Best 20 Books from 2022

6 min readDec 21, 2022

Someone recently asked me if I could recommend any good podcasts. This simple question, and the sad realization that I couldn’t, made me admit that my bias for reading/listening to full length books is in its own way limiting. I can see now that when you consume this many books it necessarily means you will be missing out on other things. I certainly watch fewer movies, less television, don’t listen to sermons, don’t watch youtube at all and now that I think about it, don’t really read many articles.

No doubt these are unintended consequences to looking at (and adding to) my reading list every day. I will reach 400 books this year. Even though that is certainly a first for me, I should probably start admitting that I might need to find other sources of intellectual input.

Still, my reading has become as much about listening to the world as it has about learning something new. And while it might be a limited medium, I also feel the urge to double down on the importance of this kind of long form argument and the novelty of books as a way of discerning and engaging the zeitgeist. With more of us becoming published authors than ever (even if self published) the medium is only going to continue to grow.

I talk to a lot of people who want to write a book. We all probably have a book or two in us. But perhaps the best advice I can give to the aspiring first time writer is, read a lot. Read a lot more than you do. I am expanded and enriched by taking in so many books. And I don’t just mean the ideas, I feel a little bit like a therapist for American writers. I listen to their stories, their frustrations, and their arguments for describing and improving everything.

I see how we all shape the world we see in different ways, struggling to find order in it somehow. We are all trying to make sense of our experience and writing books gives us a way to do that. So, my list this year (perhaps every year) is not about the “best books” but books that left an impression on me. For me these are conversations that made me think beyond my own way of ordering the world. By design then, this is not a list of books and ideas that I would entirely (or even materially) agree with. They are books that moved me to think and grow. Sometimes they are books that just say something so well, they make me appreciate and feel grateful for the writer or the subject, or the struggle implicit in the relationship between both.

There are books that were profound to me because of what I am working on these days. Impact Networks and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution, should be required reading for those of us involved in collaboration and social change.

There are efforts on this list that are intellectually vast, like The Power of Meaning. And others that are historically vast, like Aftermath, or Fintan O’Toole’s wonderfully inventive and haunting history of Ireland told through the lens of his own experience called We Don’t Know Ourselves. I was especially charmed by O’Toole and Bono’s memoir, probably because I listened to them while on my most recent trip to Dublin.

There are books that pull back the veil to show us the face of our ongoing wars with bigotry, poverty, addiction, and social isolation. Books like Invisible Child, and The Least of Us brought me back to struggles that are so important, but that I am tempted to forget.

Some were challenges to my own inner work and ever threatened character commitments, books like Being Wrong, and Conversations with People Who Hate Me, reminded me that there actually is a silver bullet, and it’s humility. And of course, some books were just fun (and profound in their own way), like Chuck Klosterman’s newest book, The Nineties.

I did also read the whole Bible again, and even though it obviously not my first reading, it was the first time I read it as a book on my list. And in that sense, I was impacted by just what an incredible piece of literature it is. A collection of books that are full of wonder, intrigue and (like no other piece of literature) provides a constant source of both challenge and comfort. I am a big fan.

I will not say more about each title, except that I was moved, impressed or otherwise walked away from reading each of these thinking, “Now that was a good book.” Something that seems to become more and more rare the more titles I finish. Apparently, I only feel that way about 5% of the time. So, here is my list of 20 (a top 10 is just not enough for a pool of 400 titles).

Finally, these are in the order I read them, not in order of importance or impact.