Look no further for your perfect holiday read.

AIR MAIL’s 10 Best Books of 2025

The story of the man who created Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; a bio of William F. Buckley Jr.; a revealing look inside Facebook; a slice of New York history that laid the groundwork for Zohran Mamdani; and more holiday nonfiction reading for every taste!

By Jim Kelly

Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, by Francesca Wade

Writing about Gertrude Stein entailed reckoning with a wealth of complexities and contradictions, and Francesca Wade does a splendid job untangling the author’s self-mythologizing, assessing her confounding politics, and exploring what makes her radical writing so beguiling. And it’s impossible to write about Stein without writing about Alice Toklas, who devoted her life first to enabling Stein’s work, then to shepherding her posthumous legacy with equal zeal, cunning, and devotion. Read how Wade accomplished this here.

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History–and How It Shattered a Nation, by Andrew Ross Sorkin

If you think you understand the greatest financial calamity in U.S. history, think again. Andrew Ross Sorkin offers a vivid account of the disaster through the lives of those who suffered through it and those who tried to avert it. Read our interview with Sorkin here.