By Joe Byerly
Since 2017, I’ve spent the final month of each year reflecting on the books I read over the previous twelve months. Without fail, a set of themes and lessons emerges from what initially feels like a random stack of titles and genres. Maybe those themes reflect where I am in my life; maybe they’re the lessons the books are trying to teach me. Either way, I hope they resonate with you the way they’ve spoken to me.
Lesson 1: Our beliefs are everything
Why do certain people or events trigger such strong emotional reactions in us? Why does it feel like others get all the breaks while some of us struggle just to get a seat at the table? Why do we act the way we act?
At the core of all those questions is a belief. A belief about ourselves. A belief about the people in our lives. A belief about how the world really works.
As General Stanley McChrystal writes in On Character, “Beliefs shape our perspectives, our biases, and often our behavior. They can form the foundation of selfless service or a launchpad for evil.” That influence runs far deeper than we tend to realize.
In How Emotions Are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that emotions are not automatic reactions, but predictions constructed by the brain to regulate the body. Our beliefs—along with past experience, culture, and context—feed that prediction system. If you come to believe you’re always going to get screwed over, your brain begins to anticipate threat in similar situations, producing negative emotions before you’re even consciously aware of what’s happening. What feels like a sudden emotional reaction is often a belief quietly doing its work.
We see this play out everywhere. A belief in control and destiny drives Sam Zemurray to become a tyrant in the banana trade in The Fish That Ate the Whale. A belief in the moral necessity of freedom compels a group of college students to dig a tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall to rescue families from authoritarian rule in Tunnel 29. And a belief in the obligation to report the truth inspires a group of women journalists to risk their lives covering the Vietnam War in War Torn.
Our beliefs sit at the root of everything we do—and everything we avoid. That’s why it matters to examine them, not just the beliefs we claim to hold, but the ones operating beneath the surface. The ones that cause us to bristle at an offhand comment, read hostility into a neutral email, or shut down when someone offers feedback we didn’t ask for. Those reactions rarely come from the moment itself; they come from the stories we already believe about ourselves, other people, and the world.
The work, then, is to remain curious about those stories—to resist becoming so convinced of our own rightness that we stop being willing to reexamine the beliefs shaping our behavior.
Lesson 2: History doesn’t repeat, but it does instruct
Our life experience is limited by the number of years we’ve walked on this planet. And even then, those years can be narrow in what we experience. As a result, we often find ourselves learning lessons for the first time—lessons someone else has already wrestled with, lost sleep over, and either survived or failed. Yet we encounter them as if we’re explorers entering an uncharted jungle for the first time—lost, scraped up, and unaware that others have already mapped the terrain.
Now imagine moving through life armed with the hard-won lessons of others—having, at the very least, a small advantage when life inevitably happens. That’s what history offers us. As Snyder’s On Tyranny opens, “History doesn’t repeat, but it does instruct… History can familiarize, and it can warn.”
That instruction matters because it’s easy to get swept up in the outrage of the moment—the newest sensation, the dominant idea of the day—especially when it all comes at us relentlessly through television and social media.
This is where history steadies us.
As C. S. Lewis warned students in 1939, as the Nazi shadow spread across Europe, “A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village.” He put it even more bluntly in the same lecture, one that I came across this year while reading The War for Middle-Earth: “The scholar has lived many times and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of his own age.”
Much earlier, in the early 16th century, Francesco Guicciardini, a statesman and contemporary of Niccolò Machiavelli, filled his personal notebook—later published as Ricordi—with lessons drawn from history and his own life. In it, he observed, “Past things shed light on future ones… The same things come back under different names and different colors. Not everybody recognizes them, but only those who are wise and consider them diligently.”
Centuries later, polar explorer Roald Amundsen applied the same idea, studying the successes and failures of earlier expeditions to successfully reach the South Pole in 1911—a story told in The Race to the South Pole by Roland Huntford. While most of us aren’t preparing for the southernmost reaches of the planet, the principle still applies.
We learn about human nature through the essays of Plutarch. We navigate modern relationships with The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins. We learn to lead better through The Need to Lead by Dave Berke and Irresistible Change by Phil Gilbert, and to manage relationships upward through Managing Up by Melody Wilding. Across centuries and contexts, the lesson remains the same: studying others’ experiences gives us a slight advantage when it’s our turn to act.
Lesson 3: Power is a force to be wielded carefully
Over the last year, I read several books about power and what happens when it interacts with human nature. Regardless of whether the person was a ruler in 387 B.C. as in Plato and the Tyrant by James Romm or a poor kid from the Texas hill country like Lyndon Johnson infrom Robert Caro’s Path to Power, the results are the same. Power reveals and power corrupts. It exposes our character flaws and our fears and insecurities just as clearly as it highlights our strengths. It feeds the ego, fuels the desire for more, and tempts us into risks we never would have imagined taking without it.
And yet, power can’t be ignored. For those who wish to change their communities, organizations, or even the world, power is a prerequisite. And we need good men and women to step up to do this. As Dr. Jeffrey Pfeffer argues in 7 Rules of Power, “If you want power to be used for good, more good people need to have power.”
The problem is that most people who seek power begin with good intentions, but power acts on human nature, often reshaping it in subtle and destructive ways. Remember, power not only reveals character; over time, it distorts it. Like Willie Talos in All the King’s Men, a Huey Long–inspired figure who rises to power promising reform, only to become the very kind of tyrant he once opposed. Plutarch noticed this pattern centuries earlier and devoted an entire essay to warning those in positions of authority about how power erodes character—especially through the influence of sycophants, who he argued “make public their view that kings and rich men and political leaders are not only successful and fortunate, but also oustandingly intelligent, skillful and so on for every virtue.”
This is why those who seek power must take additional measures to fortify their character—before power tests it. That starts with educating themselves on the effects of power by reading books like On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder; biographies of those who held power, such as Robert Caro’s The Power Broker or the Lyndon Johnson series; and ancient texts from Seneca, Plutarch, and Plato, which remind us just how little human nature—and what people do with power—has changed.
It also requires reflecting on the virtues needed to withstand power’s pull, through books like Ryan Holiday’s Virtue Series, and surrounding ourselves with people willing to hold us accountable, even when we don’t want them to.
As we move into 2026, I hope you take time to reflect on the beliefs that drive you. I hope you find a book that helps you navigate whatever challenge life puts in front of you. And if you’re stepping into a position of power, I hope you recognize that you will be tested—and that you’re preparing yourself now.
Consider this an invitation to find a book that speaks to your current struggles and helps you move from reflection to action in 2026.
2025 in the Books
January
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall
This Is Strategy: Make Better Plans (Create a Strategy to Elevate Your Career, Community & Life) by Seth Godin
Talk: The Science of Conversation and the Art of Being Ourselves by Alison Wood Brooks
February
How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain by Lisa Feldman Barrett, PhD
America’s Longest War: The United States in Vietnam, 1950-1975 (Fifth Edition) by George C. Herring
Managing Up: How to Get What You Need From the People In Charge by Melody Wilding
March
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder
The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Stop Talking About by Mel Robbins
The Artist’s Way: 30th Anniversary Edition by Julia Cameron
April
Perseverance > Endurance: Lead with Resilience. Grow Through Adversity. Win Together by Blayne Smith and Brandon Young
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson
The Fish Who Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King by Rich Cohen
May
Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
The Notebook: The History of Thinking on Paper by Roland Allen
Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War by Edwin E. Moise, PhD
War Torn Stories of War from the Women Reporters Who Covered Vietnam
June
On Character: Choices That Define a Life by General Stanley McChrystal
7 Rules of Power: Surprising–but True–Advice on How to Get Things Done and Advance Your Career by Jeffrey Pfeffer
Essays by Plutarch
July
Plato and the Tyrant: The Fall of Greece’s Greatest Dynasty and the Making of a Philosophical Masterpiece by James Romm
How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence by Matt Richtel
Race For the South Pole: The Expedition Diaries of Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford
August
Beast in the Machine: How Robotics and AI Will Transform Warfare and the Future of Human Conflict by George M. Dougherty
The Moon is Down by John Steinbeck
Tunnel 29: The True Story of an Extraordinary Escape Beneath the Berlin Wall by Helena Merriman
September
How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost Writing, Learning and Thinking by Sönke Ahrens
The Collective Edge: Unlocking the Secret Power of Groups by Colin M. Fisher, Phd
The Path to Power: The Lyndon Johnson Years (Volume 1) by Robert Caro
October
Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat by Ryan Holiday
Turning Pro: Tap Your Inner Power and Creating Your LIfe’s Work by Steven Pressfield
The 50th Law: Overcoming Adversity Through Fearlessness by Robert Greene and 50 Cent
November
History Matters by David McCullough
The War For Middle-Earth: J.R.R. Tokien and C.S Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945 by Joe Loconte
The Need to Lead: A TOPGUN Instructor’s Lessons on How Leadership Solves Every Challenge (Extreme Ownership Series, 3) by David Berke
Irresistible Change: A Blueprint for Earning Buy-in and Breakout Success by Phil Gilbert
This month
All The King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren
Chained Eagle: The Heroic Story of the First American Shot Down over North Vietnam by Everett Alvarez Jr.
All That We Can Know by Ian McEwan
Joe Byerly is a retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel with 20 years of service, including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, and command of a cavalry squadron in Europe. He earned numerous prestigious awards, including multiple Legion of Merits, Bronze Stars, the Purple Heart, and General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. In 2013, Joe founded From the Green Notebook.
A passionate advocate for self-knowledge through reading and reflection, he authored The Leader’s 90-Day Notebook and co-authored My Green Notebook: “Know Thyself” Before Changing Jobs, a resource for leaders seeking greater self-awareness. If this post resonated with you or sparked any questions, feel free to reach out to him at Joe@fromthegreennotebook.com.
