Summer offers a valuable opportunity to step back from the pace of daily life and engage ideas that inform, challenge, and inspire. Whether deepening your understanding of today’s most pressing issues or exploring enduring questions, diving into a great book remains one of life’s most fulfilling pursuits.
Our 2025 Bradley Summer Book List features timely selections that challenge conventional thinking, spark intellectual curiosity, explore enduring faith and community, and highlight ideas shaping our culture and public life.
The Anxious Generation
by Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt's "The Anxious Generation" argues that the rise of phone-based childhoods in the 2010s fueled a surge in anxiety, depression, and self-harm among adolescents. He contends that reduced independence, outdoor play, and real-world interaction have hindered development, particularly harming girls via social media and boys through virtual withdrawal. Haidt proposes four new norms and collective actions for families, schools, tech companies, and governments to foster healthier childhoods. This urgent, data-driven book is essential for anyone concerned about the well-being of young people.
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The Troublemaker
by Mark L. Clifford
The Troublemaker tells the remarkable story of Jimmy Lai, a billionaire entrepreneur turned free speech activist in Hong Kong, who is now China’s most prominent political prisoner.
Lai’s pro-democracy efforts, which included meetings with U.S. officials and support for Hong Kong’s Occupy Central movement, led to his arrest under China’s sweeping so-called Safeguarding National Security law of 2020. Held in solitary confinement since then, Lai faces life in prison on trumped up charges of sedition and collusion.
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Dickens the Enchanter: Inside the Explosive Imagination of the Great Storyteller
by Peter Conrad
Peter Conrad's compelling account presents Charles Dickens as an imaginative, humorous, and obsessive figure, rivaling Shakespeare in literary importance. Conrad explores Dickens' novels, journalistic essays, letters, and public readings, highlighting how these blurred the lines between performance and possession. He reveals the coexistence of creation and destruction within Dickens, whose cheerful public persona masked deep inner turmoil. This book delves into the genius and madness of Dickens' powerful imagination, promising to captivate and surprise both lifelong admirers and new readers.
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On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization
by Douglas Murray
Douglas Murray, a non-Jewish observer, argues that Israel's democratic values starkly contrast with Hamas's genocidal ideology. He critiques the Western left's response to the conflict, exposing their double standards and mischaracterizations of Israel. Through vivid testimony from October 7 survivors, victims, and even perpetrators, Murray illustrates the high stakes of misunderstanding this conflict for both Israel and the future of Western values.
The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror, and Entertainment
by David Mamet
David Mamet, once a liberal stalwart, now critiques the cultural and political elites he believes have corrupted American institutions. With his signature wit and mafia film references, he exposes how myth, media, and language control society. "The Disenlightenment" offers Mamet's bold insights on modern life, fiercely defending traditional values from one of America's most provocative literary minds.
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The Persistence of the Ideological Lie
by Daniel Mahoney
Daniel Mahoney argues that modern movements, from Jacobinism to wokeism, have replaced the moral distinction of good vs. evil with the false dichotomy of progress vs. reaction. This rebrands vice as virtue and condemns virtue as regressive. Mahoney examines how ideological waves like Marxism, National Socialism, the New Left, and today’s progressive dogmas share a disdain for gradual reform, constitutional limits, and personal responsibility, instead assigning guilt by class, race, or identity. He critiques today’s "culture of repudiation" and outlines a path to restoring moral clarity and civic integrity.
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Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth
by Robert P. George
Acclaimed political philosopher and legal scholar Robert P. George tackles some of the most vexing issues dividing Americans today. He argues that the “Age of Faith” of the Medieval period and the “Age of Reason” of the European Enlightenments have been followed by a modern “Age of Feeling.” In this new age, people derive their beliefs not from faith or reason — or faith and reason — but from emotion, which becomes the central source of truth. And so, many have embraced a fierce moral absolutism on the basis of beliefs that are the products of nothing more than subjective inclinations and experiences.
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The Triumph of Economic Freedom: Debunking the Seven Great Myths of American Capitalism
by Donald J. Boudreaux and Phil Gramm
Boudreaux and Gramm critically re-examine U.S. economic history, arguing that government intervention, not capitalism, has most often undermined prosperity and freedom. Focusing on five pivotal periods (Industrial Revolution, Progressive Era, Great Depression, postwar trade decline, Great Recession) and debates on inequality/poverty, they challenge the idea that these justify greater government control. Their clear, data-driven analysis encourages readers to question prevailing narratives about policies shaping modern America.
The History of St. Marcus
by Pastor Mark Jeske
The story of St. Marcus Lutheran Church is a tale of a remarkable congregation in a remarkable neighborhood in a remarkable city—and how God has blessed all three. In commemoration of the Church’s 150th anniversary, this compelling historical account provides insight into Milwaukee’s cultural roots, the resilience of the congregation’s founders, and the ongoing commitment of this community of faith to meeting the ever-changing needs of the surrounding neighborhood.
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Globetrotting: Writers Walk the World
by Duncan Minshull
With contributions from writers such as Mark Twain, Herman Melville, and Colin Thubron, this anthology captures the reflections of explorers, scientists, writers, and wanderers who have chosen to experience the world step by step. From the streets of London to the jungles of Ghana, from Antarctic ice to Japanese pilgrimage routes, each journey illustrates the benefits of seeing a place up close and in person.
Rich with insight, history, and literary depth, Globetrotting is a celebration of walking as both a mode of transportation and philosophical pursuit.
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