Believing few other gifts bring the “Merry” to Christmas like a good book, I asked some of our contributors, editors, and friends to recommend top reads.

No one who reads They Say We Are Infidels by World Magazine editor Mindy Belz should ever doubt Christians are victims of ISIS genocide.

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Michael Walzer’s first book, The Revolution of the Saints. The intellectual shortcomings of the left (and right) are attested by their failure to appreciate their greatest philosopher’s most stimulating work.

Janet Polasky’s Revolutions without Borders seeks to once more recapture the cosmopolitan, borderless, and dynamic character of revolutionary politics.

Brueggemann’s Chosen? is an example of the one-sided propaganda which he says he deplores.

Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan offer a comprehensive overview of Russian internet policy at home and abroad in The Red Web.

Cole’s Just War and the Ethics of Espionage takes readers deep into the labyrinth of ethical challenges in what the author argues is a necessary activity that prevents escalatory conflicts and protects the citizenry of a nation.

Bobo Lo’s Russia & the New World Disorder examines how the country’s internal politics and worldview impact its foreign policy choices. A dense and informative work that immensely rewards readers who have the patience to delve deeply, the book also makes the case for why Russia may struggle in the “new world disorder”.

Samuel Moyn’s Christian Human Rights argues that human rights should not be associated exclusively with the secular liberal left and liberal politics when the Christian right was historically involved with this project.