Choosing a reading material for the summer of 2025 isn’t easy. If we’re looking for novels, there are many recommendations in physical and online bookstores. More difficult is choosing a book that will challenge our intellect and challenge us ethically in the current context.

What readings can help us look beyond the surface of our confusing reality? One book that immediately comes to mind is Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy (Oxford University Press, New York, 2019). This work brings together a set of introductory studies on key thinkers of the past and present, which help us understand the complex ideological amalgamation that inspires far-right authoritarianism in the United States.

The editor, Mark J. Sedgwick, has the rare merit of having coordinated a diverse group of analysts who managed to produce a popular book on one of the least-regarded aspects when interpreting the impact of these “new right-wing movements” on the American scene: what ideologies come together in the narrative and decisions of the current United States government? How can we explain the coexistence of concepts from the political thought of Carl Schmidt with the geopolitical esotericism of Julius Evola and the constant nods to the Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin? That is the question.

A second book we can’t help but mention is the work of Javier Sicilia and Jacobo Dayán :  “Crisis or Apocalypse. Evil in Our Time”  (Taurus, Mexico, 2025). Within the ancient tradition of treatises on “evil,” with the power of a dialogue between two thinkers who are not only highly reflective but also deeply committed to the pain of the Mexican people, this book offers a meditation on the crisis of modernity, on the State that has become a Leviathan, on the almost inextinguishable longing for peace, with justice and dignity, which today seems unattainable.

This is a book written from life and suffering, from a passion for truth and powerlessness in the face of power that feeds on power. Toward the end of the book, Javier Sicilia remembers his murdered son: “I, personally, in the midst of my resistance and my dark and wavering hope, a hope without any guarantee, hope that when I die I will find Juanelo and all the defeated, alive in the love of God, in that emptiness that is His absence in the world.”

A third book, to help us get through our summer accompanied by lyrics that prepare us for the chaos to come, is “Ethics or Ideology of Artificial Intelligence?” by Adela Cortina (Paidós, Madrid, 2024). Written at the beginning of the ChatGPT boom, it shows us with great acuity that  “the increase in connectivity, thanks to networks, which should allow us to jointly decide, through deliberation, what we want to do with our future, does not improve truthful communication.  On the contrary, strategic reason triumphs once again, occupying the entire public space (…) This is terrible news if we want to strengthen democracy, which is an urgent task, because it is in danger worldwide. And, of course, in Spain, Europe, and Latin America.”

Pope Francis, following Borges, believed that reading is learning to listen to others. In times like ours, nothing is more urgent and necessary.