Congratulations to SIS professor Joseph Torigian, whose book "The Party’s Interests Come First: The Life of Xi Zhongxun, Father of Xi Jinping" has been listed as one of the best books of 2025 by Foreign Affairs.

Selected by Foreign Affairs’ editors and book reviewers, "The Party's Interests Come First" was chosen as one of the very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year.

In his October Foreign Affairs review of the book, Sinologist and Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society Orville Schell calls it a "prodigiously researched epic" that details the life of Xi Zhongxun—the father of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping—to explain the history of the Chinese Communist Party and help readers gain a sense of how the younger Xi became the man he is today.

Torigian will launch "The Party's Interest Come First" at SIS on January 28, 2026 from 5:30-7pm. (More details to come.)

Find the Foreign Affairs Best Books of 2025 list here, and read the full review of "The Party's Interests Come First" here.