2026 Short List
Galahad and the Grail (Rabbit Room, 2026), by Malcolm Guite
Why Literature Still Matters (Cassiodorus Press, 2025), by Jason M. Baxter
Christian Paideia, vol. 1: A History of Christian Education to 500 AD (Arouca Press, 2025), by Brian Welter
Guide to the Science of Reading: Translating Research to Reignite Joy and Meaning in the Classroom (Jossey-Bass, 2025), by Doug Lemov, Colleen Driggs, and Erica Woolway
Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division (Post Hill Press, 2025), by Robert P. George and Cornel West
Passing the Torch: An Apology for Classical Christian Education (IVP Academic, 2025), by Louis Markos
2025 WINNER
How to Think like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, by Scott Newstok
How to Think like Shakespeare is a brilliantly fun exploration of the craft of thought—one that demonstrates what we’ve lost in education today, and how we might begin to recover it. In fourteen brief chapters that draw from William Shakespeare’s world and works, and from other writers past and present, Scott Newstok distills enduring practices that can make learning more creative and pleasurable.
Written in a friendly, conversational tone and brimming with insights, How to Think like Shakespeare enacts the thrill of thinking on every page, reviving timeless—and timely—ways to stretch your mind and hone your words.
$14.95
2025 Short List
The Medieval Mind of C. S. Lewis: How Great Books Shaped a Great Mind, by Jason M. Baxter
Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind, by Frank Tallis
Beauty and Imitation: A Philosophical Reflection on the Arts, by Daniel McInerny
2024 WINNER
Virtue Politics: Soulcraft and Statecraft in Renaissance Italy, by James Hankins
A dazzlingly ambitious reappraisal of Renaissance political thought by one of our generation’s foremost intellectual historians, Virtue Politics challenges the traditional narrative that looks to the Renaissance as the seedbed of modern republicanism and sees Machiavelli as its exemplary thinker.
James Hankins reveals that what most concerned the humanists was not reforming laws or institutions so much as shaping citizens. If character mattered more than constitutions, it would have to be nurtured through a new program of education they called the studia humanitatis: the humanities.
$27.95
2024 Short List
Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization, by R. V. Young
Rome as a Guide to the Good Life: A Philosophical Grand Tour, by Scott Samuelson
Machiavelli’s Effectual Truth: Creating the Modern World, by Harvey Mansfield
2023 WINNER
From Plato to Christ: How Platonic Thought Shaped the Christian Faith, by Louis Markos
In ways that might surprise us, Christians throughout the history of the church and even today have inherited aspects of the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato, who was both Socrates’s student and Aristotle’s teacher.
To help us understand the influence of Platonic thought on the Christian faith, Louis Markos offers careful readings of some of Plato’s best-known texts and then traces the ways that his work shaped the faith of some of Christianity’s most beloved theologians, including Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Dante, and C. S. Lewis.