Bestsellers on Five Books
Last updated: November 03, 2024
There's lots of bestseller lists around the world, tracking which books are popular and have caught the public imagination. Here we track bestsellers based on what books people buy after visiting our site, Five Books. The results are surprising and perhaps encouraging, with (in 2023) Epictetus's Discourses winning over Prince Harry's Spare.
Napoleon: A Life
by Andrew Roberts
🎯 A bestselling book on Five Books in 2024
Interest in Napoleon Buonaparte, the Corsican soldier who became emperor of France, is perennial on Five Books, with most buyers gravitating towards Napoleon: A Life by British historian Andrew Roberts. 2023 has seen an even bigger bump than usual. Sales of this book have doubtless been driven by the new Ridley Scott movie, which has become notorious for its lack of historical accuracy. And yet…if that drives viewers to want to know more about what really happened, isn’t that still a good thing?
“It’s certainly a thriller. It’s tense, tense, tense. But the big thing in this novel is not just the tension, it’s the voices. Joseph O’Connor gives a masterclass in the different voices of the people gathered around the priest Hugh O’Flaherty to help him organise and run the Escape Line—the escape routes out of Italy for POWs and others being pursued by the Nazis. If you feel you know Rome, you’ll find much to enjoy in the twists and turns of the streets, the hidden alleys, the sudden expanses and that ever-present ‘seethe of black water’, the Tiber. It’s full Rome immersion.” Read more...
The Best Historical Fiction of 2024
Katharine Grant, Historical Novelist
“The novel is really about the unsettling of the West, and it revisits that classic hero of the Western novel: the ‘American Adam.’ This is the figure who tries to throw off history, tries to sever his family ties, and tries to break free from the past in order to experience rebirth and renewal in the so-called Edenic spaces of the West. But what Håkan finds instead is a devastating lack of connection and belonging. He experiences a kind of soul-crushing loneliness and a very limited and truncated life.” Read more...
Susan Kollin, Literary Scholar
Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense
Saul Perlmutter, Robert MacCoun and John Campbell
🎯 A bestselling book on Five Books in 2024
In Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense a Nobel-prize winning physicist, a philosopher and a social scientist together give a clear, accessible and enlightening guide to the tools of thinking that make science work. This is a brilliant book by eminent thinkers in their fields who are also superb communicators. It's a really enjoyable read and a great book for anyone who wants to think more clearly about evidence, argument, reason and the need for a degree of intellectual humility.
“One of the most popular interviews on our site is about critical thinking. Third Millennium Thinking: Creating Sense in a World of Nonsense by Saul Perlmutter (a Nobel-prize winning astrophysicist), Robert MacCoun, (a social psychologist) and John Campbell (a philosopher) is a notable new addition to that list. According to Nigel Warburton, it’s ‘a clear, accessible and enlightening guide to the tools of thinking that make science work. It’s a really enjoyable read and a great book for anyone who wants to think more clearly about evidence, argument, reason and the need for a degree of intellectual humility.'” Read more...
Nonfiction Books to Look Out for in Early 2024
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“I think this book is a watershed in the writing of human history. It is an exploration of the history of emotions, and the way that they relate to everyday life today. Zeldin helps us to understand the big picture that who we are – the way we think about love, fear, death and so on – is partly inherited from the past. The way we think about love is inherited from medieval ideas of courtly love, for instance. We’re products of the past. This was a revolutionary idea, to personalise history and make it relevant… Zeldin connects the past with the present, for me like no other historical writer…He’s chosen what he thinks are the 24 most important aspects of emotional life – like love, fear, hate or curiosity – and has dedicated a chapter to each one. He starts each chapter by interviewing someone (in the case of this book a French woman) and then traces how that person’s quandaries in life are reflected in the past. What he leads up to is a core conclusion that conversation, and nurturing the art of conversation, is one of the ways to transform our lives in a mental way.” Read more...
The best books on The Art of Living
Roman Krznaric, Philosopher
“Epictetus was mainly a teacher. We think of him as a philosopher, but he was mainly a teacher of Stoic philosophy around the first century AD. He was born a slave in what is now Turkey, was eventually liberated, moved to Rome, taught there for a while and was banished to a city in Greece called Nicopolis…It’s no coincidence that Stoicism is enjoying a revival today and Epictetus’s thought in particular, because it’s helpful in life. It’s the philosophy of hard knocks, the philosophy for people who have lived for a while and suffered for a while. It’s largely about coping with difficult situations.” Read more...
Life-Changing Philosophy Books
Eric Weiner, Journalist
“This book is a non-technical introduction to machine learning that is aimed at a general audience. It explains the different types of machine learning algorithms and their relative strengths and weaknesses, and it discusses the implications of machine learning for society.” Read more...
The best books on Artificial Intelligence
ChatGPT, AI Chatbot
“Kahneman developed research with Amos Tversky, who unfortunately died young—I think it would have been a co-written book otherwise. It’s a brilliant book that summarizes their psychological research on cognitive biases, or is patterns of thinking, which all of us are prone to, which aren’t reliable.” Read more...
The best books on Critical Thinking
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
A Guide to the Good Life
by William B Irvine
A Guide to the Good Life (2008) by William Irvine, a philosophy professor at Wright State University, is an excellent and highly readable introduction to the ancient philosophy of Stoicism. Not just for the likes of Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, the book shows how you too can apply Stoic principles in everyday life (when going to the shopping mall etc.), as philosophers explain below:
Winning Chess Strategy (for Kids)
Jeff Coakley, Antoine Duff (illustrator)
“It’s just such a fantastic book for learning chess. I think sometimes adult improvers don’t pick this book up because of the title, and they should. It’s one of the best chess books I’ve ever read…The author is definitely a very experienced chess teacher…he’s a master player who clearly started focusing on teaching…Unlike other books which are just puzzles, it explains concepts and ideas really well, the examples are picked really nicely, he’s got a good mix. In chess, we divide it into three parts, you’ve got the opening, you’ve got the middle game and the end game. This book covers all of them, there are lots of bite-sized lessons. Within the book there are also puzzles, which are more interactive, more doable…My book is so tattered and dog-eared because I look at it all the time.” Read more...
Best Chess Books for Beginners
Andrew Green, Sportspersons & Sportswriter
“This book is a collection of very clever puzzles. The author is mysterious and goes by the pseudonym M. Some are pictures, some are codes, and some are wordplay. One thing I love about them is that you have to use different types of thinking and solving techniques.” Read more...
A. J. Jacobs, Journalist
Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope
by Sarah Bakewell
Humanly Possible is a book covering seven centuries of humanistic thought, written by one of the best philosophy writers for a general audience around, Sarah Bakewell. It's a brilliant book, done with Bakewell's characteristic elegance and intelligence.
“The genius of what Alan did is to make Roosevelt’s story accessible by getting it down to a hundred pages.” Read more...
The best books on Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cynthia Koch, Historian
Talleyrand
by Duff Cooper
First published in 1932, British diplomat Duff Cooper's biography of the French statesman Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord is one of the most popular biographies of a historical figure ever written.
“I picked this one because I’m into feminism and I really like female empowerment. I feel like a lot of books just have males, white males. But this one has a lot of feminist philosophy. This book covers pretty much everything, it has Eastern, Western… different philosophies from all over the world. And it’s really easy to understand because there’s a ton of colours and pictures.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books for 8-13 Year Olds
Zara, Children
