Below is a list of books I’ve read. They are listed in sequential order except for the first bolded titles each year (beginning in 2019), which were my favorites of the year (in no particular order)
2023
The Quiet Zone, Stephen Kurczy
The Good Jobs Strategy, Zeynep Ton
The Grownup, Gillian Flynn
Either/Or, Elif Batuman
The Man who Broke Capitalism, David Gelles
When McKinsey Comes to Town, Walt Bogdanich
The Bullet that Missed, Richard Osman
Novelist as a Vocation, Haruki Murakami
Stella Maris, Cormac McCarthy
The Passenger, Cormac McCarthy
2022
G-Man, Beverly Gage
Stay True, Hua Hsu
Legacy of Violence, Caroline Elkins
Donut Economics, Kate Raworth
Purpose and Profit, George Serafeim
The Netanyahus, Joshua Cohen
The Idiot, Elif Batuman
An Immense World, Ed Yong
My Struggle, Vol. 3, Karl One Knausgaard
Watergate, Garrett Graff
Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
Bewilderment, Richard Powers
Personal History, Katharine Graham
The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan
The Urge, Carl Erik Fisher
Desert Star, Michael Connelly
Superhuman, Rowan Hooper
How to Invest, David Rubenstein
A Shot to Save the World, Gregory Zucherman
Why Didn’t You Tell Me?, Carmen Rita Wong
Alright, Alright, Alright, Melissa Maerz
A Brief History of Equality, Thomas Piketty
The Philosophy of Modern Song, Bob Dylan
Blue Ocean Strategy, W. Chan Kim
Retail Gangster, Gary Weiss
Confidence Man, Maggie Haberman
Constructing a Nervous System, Margo Jefferson
All In, Billie Jean King
Two Wheels Good, Jody Rosen
Rogues, Patrick Radden Keefe
Nixonland, Rick Perlstein
How the World Really Works, Vaclav Smil
The Zen of Therapy, Mark Epstein
Debt, David Graeber
Being You, Anil Seth
Happy-Go-Lucky, David Sedaris
Move the Body, Heal the Mind, Jennifer Heisz
The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight
Ways and Means, Roger Lowenstein
Nuclear Folly, Serhil Plokhy
Stolen Focus, Johann Hari
The Candy House, Jennifer Egan
City on Fire, Don Winslow
Sea of Tranquility, Emily St. John Mandel
Sweat, Bill Hayes
Index, a History of the, Dennis Duncan
Putin’s People, Catherine Belton
My Struggle, Vol. 2, Karl One Knausgaard
Mercy Street, Jennifer Haigh
Flying Blind, Peter Robison
The Lords of Easy Money, Christopher Leonard
The Founders, Jimmy Soni
The Copenhagen Trilogy, Tove Ditlevsen
Fight Night, Miriam Toews
Lost in the Valley of Death, Harley Rustad
Blood in the Garden, Chris Herring
Saga Vol. 1 and 2, Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples
In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio, Andrew Lo and Stephen Foerster
How to Change, Katy Milkman
Powder Days, Heather Hansman
2021
Harlem Shuffle, Colson Whitehead
There is Nothing for You Here, Fiona Hill
Our Country Friends, Gary Shteyngart
Animal, Lisa Taddeo
Common Ground, J. Anthony Lukas
Black Buck, Mateo Askaripour
Klara and the Sun, Kazuo Ishiguro
Empire of Pain, Patrick Radden Keefe
The Empathy Diaries, Sherry Turkle
The Code Breaker, Walter Isaacson
Eat the Buddha, Barbara Demick
Exercised, Daniel Lieberman
All that She Carried, Tiya Miles
Fight Night, Miriam Toews
On Animals, Susan Orlean
The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow
Invisible Child, Andrea Elliot
The Dark Hours, Michael Connelly
Noise, Daniel Kahneman
Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain
Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri
First Person Singular, Haruki Murakami
On Freedom, Maggie Nelson
Philip Roth, Blake Bailey
The Inevitable, Katie Engelhart
The Afghanistan Papers, Craig Whitlock
On Grand Strategy, John Lewis Gaddis
Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard
Calypso, David Sedaris
Nomadland, Jessica Bruder
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, Bill Gates
Death in Her Hands, Ottessa Moshfegh
We Ride Upon Sticks, Quan Barry
The Bully Pulpit, Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Plague Year, Lawrence Wright
The Premonition, Michael Lewis
The Sun is a Compass, Caroline Van Hemert
High Drama, John Burgman
Fulfillment, Alec MacGillis
Yearbook, Seth Rogen
Eichmann in Jerusalem, Hannah Arendt
Between Two Kingdoms, Suleika Jaouad
The Hard Crowd, Rachel Kushner
Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim, David Sedaris
Beginners, Tom Vanderbilt
This is How They Tell Me the World Ends, Nicole Perlroth
The Story of the Human Body, Daniel Lieberman
Extraterrestrial, Avi Loeb
Unworthy Republic, Claudio Saunt
Let Me Tell You What I Mean, Joan Didion
A Burning, Megha Majumdar
The Professor and the Madman, Simon Winchester
Under a White Sky, Elizabeth Kolbert
The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Heather Morris
We Keep the Dead Close, Becky Cooper
The Fragile Earth, ed. David Remnick
Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport
Annapurna, Arlene Blum
Capitalism Without Capital, Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake
The Law of Innocence, Michael Connelly
Serving the Servant, Danny Goldberg
The Man who Ran Washington, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser
The Warmth of other Suns, Isabel Wilkerson
Eve out of her Ruins, Ananda Devi
2020
A Promised Land, Barack Obama
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, Ottessa Moshfegh
Three Women, Lisa Taddeo
Caste, Isabel Wilkerson
Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald
Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life, Steve Martin
My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell
Negroland: A Memoir, Margo Jefferson
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, Doris Kearns Goodwin
Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson Book 3, Robert Caro
Rise and Kill First: The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations, Ronen Bergman
The Glass Hotel, Emily St. John Mandel
Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel
Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener
Ducks, Newburyport, Lucy Ellman
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey
Is this Anything?, Jerry Seinfeld
Culture Warlords, Talia Lavin
Malice, Keigo Higashino
The Best of Me, David Sedaris
JFK, Fredrik Longevall
The Motion of the Body Through Space, Lionel Shriver
The Answer Is…, Alex Trebek
If Then, Jill Lepore
Flash Crash, Liam Vaughan
The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson
Before the Storm, Rick Perlestein
Means of Ascent, Robert Caro
Nothing is Wrong and Here is Why, Alexandra Petri
When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chodron
Accountable, Michael O’Leary and Warren Valdmanis
Heat and Light, Jennifer Haigh
Disappearing Earth, Julia Phillips
The Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The Passage of Power, Robert Caro
The Biggest Bluff, Maria Konnikova
Hidden Valley Road, Robert Kolker
Clean Hands, Patrick Hoffman
Why Buddhism is True, Robert Wright
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshana Zuboff
Let’s Explore Diabetes with Owls, David Sedaris
Lights Out: Pride, Delusion and the Fall of General Electric, Thomas Gryta and Ted Mann
The Adventurer’s Son, Roman Dial
Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
The Price of Peace: Money, Democracy, and the Life of John Maynard Keynes, Zachary D. Carter
Notes from an Apocalypse: A Personal Journey to the End of the World and Back, Mark O’Connell
Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art, James Nestor
Open: An Autobiography, Ande Agassi
Springfield Confidential: Jokes, Secrets, and Outright Lies from a Lifetime of Writing for the Simpsons: Mike Reiss
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Phil Knight
The Braindead Megaphone: Essays, George Saunders
Broken, Don Winslow
Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, Daniel Pink
Recursion, Blake Crouch
Janesville: An American Story, Amy Goldstein
The End of October, Lawrence Wright
Transit, Rachel Cusk
Cleanness, Garth Greenwell
The Noble Hustle: Poker, Beef Jerky, and Death, Colson Whitehead
Narrative Economics, Robert Shiller
Weather, Jenny Offill
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest, Hanif Abdurraqib
Calypso, David Sedaris
Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster, Adam Higginbotham
A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions can Revive the American Dream, Yuval Levin
Inside the Dream House, Carmen Maria Machado
The Yellow House, Sarah Broom
In the Darkroom, Susan Faludi
This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff
Good Husbandry, Kristin Kimball
The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched the Quant Revolution, Gregory Zuckerman
Just Kids, Patti Smith
When Breath Becomes Air, Paul Kalanithi
The Beautiful Ones, Prince
2019
We the Corporations: How American Businesses Won their Civil Rights, Adam Winkler
Asymmetry, Lisa Halliday
Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom, David W. Blight
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, David Wallace-Wells
Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971, Heather Ann Thompson
The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead
The Overstory, Richard Powers
Ali: A Life, Jonathan Eig
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, Jia Tolentino
Women Talking, Miriam Toews
Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland, Patrick Radden Keefe
Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, Rebecca Henderson
The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present, David Treuer
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life, Ed Yong
80/20 Running: Run Stronger and Race Faster by Training Slower, Matt Fitzgerald
Make it Scream, Make it Burn, Leslie Jamison
Horror Stories, Liz Phair
Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, David Grann
Homewreckers: How a Gang of Wall Street Kingpins, Hedge Fund Magnates, Crooked Banks, and Vulture Capitalists Suckered Millions Out of Their Homes and Demolished the American Dream, Aaron Glantz
The Night Fire, Michael Connelly
Exit West, Mohsin Hamid
The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America, George Packer
Lakota America: A New History of Indigenous Power, Pekka Hamalainen
Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators, Ronan Farrow
Wave, Sonali Deraniygala
Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber, Mike Isaac
My Squirrel Days, Ellie Kemper
Telex from Cuba, Rachel Kushner
Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, Andrew Marantz
Dryer’s English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style, Benjamin Dreyer
Permanent Record, Edward Snowden
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari
The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and Us, Richard Prum
American Prison: A Reporter’s Undercover Journey into the Business of Punishment, Shane Bauer
Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, Branko Milanovic
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman’s Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer, Michelle McNamara
Priestdaddy, Patricia Lockwood
The Border, Don Winslow
Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Didn’t Know You Have, Tatiana Schlossberg
The Economists’ Hour: How False Prophets of Free Markets Fractured Our Society, Binyamin Appelbaum
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America, Christopher Leonard
Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century, George Packer
I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution, Emily Nussbaum
Washington Black, Esi Edugyan
The Cartel, Don Winslow
Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee, Casey Cep
How to do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell
The Third Pillar: How Markets and the State Leave the Community Behind, Raghuram Rajan
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, Yuval Noah Harari
Small Fry, Lisa Brennan-Jobs
Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, Robert Caro
Power of the Dog, Don Winslow
These Truths: A History of the United States, Jill Lepore
The Impossible Climb: Alex Honnold, El Capitan, and the Climbing Life, Mark Synnott
Good to Go: What the Athlete in All of Us can Learn from the Strange Science of Recovery, Christie Aschwanden
Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America, James Forman, Jr.
Sabrina, Nick Drnaso
Autumn, Ali Smith
The Art of Raising a Puppy, the Monks of New Skete
The Library Book, Susan Orlean
How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays, Alexander Chee
The Beastie Boys Book, Michael Diamond and Adam Horovitz
I Am Dynamite!: A Life of Nietzsche, Sue Prideaux
2018
Dark Sacred Night, Michael Connelly
How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan
Heavy: An American Memoir, Kiese Laymon
Educated: A Memoir, Tara Westover
War on Peace: The End of Diplomacy and the Decline of American Influence, Ronan Farrow
North: Finding My Way While Running the Appalachian Trail, Scott Jurek
The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1), Robert Caro
Cherry, Nico Walker
The Fifth Risk, Michael Lewis
There There, Tommy Orange
Manhattan Beach, Jennifer Egan
Barrel-Aged Stout and Selling Out: Goose Island, Anheuser-Busch, and How Craft Beer Became Big Business, Josh Noel
God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State, Lawrence Wright
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, John Carrayrou
The Mars Room, Rachel Kushner
The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, Masha Gessen
The Largesse of the Sea Maiden: Stories, Denis Johnson
The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath, Leslie Jamison
Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, Barbara Ehrenreich
Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance, Alex Hutchinson
Feel Free, Zadie Smith
Dawn of the New Everything: Encounters with Reality and Virtual Reality, Jaron Lanier
A First-Class Catastrophe: The Road to Black Monday, the Worst Day in Wall Street History, Diana Henriques
Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward
Two Kinds of Truth, Michael Connelly
2017
Lords of Finance: The Bankers who Broke the World, Liaquat Ahamed
We were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy, Ta-Nehisi Coates
Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process, John McPhee
The Late Show, Michael Connelly
The Force, Don Winslow
The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return, Mihir Desai
South and West, Joan Didion
The Association of Small Bombs, Karan Mahajan
The CEO Pay Machine: How it Trashes America and How to Stop it, Steven Clifford
How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon, Rosa Brooks
The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson
The Nix, Nathan Hill
The Case Against Sugar, Gary Taubes
The Spy who came in from the Cold, John Le Carre
Moonglow, Michael Chabon
The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed our Minds, Michael Lewis
We are all Completely Beside Ourselves, Karen Joy Fowler
2016
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg
A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James
Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal, Eugene Soltes
The Underground Railroad, Colson Whitehead
The Sympathizer, Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Vegetarian, Han Kang
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone, Olivia Laing
Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty
Work Rules!, Laszlo Block
Human Capital, Gary Becker
Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates
The Sellout, Paul Beatty
All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr
H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald
The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World, Andrea Wulf
The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, Elizabeth Kolbert
Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS, Joby Warrick
One of Us: The Story of Anders Breivik and the Massacre in Norway, Asne Seierstad
Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David, Lawrence Wright