Looking for a Winter Read? Here Are Some of Our Favorite Books 

It’s that time of year when the kids are out of school and many of us are off work for a few days at least, and things (hopefully) slow down enough to do some things we enjoy—like reading a good book. With that in mind, we have compiled a list of some of our favorite new and old books to recommend for your Winter reading list. We hope you will pick up one or two of these IFS-recommended books if you are looking for an engaging read!

Brad Wilcox: Notes on Being a Man by Scott Galloway (2025)

As I wrote in my longer review in The Wall Street Journal, Professor Scott Galloway’s new book, Notes on Being a Man is one of the best books I’ve read this year. Galloway is a popular podcaster and marketing professor at New York University, who was raised by a single mom and knows firsthand what it means to struggle as a boy in school, and brings a refreshing perspective on what to do about the falling fortunes of young men today. He underlines the challenges that our “addiction economy”—from gaming to porn—poses to young men and points them to embrace a pro-social masculinity. I wrote in my WSJ review: 

The ‘aspirational vision of masculinity’ Mr. Galloway offers is old school, centered around reviving men’s capacity to protect, provide and procreate. He challenges men to get offline and develop the physical and emotional strength to protect the women in their lives, as well as their communities and country. 

Notes on Being a Man is a great read as we head into the new year, especially if you are the parent of a boy, teach or work with young men—or jusr want to understand why boys are struggling and how to help them succeed.

Carter Skeel: Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1983), and Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (1955)

I have long been fascinated by how family culture differs in various communities, cultures, and countries. More recently, I’ve become particularly enamored with Latin American fiction. For American readers living in what often feels like an increasingly atomized and un-family-friendly society, these two novellas depict a markedly—and at times jarringly—distinct cultural atmosphere. Without spoiling either work, the drama is only possible in a culture that vests marriage and family with unrivaled social value and importance. 

Indeed, the central event of Chronicle of a Death Foretold is a wedding gone very wrong and how the bride’s two brothers respond. A young man’s quest to find his father at his dying mother’s behest drives the narrative of Pedro Paramo. Moreover, the nonlinear, chronologically expansive narratives in both books represent specific ideas about family. To what extent, for instance, is the course of your life determined by your parents? What about your family name?

I should be clear: Neither book is a didactic pro-family manifesto. On the contrary, both prompt difficult questions for marriage and family advocates like my colleagues and me. To wit: When family honor incites violence, has a culture placed too high a value on family? Can we have a pro-family culture without any of the baggage that typically attends to it? Even so, is this arrangement still preferred to the alternative? Pick up the books and let me know what you think.

Lyman Stone: Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms by Gerard Russell (2014)

Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms is a fun exploration of corners of the Middle East you probably don't know much about, and especially an exploration of rare, minority religious sects in these areas. While on its face the book reads as an ethnography and travelogue of fascinating peoples, on the subtext level, it turns out to be a riveting account of how cultures survive amid adversity—or fail to do so. Mostly free of jargon, written for the interested reader who is not an expert in these issues, the book is a fountain of curious facts and worlds that might have been.

Jared Hayden: Dignity of Dependence by Leah Libresco Sargeant (2025)

Despite its provocative title, Leah Libresco’s Dignity of Dependence: A Feminist Manifesto is a must read for everyone, not just those interested in feminism. What starts as a focused yet devastating treatment of the ways in which women are asked to fit a world that does not fit them unfolds into an eye-opening cultural expose of how our obsession with autonomy leads to the dehumanization of all people. 

As Libresco insightfully demonstrates, from politics to sports to technology, it’s not just that “a world that is unwilling to acknowledge dependence as foundational to human life is unable to treat women as equal in dignity to men.” Ultimately, when a culture writes off “ordinary parts of human life…everyone’s claim on their humanity becomes tenuous.” Far from being an inconvenience, dependence is a road map for a blessed life. As Leah makes abundantly clear, it is only when we acknowledge reality rather than deny it, when we enact policies and design tools with our dependence, difference, and limits in mind, that we find flourishing.

Michael Toscano: The Human Condition by Hanna Arendt (1958)

The best book I read in 2025 is actually one that I have re-read several times over the years: namely, Hanna Arendt’s magnificent The Human Condition. Arendt’s study recounts how three different aspects of the human personality have been either diminished or maximized in modernity, and how this has generated deep cultural crises for which we have little answer. Arendt, one of the great philosophers and social theorists of the 20th century, recounts how what she calls “the man of action”—the individual who can use great words and do great deeds that unite people into a common political body (i.e., politics)—has disappeared from history, and how modernity has devolved into a social conflict between what Marx called the animal laborans (i.e., the laboring animal) and what Max Frisch called homo faber (i.e., man the fabricator, or, better yet, man the technologist). 

I strongly recommend this extremely rich book, even though I cannot do it justice with a longer summary. But I’ll say this: it has helped me grapple with the fact that everything in our politics currently is moving in order to advance the priorities of one industry: that is, Big Tech. If you want to understand the roots of that fact, please read.

Ken Burchfiel: Expecting Better by Emily Oster (2014)

When my wife and I were preparing for the birth of our son, I found Emily Oster’s Expecting Better, a book that provides real data on a wide range of pregnancy-related questions, to be an invaluable resource. Oster, an economist by training, was not satisfied with vague recommendations about prenatal care that lacked explanation or corresponding data. Therefore, she analyzed the research herself, and shared her findings within this book so that readers can make the best decisions for themselves. Her focus on actual probabilities and metrics, rather than platitudes or ambiguous statements, helps this book stand out among similar guides. 

I also appreciated her care not to mistake correlation with causation. For instance, Oster notes that women who drink coffee have a higher miscarriage risk; however, she also points out that higher levels of nausea are correlated with both lower coffee consumption (since most people don't reach for a cappuccino when they're queasy) and lower miscarriage rates. Thus, nausea symptoms may explain the apparent connection between coffee and miscarriage—though she does caution against excessive consumption, nevertheless. Once you've made it through pregnancy, be sure to check out Cribsheet, a similar book by Oster that focuses on the early childhood years.

Wendy Wang: Get Married by Brad Wilcox (2024) 

Judging by the cover, you might assume Get Married is about telling young people to just get married, a message that isn’t necessarily popular in today’s world. But once you open it and begin reading, you will find a book that is rich in data and full of stories that speak not only to young adults, but also to people like me, who have been married for 10+ years—and really to anyone who wants a stronger marriage.  

While helping Brad assemble the data for the book and reading chapters from the very first draft, I learned so much. A few of the concepts the book tackles, such as “the soulmate myth,” were things I had previously believed. His discussion of the we-before-me mindset especially resonated with me.

I’ve been citing this book often in my own research. My favorite line is: “Happiness is less likely to be found when pursued directly,” and adopting a “family-first, me-second mentality is the paradoxical route to marital bliss.” If you haven't read it yet, Get Married should be on your list for the new year. 

Grant Bailey: The Great Transformation by Karl Polanyi (1944)

Published in 1944, The Great Transformation analyzes the economic and social changes following the Industrial Revolution in England. Karl Polanyi paints a compelling portrait of social and political upheaval in the wake of great technological change. Polanyi’s relevance today can be especially seen in his concept of the double movement, which Michael Toscano took up recently in Compact. As market society proliferated in Industrial England and old social structures dissolved, Polanyi notes that a protective countermovement formed in response.

The double movement dialectic consists of progress followed by defensive social protection. This two-step slowed the course of the Industrial Revolution but alleviated some of pain felt by the common man. This was accomplished through factory laws, public benefits, agrarian tariffs, and other social protections. And notably, the British monarchy played a central role, using the power of the Crown to blunt the effects of economic dislocation and render change socially bearable. In our day of great technological leaps and social upheaval, Polanyi’s double movement sheds light on much of the social and political dynamics we see today.

Alysse ElHage: Three Days in June by Anne Tyler (2025)

I’ve been a fan of Anne Tyler’s novels since I read my first one as a teen. Tyler—a Pulitzer Prize winner who is still writing at age 84—is probably best known for bestsellers like 1985’s The Accidental Tourist, which was made into a movie starring Geena Davis and William Hurt (for which Davis won an Oscar). But I think her best, and most pro-family novel, is Breathing Lessons, a lesser known book that hilariously details 24 hours of a very normal and often boring marriage during a road trip to a funeral. It was made into a beautiful Hallmark movie in 1994 starring Joanne Woodward and James Garner, and it’s definitely worth a watch if you can find it. 

The theme of marriage features prominently in many of Tyler’s novels, where her focus is on the messiness of married life. In some of her books, including The Accidental Tourist, these unions end in divorce, but Tyler handles the issue of marital breakdown in a way that illustrates her esteem for the institution and her recognition of how complicated it is to unravel the tie that binds, especially when children are involved. While Breathing Lessons is probably her most pro-marriage novel to date, I would add her newest book, Three Days in June to the list of her works that promote the permanence of the marriage vow. 

As the title states, the novel centers on the three days during the protagonist’s daughter’s wedding. Her ex-husband shows up at her door needing a place to stay, and Tyler weaves their love and breakup story into the setting of their daughter’s wedding preparations. Without giving too much away, Tyler manages to explore the negative effects of adultery and divorce on men, women, and children, while emphasizing the resilience of marriage—even post-divorce. I highly recommend any of Anne Tyler's novels for those who’ve never read her, but Three Days in June is an excellent choice if you need another reason to believe in lasting love. 

*Photo credit: Shutterstock