Culture

Prospect contributors recommend books for the beach: 2025

We asked staff members, contributors and critics to recommend books for taking on holiday this summer. Here are our contributors’ choices

July 15, 2025
Illustration by Kate Hazell
Illustration by Kate Hazell

Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America
by Sam Tanenhaus

More than 25 years in the making, and weighing in at 1,100 pages, this official life of the godfather of the modern US conservative movement is both gripping and authoritative. Though Tanenhaus wisely avoids the temptation to make this a dual biography of Buckley and Donald Trump, the connective tissue between the two is striking. The founder of National Review and longtime presenter of Firing Line was a fierce proponent of the “America First” doctrine (believing that the Cold War was an exceptional period). More to the point, Buckley grasped long before Maga existed that, as Tanenhaus puts it, “politics was becoming a largely public spectacle”—as was made vividly clear in his legendary debates with Gore Vidal at the 1968 conventions. Essential reading for anyone interested in US politics. 

Matthew d’Ancona, contributing editor


An Officer and a Spy
by Robert Harris

Harris has been the master of the political thriller for a generation, and recently loomed large at cinemas with the perfectly timed Vatican intrigue Conclave. But, for the most immersive beachtime thriller of the lot, I’d recommend digging back a dozen years into the Harris opus for this remarkably faithful but page-turning rendering of the Dreyfus Affair. The 1894 framing of a Jewish army officer remains notorious, but few these days have any idea of exactly how it happened or why it rocked the French Third Republic to its core. It is a case study in the terrifying convenience of conspiracy and the awesome offsetting power of awkward questions to break it.

Tom Clark, contributing editor


King Kong Theory
by Virginie Despentes

Virginie Despentes’s King Kong Theory (2006) is, by virtue of being a collection of essays, perfect for interrupted reading on a holiday. It’s not too dense for an indolent, distracted mind, but it is fascinating enough that it’ll give you quotes to discuss over dinner with friends. It’s something I’ve thought about for months afterwards.

Tilly Lawless, Sex life columnist


Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann
by Harriet Baker

This book was gifted to me by a friend. I’m not sure I like people buying me books—so many times I’ve been given books that I haven’t enjoyed but, because they’re presents, I’ve felt obliged to stick with the to the end. However, I’m happy to report that I loved this one! It explores the lives of three free-thinking female authors saddled between London and their country abodes—and made me feel as though I was escaping into a world that no longer exists. Rural life is magnified: the daily routines of country living; the small conversations with passing strangers; taking the time to notice the way a spider weaves its web. The book illustrates how solitude is essential to writers and those who dare to think differently. By the end of the book I felt so well acquainted with this trio that I was rather sad I had to let them go.

Kiran Sidhu, Rural life columnist


The Star Diaries
by Stanisław Lem

Growing up in Soviet Ukraine, I had read a lot of science fiction by the age of 14, but this book, borrowed for me by my physicist dad from the local library, literally swept me off my feet. The protagonist, Ijon Tichy, is a cheerful and nonchalant space pilot; fond of hanging his wet spacesuit out of the porthole to dry, he is also capable of surviving the most astounding ordeals—from being disintegrated into his constituent elements to being endlessly reduplicated in a time loop. Behind the façade of jokes, the book raises serious existential, environmental and political issues, including those of totalitarianism versus democracy. In one of the journeys, Tichy visits the planet Abrazia, the whole economy of which is run by one huge dragon—a rather transparent allegory of the Soviet Union, as well as of modern China.

Vitali Vitaliev, Second life columnist


Moonbound
by Robin Sloan

Robin Sloan has a deserved reputation as chronicler of Silicon Valley quirk and culture. His near-future fantasy novels Annabel Scheme, Mr Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and Sourdough are funhouse mirrors held up to the lives of young techies. Which means that, at first, his latest novel, Moonbound, appears to be a sharp left turn. It reads initially like high fantasy, set as it is in a world of talking animals and magic swords, though it quickly becomes apparent that we are living in a distant future after humanity has been exterminated by superintelligent AIs. The book offers both a satisfying hero’s journey and possibly the best metaphor we currently have for understanding how AIs actually work: a caste of monastic scholars diving into bottomless pools to commune with a wholly alien being.

Ethan Zuckerman, columnist


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