Newsroom, December 04, 2025: In a year of seismic shifts from Trump's G20 snubs to Gaza's unrelenting shadows, 2025's literary harvest on global affairs cuts through the noise with sharp, revelatory narratives. These books, blending archival digs with eyewitness grit, don't just recount events; they unearth the human threads weaving politics into our collective fate.
As India navigates its own crossroads of trade pacts and demographic dives, these works offer a mirror to the world's churning tides, reminding us that history's echoes shape tomorrow's headlines.
Joseph Torigian's The Party's Interests Come First pierces the veil of China's enigmatic rise with the first English biography of Xi Zhongxun, father of President Xi Jinping. Tracing the Chinese Revolution's brutal machinery, Torigian lays bare the Communist Party's unyielding grip, ideological fervour laced with coercion that birthed a superpower at the cost of untold suffering. It's a sobering lens on how familial legacies forge national destinies, essential reading as U.S.-China frictions simmer.
Yvonnick Denoël's Vatican Spies unearths the Holy See's shadowy playbook across eight decades, from WWII infiltrations to John XXIII's secret Khrushchev talks. Drawing on declassified archives, it exposes Russian priests as Soviet moles, Vatican banks as anti-communist war chests, and Jesuit-Opus Dei clashes under Benedict XVI. Denoël's tale of faith weaponised as diplomacy reads like a Cold War thriller, illuminating the Vatican's quiet hand in global chess.
David Van Reybrouck's Revolusi resurrects Indonesia's 1945 independence through 200 eyewitness voices, from flag-raisers to forgotten foot soldiers. This oral history of a 68-million-strong nation's birth amid colonial carnage captures the raw pulse of decolonisation, where a homemade banner ignited a modern world's third-largest democracy. Van Reybrouck's tapestry of triumph and trauma makes it a vital chronicle for understanding Asia's post-empire scars.
Steve L. Monroe's Mirages of Reform unravels Arab neoliberalism's false dawn, from Jordan to Morocco, probing why trade liberalization fizzled into elite entrenchment. Interviews and firm data reveal international pressures clashing with domestic power plays, a sobering audit of how reforms serve the few. Monroe's dissection is a must for decoding the Middle East's economic mirages.
