Sunday, December 15, 2013

Best Books of 2013

It's that time of year when "Best of 2013" lists are being compiled. Here's a few from across the web.

The New Republic has posted its Best Books of 2013. The list includes Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram (Knopf), George Packer's The Unwinding (FGS), Bill Minutaglio and Steven Davis's Dallas 1963 (Twelve).

NPR has posted, "Book Concierge: Our Guide to 2013's Great Reads." In the Biography & Memoir category are books such as A. Scott Berg's Wilson (Putnam) and Jill Lepore's Book of Ages (Knopf). Under Staff Picks are Scott Anderson's Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Doubleday) and Wendy Lower's Hitler's Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). And, the For History Lovers section includes lots of novels, as well as Carla Kaplan's Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance (Harper) and Neil Irwin's The Alchemists: Three Central Bankers and a World on Fire (Penguin).

The Economist has put together a video on its six best of the year, including Charles Moore's Margaret Thatcher: the Authorized Biography (Knopf) and Peter Hart's The Great War (Oxford). The top 50 books compiled in article form are here and include Coolidge by Amity Shlaes (Harper); The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger and a Forgotten Genocide (Knopf) by Gary Bass; and The Bully Pulpit: Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft and the Golden Age of Journalism (Simon & Schuster) by Doris Kearns Goodwin.

The NYT also has a video accompanying its top ten list. On its non-fiction list is Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House (Doubleday) by Peter Baker. On the NYT top-100 list are The American Way of Poverty (Nation) by Sasha Abramsky; Gary Bass's The Blood Telegram (Knopf); Jill Lepore's Book of Ages (Knopf); Goodwin's The Bully Pulpit (Simon & Schuster); and Packer's The Unwinding (FSG).





Jonathan Yardley, whose reviews are often included in the weekly Book Roundup, has issued his favorite books of 2013 in the Washington Post.

Three critics have also posted their favorites in the New York Times: Michiko Kakutani, Dwight Garner, and Janet Maslin.

And be sure to check out the fun list over at The Atlantic where staff writers share favorite books they have read this year, regardless of publication date. This list ranges from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power.


UPDATE: Salon has also posted a top book list for the year, here, and a "What to Read" list, here.


There's lots of good legal history missing from these lists... What are your top reads of 2013?