My 10 Favorite Books of 2024

Run don't walk to buy all of these.

by Rod D. Martin
December 18, 2024

This is my end-of-year review of the best books I read this year.  They weren't all published in 2024 (though some were), nor are they everything I read in 2024 (not by a long shot). But I read them in 2024 and hope you and your loved ones will read them in 2025 (which is why I’m sending them to you just before Christmas).

Moreover, I am leaving out the Bible (the link is to my favorite Study Bible), which is obviously my favorite book every year. You should read more about that here:

I Just Read the Entire Bible in 45 Days. You Should Too.

In any case, here, in no particular order, are my 10 Favorite Books of 2024:

1. Life After Capitalism: The Meaning of Wealth, the Future of the Economy, and the Time Theory of Money, by George Gilder

Okay, okay: there's certainly an order to this first one.  This is the book of the year, and one of the books of the century. In Life After Capitalism, the inimitable George Gilder -- tech guru, Christian, foster son of David Rockefeller, co-creator of supply-side economics and Ronald Reagan's most-quoted living author -- finally distills his Information Theory of Economics down to its clear, concise essence.

Here we learn of the brilliance of Claude Shannon, Alan Turing, Kurt Gödel, and other pioneers who gave us the modern world, applying their insights to solve some of the most insoluble problems of economics.

In the process, Gilder corrects and improves upon all economists before him, rewriting much of what we think we know and particularly clarifying the essential, indeed epic, role of the entrepreneur.

Life After Capitalism is a contribution to economics, innovation, and freedom as great as those of David Ricardo or Carl Menger, and in key respects may excel Adam Smith himself.  This is the absolute must-read of the year (and I am tickled pink to report that I got to read it in manuscript form prior to its publication).

2. The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End, by Neil Howe

If George Gilder hadn’t written Life After Capitalism, this would be my Book of the Year.

Three decades ago, Neil Howe and the late William Strauss birthed a new theory of Anglo-American history in Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584-2069. Their theory can be best summarized in the famous quote from Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

In essence, the theory runs as follows:

1. At any given time, there are four generations alive.

2. Each generation has a collective parenting style that has a collective result. Observationally, there are pretty consistently four of these, and each produces the next in turn.

3. At any given time, these four generational archetypes are in play, but in a different lineup based on age and relative power. Right now, the Boomers are at their maximum power.

4. Any time the generational equivalent of the Boomers are at maximum power, the world explodes.

With that last bit, every GenXer, Millennial, and GenZer can wholeheartedly agree.

The roughly 80-100 years comprising the four generations is called a Saeculum, or natural century. Each power shift from one generation to the next is called a Turning. When the generational lineup is as it is now, this is called a Fourth Turning, after which the cycle repeats, but before which there is an ekpyrosis, or existential, cataclysmic Crisis.

It turns out that this can be traced back centuries. The past Fourth Turning Crises are the Wars of the Roses (1459-1487), the Armada Crisis (1569-1594), the Glorious Revolution (1675-1704), the American Revolution (1773-1794), the Civil War (1860-1865) and the Great Depression and World War II (1929-1945).

We’re due. As the title says, The Fourth Turning Is Here. And inevitable as that may be, it is certainly existential. The outcome of every previous Crisis forever after changed the world. Every one of them could have gone the wrong way.

Just to be clear, my friend James Lindsay calls all of this “astrology for humanities majors.” But what does he know: he has a Ph.D. in math! At the polar opposite is Steve Bannon, for whom Howe’s theories have shaped his worldview.

Me? The proof of the pudding is in the eating. But so far, Neil and Bill have done a remarkable job of describing the cyclical currents of linear history. Read the book, and prepare for a difficult eight years ahead.

3. The Biblical Structure of History, by Gary North

Speaking of the structure of history, the late Gary North writes the most fascinating examination of historiography I’ve seen in his last-ever book.

Though North was an economist and theologian (one of whose first jobs was working for Ron Paul, whose homeschool curriculum he wrote shortly before he died), his Ph.D. was in history, and his historical work was exceptional (see especially Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church, the finest book on its topic).

But the question remains: what is the meaning of history? Clearly normal people don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, but professional historians do, and their answers, whether true or false, shape our views of ourselves and our civilization. One need only consider the difference between Howard Zinn and Paul Johnson. Worldview matters. It begins with epistemology and teleology (or from the materialist perspective, the lack thereof).

North was nothing if not a man who believed in teleology. His book not only shows how history ought to be done but how it ought not, and why. As in his economics, he begins with the presupposition of God’s ownership of everything. He ends with a challenge to reconstruct every academic discipline in terms of Scripture.

If you don’t believe the Christian God is sovereign, this book is probably not for you. If you do, it may be a bit dry at points, but North’s vigor as a writer makes up for that, and the lessons he teaches are of the broadest possible applicability.

4. Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue, by Ryan Holiday

This book actually came out in 2018, and I read it then. It was worth the re-read.

Conspiracy is the wildly entertaining story of how my friend Peter Thiel came to the defense of Hulk Hogan against a wealthy media giant, and literally slew it. There’s nothing left. Peter annihilated it. And Gawker never knew what hit it until it was done.

The book is just a romp. If it doesn’t become a movie, someone somewhere should get fired. From sex scandal to brilliant legal strategy to Peter’s love of Machiavelli’s Discourses to actual cloak and dagger, well, conspiracy, Holiday’s book has it all. And just as fellow PayPalian Elon Musk disrupted the world through his purchase of Twitter, here you see Peter Thiel reshape the landscape through what can only be called “creative destruction”.

5. Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson

Speaking of Elon, the new Walter Isaacson biography is a tour de force.

Isaacson is a masterful biographer, as anyone who read Steve Jobs or Benjamin Franklin already knows. He engagingly chronicles the rise of the bullied South African kid, the immigrant to America, the young entrepreneur, and the greatest innovator of the 21st Century, all coming together in a single person whose status as the world’s richest man is the least of his accomplishments.

And I want to stress: what Elon has accomplished is absolutely transformative, in the same way as the development of the oil industry, of electric power, of steel, of the automobile, and of the airplane, all of which changed not just how we live but how we conceive of ourselves. As price drops demand increases, and SpaceX has reduced the cost per pound to orbit by orders of magnitude. When he says we’ll soon have a million people living and working in space he’s being conservative. And that will change absolutely everything about absolutely everything.

Reusable Rockets: Dawn of the Real Space Age

For two years, Isaacson shadowed Elon, walked his factories, attended his meetings, and exhaustively interviewed him, his friends, and his adversaries. The product is not merely enjoyable but powerfully instructive. Not only that, it’s a big book at 688 pages, so if you buy it as a Christmas gift, they’ll know you really got them something.

6. The Space Trilogy: Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. You need fiction — stories — in your life. C.S. “Jack” Lewis certainly thought so.

Readers of the perfectly delightful Chronicles of Narnia might well expect The Space Trilogy to be a set of children’s books. They would be wrong. The Space Trilogy chronicles Dr. Elwin Ransom’s adventures on first Mars, then Venus, and finally Earth, in a pre-Space Age conception (written in the early 1940s) of a very different Solar System.

As in all good science fiction, the abnormal settings facilitate an examination of humanity itself, and in this case, man’s relationship to God, to angels, to demons, and particularly to evil.

The entire series would be worth it just for the ending of Perelandra, depicting unfallen Adam and Eve figures who successfully resisted the Serpent (or in this case, the Unman). It’s frankly breathtaking, conveying insights I’ve never heard elsewhere. And it’s gloriously beautiful.

But one cannot speak of The Space Trilogy without the overwhelming sense that That Hideous Strength was written yesterday, not in 1945 (a characteristic it increasingly shares with 1984). As the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments (the NICE, complete with its own NICE Police) takes greater and greater control of British society, it demonstrates the subversiveness and sheer evil of totalitarianism, and the means by which it gains purchase among the unsuspecting. Like 1984, Democrats (and Labour) seem to have decided the book is a how-to manual.

The Inner Ring - C.S. Lewis

(Note for Lewis aficionados: That Hideous Strength is The Abolition of Man and “The Inner Ring”, but in story form. And it’s much superior to both.)

7. Pirate Money: Discovering the Founders’ Hidden Plan for Economic Justice and Defeating the Great Reset, by Kevin Freeman

Brought to you by the host of Economic War Room with Kevin Freeman, one of America’s leading public intellectuals, Pirate Money uses a silly hook to convey a brilliant old-new innovation, one that’s on the brink of adoption in numerous states.

The dollar has lost 87% of its purchasing power since 1971, when Richard Nixon closed the gold window. The loss is usually steady and gradual, so people can adjust. But sometimes people get stupid and vote for Democrats, resulting in the Carter and Biden inflations. Poor people suffer the most, every single time.

It doesn’t have to be this way. As George Gilder demonstrates (see Life After Capitalism above) money is not a commodity but a measuring stick: it is literally tokenized time. Through floating currencies, the global monetary system robs everyone, but especially the poor, to the great and unjust enrichment of a very unique few. It’s a scam, and it’s unsustainable.

In Pirate Money, Kevin makes the case for utilizing the U.S. Constitution’s Article 1, Section 10 to enable states to electronically issue 100% gold-backed currencies. Being constitutionally-protected legal tender, their use would not be subject to capital gains tax (like crypto), and credit card companies would have to exchange them for other currencies in the same way they currently do pounds and euros and yen.

Rod Martin's Keynote at the National "Pirate Money" Legislative Summit

Kevin’s plan (which I’ve advocated, including in legislative testimony) would provide Americans (and others) with a true store of value, a stable currency, and a hedge against inflation. It would also significantly increase the dollar-price of gold, as gold’s demonetization has undoubtedly depressed its price. There’s a lot of opportunity in all of that. But perhaps the biggest opportunity is in thwarting the federal government’s monopoly on legal tender currency and thus its ability to force us into a CBDC and concomitant social credit score.

The Bible requires honest weights and measures. You should too. This is how.

8. Shepherds for Sale: How Evangelical Leaders Traded the Truth for a Leftist Agenda, by Megan Basham

Megan Basham’s New York Times bestselling blockbuster provoked outrage in all the predictable circles. It also hit the target. With nukes.

In Shepherds for Sale, Megan Basham documents how progressive powerbrokers —from George Soros, to the founder of eBay, to former members of the Obama administration — set out to change the American church. Their goal: to co-opt evangelicals for political purposes. They did this by co-opting key church leaders, introducing Critical Theory (Critical Race Theory, Queer Theory, Radical Feminism, Standpoint Epistemology, everything), Alinkskyite tactics, mainstream media support for the subversives, and of course, copious amounts of money and promises of prestige.

In large measure they’ve succeeded. But the battle is far from over.

Lots of well-meaning church folks don’t understand why billionaires and power brokers would care about their seminaries and pulpits. That’s a mistake. The liberals corrupted the old Mainline denominations a century ago, and for the same purpose: to shift the culture and thus win elections. They succeeded in creating Democrat dominance and reshaping American thought for generations after. Having unexpectedly lost Hillary’s “inevitable” election in 2016, they doubled down on their time-tested plan.

Agree or disagree. But give it a read. More than anyone before, Megan brings the receipts.

9. Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor

Okay, I admit:  this is totally cheating, first because it's a classic and most Christians should have read it by now, and of course because it's far from the first time I've read it (which is also true of several others on this list).  Plus, it's a condensed version of the Taylors’ two-volume biography of the famous founder of the China Inland Mission (which itself is well worthy of reading yearly, a luxury for which I didn’t have the time this year, but which many pastors choose to do).

Cheat or no cheat, aside from the Bible, this is one of the best books of any year. The Taylors (son and daughter-in-law of their subject) do not merely chronicle biographical details but rather focus intently on Hudson Taylor's prayer life and its consequences. The great missionary, like his friend and supporter George Müller, believed intently that we serve a personal God who adopts us as sons and daughters and loves us as a Father; and for this reason, he prayed as a son asking sustenance from a parent, refusing to ask his fellowman even for contributions to his ministry.  Yes, he never held a fundraiser, or even did a direct mail piece. And trusting God entirely for his provision at all times and in all situations, Taylor saw his ministry blessed beyond his wildest imaginings, as CIM placed and funded hundreds of missionaries across every province of a previously unreached China.

Not bad for a guy who started with less than nothing, and never asked any human for anything.

This book is challenging, inspiring, and a must re-read. (And before anyone says it, no, neither Taylor nor I are or were then suggesting that God requires this approach; but Taylor lived it, and I have found that like Earthly fathers, God greatly appreciates and rewards our childlike trust in Him.)

10. The Best Intentions: How a Plan to Revitalize the SBC Accelerated Its Decline, by Chuck Kelley

It turns out, America’s largest Protestant denomination doesn’t need outside help to blow it.

Fifteen years ago, the Southern Baptist Convention’s top minds conceived the Great Commission Resurgence (or GCR), a restructuring effort aimed at reaching the lost and growing the church.

At the time, there were 16.5 million Southern Baptists. Today there are less than 13 million.

Chuck Kelley, then-President of New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, was one of the few prominent voices to oppose the GCR. And it turns out, he was right, in every particular.

Chuck’s book shows what happened, in exhaustive detail, and provides a pathway back. You can never fix problems you won’t own up to. This is a much-needed start.

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That’s it! Now go do your Christmas shopping! Your family and friends need these books. So do you.

Merry Christmas,

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