Category: Book Reviews

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My Favorite Books of 2025 and What I Plan to Read in 2026

I’m not sure how many books I read in 2025, but it felt like a lot. Below I’ve collected a few standouts. This list reflects my intellectual preoccupations: democratic socialism and social democracy, labor history, Yiddish and Yiddishkeit, and realism in art and literature.

Tomorrow’s Bread by Beatrice Bisno

Published in the 1930s, this proletarian novel is based on the life of the author’s father, Abraham Bisno, a Jewish immigrant to Chicago from Ukraine who became a prominent labor leader among the city’s garment workers. A consummate organic intellectual, Bisno was a militant strike leader and practical socialist with provocative bohemian proclivities. The novel narrates Bisno’s personal and family life and paints an evocative picture of Jewish immigrant life in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century, a subject I wrote about recently for the Newberry Library.

The Communist by Guido Morselli

I was blown away by this intensely philosophical and psychological portrait of the Italian Communist Party in the 1950s. Although it is a novel, the story is grounded in a real milieu and mixes factual people and events with fictional in a way that I found compelling and stimulating. I especially liked its reflections on the fate of labor in a socialist society, a seemingly abstruse topic on which the plot actually hinges.

Your Comrade, Avreml Broide: A Worker’s Life Story by Ben Gold, translated by Annie Sommer Kaufman

Originally serialized in the leftwing Yiddish newspaper Morgn Frayhayt, this short novel tells the story of Avreml, a Jewish immigrant to New York from a shtetl in Romania. The novel is divided into two parts: the first is a lively description of life in the old country, peppered with romance, duplicity, underworld thieves, and a knock-down, drag-out fight. When events drive Avreml to leave for the United States, he finds himself alone and alienated by his new surroundings, an exploited worker in the garment industry. Avreml discovers socialism and eventually joins the Communists, making great personal sacrifices for the movement. While I found the second half of the novel didactic and dogmatic—it would be interesting to contrast it with the novel mentioned above, which takes a much more skeptical perspective on communist politics—the first half was utterly enchanting, enlivened by artist William Gropper’s inimitable illustrations. Kaufman’s translation is so seamless that you hardly realize you’re not reading the original, and her introduction places the novel in social and historical context.

New Deal Art by John P. Murphy

Written by my good friend and former Northwestern comrade, this handsomely illustrated survey is art history at its best. It offers a social, cultural, and institutional account of the era’s major artists and artworks, highlighting the diversity of New Deal artists while prompting the reader to consider the implications of the New Deal’s experiment in cultural democracy for today. I posted a short review of it on Amazon.

Salud y Shalom: Conversations with Jewish Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade by Joseph Butwin

A work of oral history, this book offers an unparalleled look at the personal and cultural factors that motivated American Jews to travel to Spain in the late 1930s and fight on behalf of the Spanish Republic against a fascist rebellion supported by Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. As these conversations reveal, Jewish volunteers—who made up around a third of those who joined the Republican cause from abroad—often came from families steeped in left-wing Yiddish culture. In other words, they had yikhes. Butwin conducted his interviews in the 1990s, when the veterans were still alive, and his book is notable among recent publications on the Spanish Civil War for containing so much first-hand testimony from the war’s participants, which it is no longer possible to gather. I hosted a book talk with the author for the Chicago YIVO Society in November.

Nordic Socialism by Pelle Dragsted

Drawing on the experience of the Nordic economies—where strong labor unions, state-owned enterprises, social democratic welfare states, and cooperative enterprises shape much economic activity—Pelle Dragsted, who represents the Red-Green Alliance in the Danish parliament, argues that it is possible to build a socialist society that avoids the pitfalls of the failed state socialisms of the twentieth century while still delivering a broad democratization of the economy. He envisions a pluralism of communal ownership forms that give ordinary people control over their lives while ensuring a high standard of living that is ecologically sustainable. I read Dragsted’s book alongside several other books about Nordic economic systems, including Viking Economics by George Lakey, Economic Performance in the Nordic World by Torben M. Andersen, and The Rise and Fall of Swedish Social Democracy by Kjell Östberg. One goal I have for 2026 is to write a review that addresses all these books together.

While Messiah Tarried by Nora Levin

I’m not sure why this book isn’t better known (although maybe I’m betraying my own ignorance). As a history of Jewish socialist movements, it covers much of the same territory as World of Our Fathers by Irving Howe and Prophecy and Politics by Jonathan Frankel, both of which are better known. What I liked about Levin’s book, which I finished in the waning hours of 2025, is its synoptic quality. Where Howe focuses on Jewish immigration to the United States and Frankel looks at Jewish socialism and nationalism in Eastern Europe, Levin brings these different strands together. She begins in the Russian Pale of Settlement, describing the conditions faced by Eastern European Jews, and covers Jewish immigrant socialist and labor movements in London and the U.S., the Bund in the Russian Empire, and the rise of socialist Zionism, ending with a chapter on Jewish-Arab relations in Palestine before the Balfour Declaration, a timely note on which to conclude.

I’m kicking off 2026 by diving into Sven Beckert’s new history of capitalism. I admired his earlier book, Empire of Cotton, and am looking forward to this one. At more than 1,000 pages, I think it should count as at least two books when it is time to tally the year’s reading at the end of 2026. A couple of other books I look forward to reading are Citizens of the Whole World: Anti-Zionism and the Cultures of the American Jewish Left by Benjamin Balthasar and Embracing Exile: The Case for Jewish Diaspora by David Kraemer.

Happy New Year, and happy reading!

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What George Lakey’s Viking Economics Gets Right—and What It Leaves Out

I have long admired the Nordic social democracies. With strong labor unions, generous welfare states, and universal social programs that prevent poverty, promote equality, and preserve freedom, they are as close to “real utopias” as anything today. They are also powerful counterexamples to popular talking points about the virtues of unfettered capitalist markets. Whenever someone shoots down a proposal to make the U.S. economy fairer and more equal—by instituting, say, single-payer health insurance or a universal child allowance—on the grounds that such programs are too expensive, would distort incentives, stifle innovation, or bankrupt the nation, one can always point to the Nordic countries where such programs are the rule and life appears to go on as prosperous and happy as ever. Indeed, these counties frequently top lists of the happiest countries in the world, an impressive feat considering that half the year they’re shrouded in darkness.

That’s not to deny that the Nordic economies have their problems. Following the Great Recession of 2008, Iceland practically imploded due to the bad investments of its banking sector. In Norway, where the discovery of oil in the 1970s led to the creation of a sovereign wealth fund seeded with money from the production of fossil fuels, climate change presents acute challenges. And in Sweden and Denmark, cultural conflicts over immigration have fueled the rise of far-right parties who have used the welfare state as a wedge issue to turn working-class voters against new immigrants, who are portrayed as a drag on the countries’ public services. However, as George Lakey argues in his 2017 book Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got it Right—and How We Can, Too, despite these problems, “the Nordic model” is still worth emulating. In accessible prose and a conversational—one could almost say breezy—style, Lakey describes how the Nordic social democracies developed, what makes them thrive, and what they can teach the rest of the world.

Class Struggle and the Birth of the Nordic Model

One of the most valuable parts of Lakey’s discussion is his history of the Nordic model, which occupies a big chunk of the first part of the book. As skeptics of applying Nordic principles to the American economy often imply, the model can seem a natural correlate of Nordic culture, something in these countries’ DNA, as it were, and thus hard for other countries to replicate. What Lakey shows, however, is that although the bold adventuring spirit of the Viking past has played a role in the development of the Nordic social democracies, their history is quite recent, the product of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Norwegian socialist Martin Tranmæl flirted with communism before charting a more moderate course. Public Domain/Wikimedia Commons.

Before then, Nordic societies were poor and unequal, mired in the same outmoded social customs and hierarchies as much of the rest of Europe. During the nineteenth century, many Scandinavians immigrated to North America in search of greater opportunity. The decision to adopt social democratic policies, leading to the creation of a strong welfare state, high-levels of equality, a much-diminished and chastened class of aristocrats and wealthy capitalists, and broadly shared prosperity was the outcome of social conflict and pressure from below in the form of a growing labor movement and nonviolent mass strikes that attracted broad social support. As Lakey shows in the case of Norway, the Nordic country he knows best, a militant workers’ movement that flirted openly with communism was key to the creation of a strong social democratic culture in which the power of owners was checked by democratic institutions that applied not just to the polity but also to the workplace. This history suggests that the Nordic model has less to do with “cultural DNA” than with class struggle and social movement organizing.

What Makes the Nordic Model Special?

In the second part of the book, Lakey moves beyond history to look at the institutions and ideas that underpin the Nordic model in greater detail, focusing on the areas of gender equality, work-life balance, poverty, taxes, education, racism, and efforts to combat global warming. While Lakey cites impressive initiatives in all these policy areas, I was especially interested in his discussions of work-life balance, poverty, and taxes. These topics comprise core aspects of the economy which affect large swathes of the population and are the areas where the U.S. has the most to learn from the Nordic countries, in my opinion. That’s not to say there isn’t much to learn in the other areas, whose importance must not be underestimated; but the Nordic emphasis on collective bargaining and a welfare state that provides universal services through the public rather than the private marketplace represents one of the most dramatic contrasts between the Nordic and the U.S. models.

Lakey’s discussion of these areas is illuminating. Americans have good reason to be jealous of the generous paid vacation time that Nordic workers enjoy (roughly five weeks), their guaranteed health insurance, which they get independent of employment, and the active labor market policies that ensure workers are matched with jobs that best suit their talents and interests. Although the Nordic tax burden may appear onerous from a U.S. perspective, it enjoys widespread support because of the high-quality services it finances. Yet I couldn’t help feeling that Lakey was sometimes bending over backwards to accommodate dubious U.S. assumptions about the sanctity of work and private initiative even as he extolled the Nordic rejection of “neoliberal” market logic.

My copy of Lakey’s book.

Take work. Lakey emphasizes the Nordic respect for work as a key driver of their success in reducing poverty. For example, in a section entitled “The Central Role of Work In Anti-Poverty Strategy,” Lakey writes: “For the Norwegians’ economic design, paid work is fundamental” (p. 128). While I wouldn’t dispute that assertion per se, I would argue that Lakey could have emphasized more clearly that the Nordic economies succeed in reducing poverty by distributing income through the welfare state rather than exclusively through the market mechanism of “factor income,” which distributes income based on things like rents, profits, and wages. As policy analyst and Nordic welfare state connoisseur Matt Bruenig argues, meeting the needs of people who can’t earn factor income because they don’t own assets and can’t work (because they belong to a core category of nonworkers: children, retired people, the disabled, the unemployed, students, and caretakers) is key to reducing poverty. “People who do not generally study poverty often erroneously believe that the answer to poverty is more jobs and higher wages,” Bruenig writes. “This is not surprising because this is the major poverty narrative of [U.S.] society. But this strategy runs into a wall very quickly” because “poverty afflicts nonworkers.” The reliance on the welfare state, which distributes income apart from work, is a big part of what makes the Nordic model successful and is something we should emulate here in the U.S. To his credit, Lakey does emphasize the importance of universal social programs to the Nordic model, which provide key services like healthcare, education, and childcare for all irrespective of income or employment status.

Lakey also emphasizes the role of cooperatives in the Nordic economies, taking pains to show the size and importance of this sector within the overall model. While I have nothing against co-ops and would welcome their spread in the United States, I wondered why Lakey didn’t also stress the role of state ownership in the Nordic model, a phrase that appears nowhere in the book, according to a Kindle keyword search. (Lakey does mention that Norway is home to “the largest sovereign wealth fund in the world,” but only in passing in his discussion of climate change.) Once again, Bruenig’s work is insightful. As he has discussed at length, the Nordic economies are characterized by a high degree of public ownership, often exceeding the levels of state ownership in more nominally socialistic countries such as Venezuela. I was also surprised that Lakey did not mention the Meidner Plan, an ambitious proposal by Sweden’s labor unions to socialize the country’s economy through wage-earner funds.

Another weakness of the book is its near total neglect of Finland. While technically not a Scandinavian country due to its geography and language, Finland is still considered a Nordic country, and its economy includes many of the same institutions that make the other Nordic countries stand out. Fortunately, readers interested in Finland can pick up The Nordic Theory of Everything by Finnish American journalist Anu Partanen, which complements Lakey’s book well.

Why the Nordic Model Isn’t Just for the Nordics

Aside from the history it tells, the main strength of Viking Economics is its concluding discussion of why the Nordic model is generalizable beyond the borders of the Nordic countries. Lakey organizes this discussion as a Q&A, answering the questions he has heard most frequently in the talks that he has given on the virtues of the Nordic economies. Common talking points against applying Nordic principles in the U.S. include the fact that the Nordic countries are small and have homogenous populations, whereas the U.S. is big and diverse. As Lakey points out, however, small size is generally considered a disadvantage when it comes to economics. “A big and wealthy country like ours can take on many projects that are beyond the reach of smaller countries,” he writes. “There are many ways in which the United States could use its advantages of scale to exceed the achievements of the Nordics” ( p. 245-6). And on the question of homogeneity, it’s not clear how it is relevant to providing things like free public higher education. As Lakey points out, New York City, a very diverse place, once offered free public higher ed. The contrast between Spain and Portugal provides another counterexample to the homogeneity and size talking points. Portugal is smaller and more homogenous than Spain, yet it is poorer and more unequal. One could go on, but these examples should give a taste of how Lakey addresses common arguments against importing the Nordic model to the U.S.

Finally, Lakey is at his best when explaining how nonviolent mass protest can achieve progressive change. As he compellingly shows, this is what happened in countries like Norway in the early 20th century and Iceland after the 2008 economic collapse. Lakey combines his pacifist beliefs as a Quaker with myriad examples of social reform from the 1930s and 1960s to make a persuasive case that well-organized social movements using peaceful tactics are the best vehicle for lasting change. Such movements offer a glimmer of hope in our dystopian present: It is often when countries are most polarized that grassroots change can occur most rapidly. “Just as in the Nordic countries in the 1920s and ’30s, the legitimacy of the U.S. political economy is shredding,” Lakey writes. “Now, because legitimacy has eroded, we can go well beyond the piecemeal reforms yielded in the ’60s that kept the power structure in place” (p. 264). The damage and further polarization sure to be inflicted by the second Trump administration offer a chance to test this idea—and an incentive to prove it right.