autobiographical work, Westover tells the story of her childhood and formative years living in a small town in Idaho and growing up as part of a fringe Mormon family. This moving tale reminded me a lot of Hillbilly Elegy and is the story of how Tara grappled with her upbringing and found her way in the world.

-The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
In this timely work, Douthat chronicles how a society rises and falls and makes the case that we are in the age where we are slowly blasting ourselves apart.

-Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer
Abandoned by incompetent leadership, the men of tiny Taffy 3 find themselves the only thing standing between the full force of the Japanese Navy and General MacArthur’s exposed landing beaches. Out-manned and out-gunned, Taffy 3’s destoryers would charge into the face of battleships in the last battleship engagement in human history. This book is their story, a story historians have called the U.S. Navy’s finest hour.

-Big White Ghetto: Dead Broke, Stone-Cold Stupid, and High on Rage in the Dank Woolly Wilds of the Real America by Kevin Williamson
There is perhaps no finer modern essayist than Kevin Williamson. With his usual brilliant prose, this collection of essays tramps across this great nation telling stories from the farmland, the left-behind small town, the big city, and the oilfield. It is gritty, heartbreaking, hopeful, and always insightful.

-For the Life of the World by Fr Alexander Schmemann
Fr Schmemann puts forward an approach to life rooted in the liturgy and Sacrements of the Orthodox Church and how this experience addresses secularism and the culture of our day and finds answers in the Sacrement.

-A Long Night in Paris by Dov Alfon
Written by a former Israeli spy, this novel is a gripping international thriller that provides interesting insight into the processes of some of Israel’s most elite spy units.

-Socialism Sucks: Two Economists Drink Their Way Through the Unfree World by Robert A Lawson
In this fun and educational book, two economists travel around the world exploring socialist (and fake socialist) countries and detailing what they see and why they work and don’t work and the beers they drink along the way.

-Twilight of the Gods: War in the Western Pacific 1944-1945 by Ian W Toll
In the capstone of Toll’s outstanding Pacific War trilogy, he chronicles the final year of the Empire of Japan and the overwhelming might of the American forces that brought it to its knees. From the sands of Iwo Jima to secret discussions in the Imperial palace and ultimately to atomic destruction, this is a chronicle of Imperial Japan’s Götterdämmerung.