One of the greatest pleasures of running Foreign Policy’s Books section is getting to peruse highly anticipated books before their release—and, occasionally, stumbling upon a section that our readers are sure to find illuminating, provocative, or otherwise insightful. The articles below, all adapted from books published in 2025, offer a peek into some of our favorite titles that influenced the discourse on foreign affairs this year.
1. When the Threat Is Inside the White House
By Tim Weiner, July 11
One of the greatest pleasures of running Foreign Policy’s Books section is getting to peruse highly anticipated books before their release—and, occasionally, stumbling upon a section that our readers are sure to find illuminating, provocative, or otherwise insightful. The articles below, all adapted from books published in 2025, offer a peek into some of our favorite titles that influenced the discourse on foreign affairs this year.
1. When the Threat Is Inside the White House
By Tim Weiner, July 11
This summer, nearly 20 years after the publication of his National Book Award-winning Legacy of Ashes, which detailed the history of the CIA from World War II to the so-called war on terror, veteran journalist Tim Weiner came out with The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century, Legacy’s long-awaited successor.
The Mission provides readers with unprecedented access to the agency in the 21st century, including the first on-the-record interview with a sitting director of the clandestine service. In his adapted essay for FP, Weiner examines the CIA’s recent history, especially now that U.S. President Donald Trump and a cadre of “amateurs and toadies” are in charge of it.
“The CIA is an executor of U.S. foreign policy; its spies are exquisitely sensitive to orders from on high, and they conduct covert operations under the command of presidents and presidents alone,” Weiner writes. “What do they do when the greatest threat to U.S. national security is the man in the White House?”
2. How Gaza Shattered the West’s Mythology
By Pankaj Mishra, Feb. 7
Post-World War II ideals about a shared global humanity have gotten some harsh reality checks in recent years, from the COVID-19 pandemic to revanchist wars to devastating economic collapse. But, essayist and critic Pankaj Mishra argues, none of these crises compare to what has transpired in Gaza since Oct. 7, 2023.
In an excerpt from The World After Gaza, Mishra writes that “nothing has left us with such an intolerable weight of grief, perplexity, and bad conscience” as Gaza. The world must now confront “a catastrophe jointly inflicted by Western democracies, which has destroyed the necessary illusion that emerged after the defeat of fascism in 1945 of a common humanity underpinned by respect for human rights and a minimum of legal and political norms.”
3. Can Chinese Authoritarianism Stay Smart?
By Jennifer Lind, Nov. 26
It’s often said that, in the face of current headwinds, China is inevitably heading toward economic if not geopolitical decline. Yet while the country faces serious challenges to future growth, political scientist Jennifer Lind believes that it’s too soon to discount Beijing’s superpower status.
In her new book, Autocracy 2.0: How China’s Rise Reinvented Tyranny, Lind analyzes the rise of what she calls “smart authoritarianism,” whereby autocracies have adapted their methods for today’s world by governing with more inclusive economic measures and a less heavy-handed approach to repression. China’s future, she argues, depends on its continued ability to maintain political control while fostering the conditions for technological innovation.
“It’s an open question whether the [Chinese Communist Party] can effectively manage the challenges facing China’s economy,” Lind writes. “But the lens of smart authoritarianism explains how China got where it is today: to a place many observers said it could never reach.”
4. Welcome to Weimar 2.0
By Robert D. Kaplan, Jan. 17
Soldiers of the Weimar Republic stand guard at the Reichstag in Berlin in 1920, looking out over a crowd during a period of unrest. Topical Press Agency/Getty Images
“Today, China, Russia, and the United States, to say nothing of the mid-level and smaller powers, are all running a strange simulation of the Weimar Republic: that weak and wobbly political organism that governed Germany for 15 years from the ashes of World War I to the ascension of Adolf Hitler,” longtime foreign-affairs writer Robert D. Kaplan declares in an article adapted from his book Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis.
According to Kaplan, it’s not just the United States under Trump—the whole world is caught up in Weimar syndrome. We’re connected like that doomed republic’s interrelated states, vulnerable to the ripple effects of crises in distant parts of the world. Ultimately, he writes, the “first half of the 21st century may be as frightening and revealing as the first half of the 20th.”
5. The Political Giant the West Forgot
By Howard W. French, Aug. 8
Western narratives of the 20th century tend to center North Atlantic history, with a particular focus on U.S.-Soviet tensions, the U.S.-led international order, and the creation of NATO. But in The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, FP columnist Howard W. French argues that the story of Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to become the first Black colony in Africa to gain independence from Europe, shows “why Africa and Africans merit their place on a centripetal path much nearer to the center of our history.”
“This is not a matter of polemical willfulness,” French writes in an essay adapted from his new book. “The end of colonial rule on the African continent deserves consideration as one of the most consequential events of our times, yet it remains widely undervalued.”
