Over the weekend, I enjoyed reading my NR colleagues’ “favorite books of 2024” selections. Several of these titles have already joined what I like to call The Big Stack — i.e., the list of books that I have promised myself that I’ll get to . . . soon (someday).

As it happens, I have three books on my desk right now that I had meant to dive into over the Christmas holidays. But, after family, friends, good Scotch, and the college football playoffs all took their allotted time, these books are now a (pleasant) 2025 problem.

Places and Names: On War, Revolution, and Returning, by Elliot Ackerman

I first encountered Ackerman’s writing in the pages of the New York Times in 2019 while at Quantico. His essay “A Battle in Fallujah, Revisited” had a profound and sobering effect on me, with its grim and gritty descriptions of the horrors of........

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