Beyond tracking the release date of a few books I’ve been obsessing over, I’ve never been one to give much forethought to the books I read each year. If an interesting books comes across my radar, I take an interest, but I’ve never really planned what I read.

As the end of 2019 quickly approached, I saw more and more “best of” book lists, and after seeing Bud Smith’s, I had the thought that perhaps I should change things up a bit this year, because—hey! A lot happened in 2019 and I’m all...