Books read in 2026

Total Read

One, as of Jan. 4, 2026

Themes

As with 2024, I’m expecting a good amount of reading on the following topics:

• Photography and art
• More broadly, the creative process
• Engineering and technological failure
• What I’ll call the intersection of technology and civics
• Fiction

I’ll get a better shape of the themes a few months into the year.

Currently reading

• Agent Running in the Field, by John Le Carré
  • Source: Mary Meuser Memorial Library

Carryovers:

• The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff
  • Source: Purchase, following partial library read
• Engineers of Dreams, by Henry Petroski
  • Source: Purchase

Completed

History Matters, by David McCullough

• Completed: Jan 4, 2025
• Source: Mary Meuser Memorial Library
• Format: Physical book

The book, edited by his daughter Dorie McCullough Lawson and Michael Hill, is in four parts: “Why History”, “Figures in a Landscape”, “Influences”, and “On Writing”. Each part is distinct to itself, but they are all related. Some common themes and phrasing show up across the different pieces. They are a mix of essays, addresses, remembrances, interviews, and tributes.

Throughout, what comes through about McCullough in the writing is the respect he has for his selected subjects, the drive he has to present those subjects well, and the joy he had in the work and journey.

Some keys from across the book that are sticking with me:

• That no one, ever, “lived in the past” vs. everyone forever living in the present moment. We have the benefit of looking backwards at the lives of events and participants knowing the outcome but that shade our grasp of what was knowable or achievable in the moment.
• That nothing in history is fixed or preordained that both choice and luck matter a great deal. A telling example here is George Washington’s retreat from Brooklyn after a defeat that had weather and the British Navy played out differently, could have been the end of the the American Revolution
• Accordingly, and importantly, our national heroes, while having some very good and admirable qualities, are also very much human

I picked up a good number of other recommendations of reading material to look into further. I have McCullough’s Brave Companions on our library shelves already, and plan to look into his biographies of Theodore Roosevelt and Harry Truman. But, also, Barbara Tuchman’s work, and Herman Wouk’s The Caine Mutiny are both works I’ll likely dig into later this year.