Books Jacobin Loved in 2025

The Editors

This year was a depressing one for politics, but it produced books that were ambitious and serious attempts to understand the present. From novels about millennial ennui to sweeping histories of the West, 2025 had a lot to offer to readers.

Girl Reading On A Sofa

From massive tomes on the French Revolution to investigative reporting on the artificial intelligence industry, we’ve read the most important books that came out this year. (Fine Art Images / Heritage Images / Getty Images)


While 2025 was a terrible year for politics, it was an excellent one for books, both fiction and nonfiction. From massive tomes on the French Revolution to investigative reporting on the artificial intelligence industry, we’ve read the most important books that came out this year and made a list of some of our favorite titles.


Perfection

Vincenzo Latronico, translated into English by Sophie Hughes

Perfection follows Tom and Anna, two “creative professionals” who, in their twenties, circa 2010, depart their unnamed Southern European hometown to join the rapidly growing expat community in Berlin. Their life of gallery visits, late-night raves, and Saturday afternoons lounging in the park — as curated for Instagram — looks picturesque. But as the couple ages through the decade, their social circle shrinks, wealthier West Germans and Americans begin to overtake the city, and the sense of cosmopolitan possibility offered by remote work and the digital nomad lifestyle curdle into something stultifying and claustrophobic. An often acerbic satire written entirely without dialogue, Perfection is a simultaneously breezy and unsettling look at millennial aspiration and aging in the era of globalization and the smartphone.

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