With so many new books coming out, what’s the best way to choose what to read? At Five Books, we believe that any book that helps with either enjoying life or understanding the world better is worth reading, and those are the qualities we look for in books. If you’re interested in a particular area—new historical fiction or new history books–we’ve also got more detailed lists you can click on, with a wider range of books.
Publishing these days is very focused on identifying bestsellers and pushing them via highly focused marketing campaigns. We love bestsellers as much as the next person, but we try to focus on books of lasting value or that have something a bit special about them.
(Note: We also have a list of the best books of all time. These have to be picked again and again in our expert interviews, so tend to be older books, with a few exceptions. Many of them are novels or historic texts already in the public domain and available as free ebooks).
Doro: Refugee, Hero, Champion, Survivor
Doro Ģoumãňęh and Brendan Woodhouse
"This is Doro and he is beautiful" is the opening line of Doro: Refugee, Hero, Champion, Survivor. It's the story of Doro Ģoumãňęh, a Gambian fisherman, who lost sight in one eye, some of his teeth, and experienced unbelievable horrors trying to get to Europe. The co-author is Brendan Woodhouse, a British firefighter who was one of the volunteers that rescued Doro on the Mediterranean, as part of a charity called Sea-Watch. It's hard not to cry reading this book. It's one of 2023's must-read books, and the must-read book if you live in Europe and care about other human beings.
This is a book about Doro and Brendan and it is beautiful.
The House of Doors
by Tan Twan Eng
☆ Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
The House of Doors is another beautiful historical novel by Malaysian novelist Tan Twan Eng. Set in Penang, it's told through the eyes of two people: Lesley Hamlyn, a Malaysian-born English woman married to a lawyer and the British novelist W. Somerset Maugham (Willie). It's a wonderful fusion of fact and fiction, featuring also Sun Yat-sen—the Chinese revolutionary who served as the first president of the Republic of China. Sun Wen, as he liked to be called, spent time in Penang in 1910.
The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
by David Grann
☆ Included in Barack Obama’s Summer 2023 Reading List
“If a grisly story of adventure on the high seas is what you’re after, David Grann, writer of wonderful tales of narrative nonfiction, had a new book out in May: The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder about an 18th-century British man-of-war which was shipwrecked off Patagonia.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early Summer 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
The Running Grave
by Robert Galbraith
Out later this year is The Running Grave, the 7th book in Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling)'s Cormoran Strike series, one of the most enjoyable crime fiction series out there. It features Cormoran Strike, a British war veteran-turned-private investigator, and Robin Ellacott, who starts out as a temp but becomes his business partner. In The Running Grave (according to JK Rowling via Twitter), Robin goes undercover to join a religious cult on behalf of a client who is worried about his son. The books in this series tend not to be fast-paced thrillers, but get you into the daily lives of the main characters, with the plot/mystery driving the story forward. If you haven't read any of the books yet, it's best to start with the first, The Cuckoo’s Calling, published exactly a decade ago.
Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon
by Michael Lewis
Going Infinite is by Michael Lewis, one of the best writers about finance out there. In this book, he takes on the story of Sam Bankman-Fried (aka SBF), who became a multi-billionaire as the founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange. FTX went bankrupt late in 2022 and SBF was arrested on multiple criminal charges. According to the book blurb, Lewis got to know Bankman-Fried during the years of his rise. Lewis's books tend to be entertaining and as well as informative and, hopefully, this one will lift the lid not only on SBF but the world of cryptocurrency, too.
Birnam Wood: A Novel
by Eleanor Catton
☆ Shortlisted for the 2023 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
“Eleanor Catton won the Booker Prize for her novel, The Luminaries. This is very different. It’s also set in her native New Zealand, but it’s a kind of environmentalist thriller. It’s extremely witty, extremely pacey, and incredibly well crafted. It’s about the fight over a particular patch of threatened ground in rural New Zealand. A group of guerrilla gardeners wants to use it for their organic ecological project but it’s also in the sights of miners and developers. The clash between them is executed with incredible panache, wit, surprise and suspense.
This is a book which on its back cover has an endorsement from none other than Stephen King, which I think tells you about the narrative drive that Eleanor Catton achieves here. It’s enormously enjoyable and, of course, it raises all of these profound questions about who should control the land and how it can be protected from environmental degradation.”
“One of the biggest books of the season must be Eleanor Catton’s hotly anticipated third novel Birnam Wood. Pitched (somewhat unexpectedly) as a psychological thriller, it follows the members of a guerilla gardening group as they take over an abandoned farm in cautious partnership with a paranoid American billionaire with plans to build his own survivalist bunker.” Read more...
The Notable Novels of Spring 2023
Cal Flyn, Journalist
Demon Copperhead
by Barbara Kingsolver
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
🏆 Winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction
“This is a real blockbuster of a novel with stunning energy, enormous humor, wit and sheer narrative drive. It’s a retelling of Dickens’s David Copperfield, from the title onwards. In fact, it follows Dickens’s plot fairly closely but Kingsolver moves the action to poor, rural Virginia, to the lives of country dwellers who in American culture have always been dismissed as hillbillies. In a way, it’s a great celebration and reclamation of that so-called hillbilly identity.
But it’s more than that because as the young hero Damon (or Demon) grows up, he becomes embroiled in one of the greatest social crises of contemporary America, which is opioid addiction. It becomes an issue-driven book, but the great disaster of mass addiction in his rural community never overwhelms his voice. It never dampens the wit and the sheer exuberance of the storytelling. In the end, it’s a book about some very, very dark social processes, but at the same time it’s still absolutely uplifting, exhilarating and enjoyable.”
“I’ve been to parts of Appalachia; I do a lot of library outreach. It’s dirt-poor. If you were transported there from New York or Atlanta, you would think you were in some sort of alternate universe, because the poverty is so extreme. The neglect, the drugs, and the opioid crisis—all of those are crimes. The kid in Demon Copperhead is in such a horrible situation that he’s taken away from his family…It’s his attitude that makes it so engaging. The book is dark, but it’s not overwhelmingly dark and horrible because he has such a great sense of humor.” Read more...
Crime Fiction and Social Justice
Karin Slaughter, Thriller and Crime Writer
“The influential American comedian Steven Wright, known for his deadpan one-liners, has also ventured into fiction for the first time with Harold, an absurdist, stream-of-consciousness novel set over a single day in a third-grade classroom, as thoughts flit through the mind of an eight-year-old boy.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Journalist
“Set at the end of a long hot summer on Long Island, we follow a manipulative 20-something as she infiltrates the social circles of the American elite. Cline is an able storyteller and a master narrator of the inner lives of amoral young women. Another hazy, intriguing tale from the author of The Girls, her bestselling 2016 novel of cult-motivated murders in 1960s California.” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Journalist
“Alice Winn’s In Memoriam—a love story set during the tumult of the First World War—came roaring out of the starting gates and straight into the bestseller lists. In it, two heartsick schoolboys are forced to confront their feelings for one another amid the horror of war. In it, two heartsick schoolboys are forced to confront their feelings for one another amid the horror of war. It’s been endorsed by such literary grandees as Maggie O’Farrell and Garth Greenwell; The New York Times has also described it as both ‘devastating’ and ‘tender'” Read more...
Cal Flyn, Journalist
The World: A Family History of Humanity
by Simon Sebag Montefiore
The World: A Family History by Simon Sebag Montefiore is a doorstopper of a book but a fabulous way to read about world history on a truly global scale across thousands of millennia. What holds it together is a focus on families, starting with the first footprints of a family ever found right the way through to the Trump family. As Sebag Montefiore explains at the beginning, this a work of synthesis, based on his reading and travels over the decades, written up during the Covid lockdowns. It's a really remarkable work of popular history, and a lot of fun to read.
Holly
by Stephen King
Stephen King returns with a new work of horror, Holly, a detective story featuring fan favourite Holly Gibney. Holly, who is autistic, first appeared in King's series about the private investigator Bill Hodges; over the course of several books she has evolved from a shy and awkward recluse into a determined and resourceful PI. This is her first solo outing. “I could never let Holly Gibney go," King explained. "She was supposed to be a walk-on character in Mr. Mercedes and she just kind of stole the book and stole my heart.” The Daily Mail has described it as a "black-hearted parable of American life in the Covid era.... as horrifying as anything King has written."
The audiobook is read by Justine Lupe, who played Holly in the television adaptation of Mr. Mercedes.
Act of Oblivion
by Robert Harris
☆ Shortlisted for the 2023 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
New historical novels by British writer Robert Harris are always worth looking out for so don't let the blitz of marketing surrounding his latest, Act of Oblivion, put you off. It's set at an interesting point in English history: the immediate aftermath of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Through the reflections of one of the main characters, we see the events leading up to the execution of Charles I more than a decade previously, in 1649, as well as the battles of the English Civil War and Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army. Puritan America is also an important part of the setting. If you're interested in history and don't know the details of this period, it's an interesting book, not least because you can't help but reflect on what it takes to tip a country into civil war.
“There’s…a new book from Salman Rushdie, Victory City, his fifteenth novel. It’s a fantastical epic, which opens in 14th-century India and features a nine-year-old orphan selected by the goddess Parvati to be her human vessel. The Times has described it as “a total pleasure to read, a bright burst of colour in a grey winter season,” full of “lush, romantic language.” (Rushdie, who is still recovering from a brutal knife attack last summer, is reported to be in daily contact with Hanif Kureishi, the acclaimed British writer who suffered a serious spinal injury in December and remains in hospital in Rome).” Read more...
The Notable Novels of Spring 2023
Cal Flyn, Journalist
Damascus Station
by David McCloskey
Damascus Station by former CIA agent David McCloskey has been out for a while in the US (where fans are waiting for the next instalment, Moscow X: A Novel, out in October), but for those of us in the UK it's a new arrival that's being very warmly received by spy thriller fans.
A Winter Grave
by Peter May
A Winter Grave is by Peter May, a writer of very thoughtful crime fiction. This is a work of cli-fi, really, set in the near future (2051), in a world where we didn't stop global warming in time. The action takes place in May's native Scotland, both in Glasgow and a remote Highland village during an ice storm. Occasionally it's a little didactic, but it's easy to forgive, given the subject matter. It's very evocatively done, and the melancholy mood of the book stays with you.
The World and All That It Holds
by Aleksandar Hemon
The World and All That It Holds is a new historical novel by Bosnia-born novelist Aleksandar Hemon, who we interviewed more than a decade ago on the cheery topic of 'Man's Inhumanity To Man'. This novel is set at the outbreak of World War I and ranges from Sarajevo (where the main protagonist witnesses the killing of Archduke Ferdinand and Sophie, his wife) to Shanghai.
Emperor of Rome
by Mary Beard
Emperor of Rome by British classicist Mary Beard is due out in September and covers a number of emperors. Not much is known about it so far, but according to a synopsis reported in The Bookseller, "it's much more than the usual emperor-by-emperor collection of biographies...For most Romans, one ruler was much like another and she takes a thematic approach instead – looking at the fact and fiction of these rulers, asking what they did and why, and how we have got such a lurid view of them. The themes are autocracy, corruption and conspiracy – and also the day-to-day practicalities of the emperors’ lives (who did the cooking, or took the dictation?)."
The Passenger & Stella Maris
by Cormac McCarthy
Coming back to publishing 16 years after his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Road, Cormac McCarthy published two linked novels within a month of each other in late 2022: The Passenger and Stella Maris. They were also immediately made available as a boxset, pictured here.
“A Stranger in Your Own City by Ghaith Abdul-Ahad is a beautiful book which tells that story from the point of view of a local resident, an architect, who later ended up working for foreign media, first as a fixer and then as a photographer and writer. The book opens with a chapter on “My First War”—about the Iran-Iraq war, talks about the years of sanctions, and then goes through everything that happened from 2003 up to the present. I couldn’t put it down. It’s like having a friend telling you what they lived through and finally being able to understand what happened and why things went so wrong.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Early 2023
Sophie Roell, Journalist
Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations
by Simon Schama
Foreign Bodies is a book about pandemics and vaccines across the millennia by Anglo-American historian Simon Schama. Schama is a professor at Columbia but also a brilliant popular historian, very talented at getting on top of huge amounts of information and getting it across in a memorable way. This book looks like a good way to say goodbye and get a historical perspective on the Covid pandemic, even as Schama predicts more will follow.
Exiles
by Jane Harper
☆ AudioFile magazine Earphones Award for an exceptional audiobook
Exiles is by Jane Harper, one of our favourite writers of mystery novels. All have been set in Australia in a genre some refer to as 'Outback noir.' Her last book was The Survivors, set by the ocean in Tasmania, her best book (according to two of our interviewees) is The Lost Man. This book, Exiles, is set in South Australia's wine country. It features Aaron Falk as the investigator, who also featured in The Dry and Force of Nature.
“The actor Tom Hanks has published a second book, his first novel, which offers a behind-the-scenes account of the creation of a blockbuster movie: The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece. It’s received somewhat mixed reviews (The Washington Post described it as “thoroughly engaging”; The Guardian said it was “a bland busman’s holiday”) but has already garnered plenty of column inches and will certainly find a large audience. (Hanks’ first book, a collection of short stories in which typewriters featured prominently, is reported to have sold 234,000 copies in the UK alone.)” Read more...
Cal Flyn, 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 Earth Transformed: An Untold History
by Peter Frankopan
The Earth Transformed is by Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford and a specialist on Byzantium. However, in The Earth Transformed he tells the story not of political dynasties and wars but of the world's climate. Frankopan is a nice writer so this is a good way to get up to speed on the world's climate history, though it is long—650 or so pages—so it's more compendium of information than quick summary.
Aristotle: Understanding the World's Greatest Philosopher
by John Sellars
Aristotle: Understanding the World's Greatest Philosopher is the latest book by John Sellars, a Reader in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London, who excels at writing short books for a general audience on ancient philosophy. For those of us not yet brave enough to embark on the Nicomachean Ethics, this 144-page book (just under four hours as an audiobook) is a great way into one of the greatest philosophers of all time.
Bloodbath Nation
by Paul Auster
Bloodbath Nation memorializes the empty sites of several dozen mass shootings in the United States. The text is by American novelist Paul Auster and the photos, in black and white, by Spencer Ostrander, a photographer based in New York. Many countries have introduced strict gun laws to prevent mass shootings; the US has not, in principle because of the Second Amendment of US Constitution. The amendment states that "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
The Story of Russia
by Orlando Figes
The Story of Russia is a highly readable account of the whole of Russian history, from the early days of the Rus to the current war in Ukraine, in fewer than 300 pages. Historian Orlando Figes, author of our most recommended book on Russian history—A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution—shows how that history is essentially a story. This is no different from any other country's national history, constantly changing to reflect current concerns, but it is a story many Westerners are unfamiliar with and crucial to understanding Russia today.
The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I
by Lindsey Fitzharris
For those who like the history of medicine and aren't squeamish, the much-awaited new book by Lindsey Fitzharris, author of The Butchering Art, is now out. It went straight onto the New York Times bestseller list and does not disappoint.
Venice: A Sketchbook Guide
by Matthew Rice
Now that most practical information needed when travelling—restaurants, hotels, bus and train times—is more up-to-date when researched online, the role of a physical guidebook is harder to nail down. Venice: A Sketchbook Guide by watercolour artist Matthew Rice offers a solution: this guidebook is a short, detailed, beautiful, quirky introduction to a city telling you everything you need to know for a meaningful visit.
A Book of Days
by Patti Smith
A Book of Days by Patti Smith starts January 1st with a photo and a single line of text and continues through the rest of the year for a total of 366 days (it includes February 29th for those born in a leap year). The book is based on Smith's very successful Instagram account.
The Shortest History of the Soviet Union
by Sheila Fitzpatrick
Australian historian and 20th century Russia specialist Sheila Fitzpatrick's The Shortest History of the Soviet Union covers its seven-decade, complex history in just 230 pages—with comfortable spacing and quite a few illustrations. It’s part of ‘The Shortest History of…’ series (which also has a highly recommended short history of China by Linda Jaivin).
Looking for Theophrastus: Travels in Search of a Lost Philosopher
by Laura Beatty
***🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year ***
“Theophrastus was slightly younger than Aristotle and came to Plato’s Academy when Plato was quite an old man. Then, when Plato died, he traveled with Aristotle, and was involved in Aristotle’s non-philosophical projects looking very closely at the nature of the world: the biological world, the geological world and so on. Theophrastus is probably best known for a book called The Characters. It’s not really famous amongst philosophers, although he was a philosopher. The Characters consist of descriptions of types of people in terms of their psychological patterns of behavior and so on, which seem very modern. But what Laura Beatty has done is take the bare bones of his life—because not all that much is known about him—and made a literal journey through the places where Theophrastus lived and tried to understand more about him.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books of 2022
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
“In Atoms and Ashes, Ukrainian historian Serhii Plokhy, author of a brilliant book on Chernobyl, looks at six nuclear disasters around the world—starting with the testing of a hydrogen bomb in Bikini Atoll in 1954 and ending with Fukushima—to see what lessons can be learned from them. As citizens, the pros and cons of nuclear power is something we have a duty to think about, and this book is a gripping way in.” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
My Fourth Time, We Drowned
by Sally Hayden
***🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year ***
***Winner of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Writing***
“My Fourth Time, We Drowned is another extraordinary investigation of a topic which people want to keep hidden, in this case the reality of the lives of migrants trying to get into Europe across the Mediterranean who have travelled there from many parts. It tells the story of extraordinary suffering that families go through to send family members to Europe, and of the migrants themselves, at the hands of traffickers, of militias and, indeed, indirectly, at the hands of international organizations that haven’t cared as much as they should have about their well-being.
What is especially rich about the book is that the migrants themselves speak not after the fact, but during their ordeals. So, although they are very much out of sight when it comes to television and the usual forms of journalism, the individual stories are told through often secret exchanges on social media. And they’re told extraordinarily compellingly.
The book is a critique of the EU and the UN for their policies, for keeping these migrants out, and their systematic indifference to their suffering. It’s very much—as many of these books are—a book for our time.”
“The subtitle is ‘seeking refuge on the world’s deadliest migration route’—that being the route from North Africa, across the Mediterranean, to Europe. All the books on the shortlist have a topicality and the ways in which they are topical are very varied and interesting. This is a book about events that are unfolding right now, as we’re speaking. We know they’re happening, but somehow we manage to push them away and not think about them. But migration is one of the huge issues of our time and this book really makes you feel it.” Read more...
The Best Nonfiction Books: The 2022 Baillie Gifford Prize Shortlist
Caroline Sanderson, Journalist
Liberalism and Its Discontents
by Francis Fukuyama
It’s a good time to reflect on liberal democracy, and Francis Fukuyama has a new, short, book out: Liberalism and its Discontents, addressing both what it is and some of the challenges it faces from both left and right. He’s a clear thinker and talked about which other books to read about liberal democracy in our most recent interview with him.
“Piketty’s doorstopper books have been bestsellers but his latest, A Brief History of Equality, is short and so a nice introduction to his approach. As some commentators have pointed out, it’s also a little more optimistic, which we probably all need right now” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
“I love history and I find medical history in particular very gripping (especially the discovery of vaccines), so I really enjoyed The Empress and the English Doctor: How Catherine the Great Defied a Deadly Virus. The author, Lucy Ward, is a journalist so it’s good bedtime reading, bringing home nicely the story of the fight against the horrors of smallpox as well as focusing on Catherine the Great” Read more...
Notable Nonfiction of Spring 2022
Sophie Roell, Journalist
The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses
by Patrick Hastings
It's supposed to be an amazing experience reading James Joyce's Ulysses but, unfortunately, many of us aren't up to the task on our own: we need help. The Guide to James Joyce's Ulysses is by Patrick Hastings, creator of the UlyssesGuide.com and a long-term teacher of Ulysses. The book is accessible and easy to read, comprehensive without being intimidating.
The Last Emperor of Mexico
by Edward Shawcross
The surreal story of Ferdinand Maximilian (1832-1867), the Habsburg archduke and younger brother of Emperor Franz Josef of Austria who was executed after a brief reign as Emperor of Mexico. In addition to the inherent interest of this strange tale, the book is also a nice introduction to a period when Mexico—which had been the centre of the Spanish empire in the Americas for three centuries—became independent but also lost ground to the emerging power of the United States.
It Starts With Us
by Colleen Hoover
Fans of blockbuster romance author Colleen Hoover must not miss her long-awaited sequel to her beloved and perennially bestselling It Ends With Us. Picking up right where the epilogue for It Ends with Us left off, we see the world through the eyes of both Lily and Atlas as they embrace a second chance at true love—that is, if Lily’s ex-husband Ryle will let them.
The Ink Black Heart
by Robert Galbraith
The Ink Black Heart is the sixth book in Robert Galbraith’s Cormoran Strike series, one of our favourite crime fiction series. The plot revolves around a cartoon and an online game based on that cartoon, and London’s Highgate Cemetery plays a key role in events (if you’ve never visited, you should: both Karl Marx and Douglas Adams are buried there, amongst hundreds of graves and ash trees growing all over the place. All in all, an ideal setting for a murder). The book is long, and it’s for readers who enjoy living daily life with the two main protagonists, Strike and Robin, as they go out about running their detective agency, rather than a pacy thriller you rush through at speed to find out whodunnit. As we’ve noted previously, this is a series where character development is important and while you can read each of the books as standalones, it’s best to start at the beginning with The Cuckoo’s Calling. The audiobook narrator for every book in the series so far, Robert Glenister, is excellent.
Vaxxers: The Inside Story of the Oxford AstraZeneca Vaccine and the Race Against the Virus
by Catherine Green & Sarah Gilbert
Vaxxers is a book by two scientists at the University of Oxford who, with their team, developed the AstraZeneca vaccine against Covid-19. Professor Catherine Green heads the Nuffield Department of Medicine's Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility and Sarah Gilbert is Professor of Vaccinology. Behind the impressive titles and incredible achievement, it's the story of two scientists working flat out and what it was like on a day-to-day basis—scientifically, practically and emotionally.
The title is telling: this is a book written with anti-vaxxers in mind, outlining what it is that vaxxers do, or did in the case of this particular vaccine. The writing of the book was prompted by a campsite encounter Green had with an anti-vaxxer, who had told her, "I'm not saying there is definitely a conspiracy...but I do worry that we don't know what they put in these vaccines: mercury and other toxic chemicals. I don't trust them. They don't tell the truth." Green had to tell her, "I am 'them': and, appropriately, at the end of the book all the ingredients of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine are listed.
Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern
by Mary Beard
It was the Roman historian Suetonius who first wrote about the lives of The Twelve Caesars, a potboiler of a history featuring incest, poisonings, and various depraved tyrants. They lived two millennia ago now, on a peninsula in southern Europe, but we know most of their names, even what they probably looked like. In this beautifully presented book, classicist Mary Beard investigates the phenomenon, looking in particular at visual representations of the Roman emperors down the centuries. Statues and pictures of Augustus (and other emperors) were ubiquitous at the time, but exploded again in the Renaissance and remain with us to this day. The illustrations are beautifully done, starting on the first page, where there's pictures of all 12 of them (including dates and manner of death).
“It’s a book about the nature of consciousness, one of the most intractable problems that human beings have come across. How do we understand how we, as apparently material beings made of flesh and bone—and, in particular, millions of neurones—get to the position of having qualitative experience, through the experience of the world through our senses, reflection and experience? Beautifully written, easy to read, hard to put down. It’s passionate, and it’s not patronising.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books of 2021
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
Silverview: A Novel
by John le Carré
Yep, it's true. Even though he died in December 2020, John le Carré (aka David Cornwell) has a new book. It was completed before he died and he gave his blessing to his sons to publish it. Silverview is a house on the edge of the seaside town where the main protagonist, Julian Lawndsley, has retreated to set up a bookshop. Silverview is very le Carré in its slow pace, and reads almost like a languid farewell from the greatest spy novelist of the 20th century.
Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India
by Kapil Komireddi
Malevolent Republic by K.S. Komireddi, an Indian essayist and author, is a highly readable polemic tracing India's history over the last seven decades in just 200 pages. The title makes no bones about the author's angle: he is relentlessly critical, sparing no one and nothing in his quest to understand how India got to the point it's at today. He writes, "India can scarcely be taken seriously as a 'democratic counterweight' to China...as it itself transforms into a brutally exclusionary Hindu-supremacist state" run by "bigots dedicated to destroying all that made it." It's not just India's current leader that comes under attack. Indeed, Modi’s path to power seems almost incidental given the missteps of the preceding prime ministers—from Indira Gandhi, a ruthless leader “devoured by the ogre she fostered”, to Manmohan Singh, politically “the least qualified candidate for the job”.
Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing
by Chris Bail
At his 'Polarization Lab', Duke sociology professor Chris Bail looks at what effect social media actually has on our political behaviour. Breaking the Social Media Prism sums up, in a shortish book, the results of that research, and it's not what you expect. Definitely a book worth reading if you're a user of social media, not only to understand other people's behaviour, but your own. (Also quite fun: if you have a Twitter account you can test your political ideology)
The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
by Walter Isaacson
The Code Breaker is the story of Jennifer Doudna, who won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her development of the CRISPR technology that allows gene editing. It is also the story of genes and gene editing and women in science. Walter Isaacson is a veteran biographer. He writes in highly readable prose that is particularly welcome when it comes to writing about science, when the concepts can be difficult. He also writes it like a pacy story, where you want to know what happens next. It is little surprise that on coming out, The Code Breaker went straight to the top of the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list.
Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer
by Steven Johnson
In Extra Life: A Short History of Living Longer bestselling author Steven Johnson—who among other books wrote the brilliant The Ghost Map—looks at what it is that has enabled human beings to radically increase their life expectancy over the last century.
Combating Inequality: Rethinking Government's Role
by Dani Rodrik & Olivier Blanchard (editors)
We've all become aware of the problem of inequality in recent years—with a few individuals now richer than entire countries. Where we've had less clarity is around what to do about it. Combating Inequality is a collection of essays by leading economists, edited by Olivier Blanchard (MIT) and Dani Rodrik (Harvard). It's based on a conference on inequality held at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington DC-based think tank. Consider it the collective wisdom of dozens of top economists, several of them also former policymakers. In short, the book we've all been waiting for.
River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads
by Cat Jarman
That many of the things we thought we knew about the Vikings is wrong was revealed to us in our Five Books interview about the Vikings with medieval historian Eleanor Barraclough in 2016. With our interest in Vikings awakened, it was exciting to see a book called River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads published in February 2021. River Kings is by archaeologist Dr Cat Jarman, who is a senior adviser to the new Museum of the Viking Age in Oslo. Specifically, she is a bioarchaeologist, which means she uses forensic tools—like isotope analysis, carbon dating, and DNA analysis—to try and figure out what happened to bodies buried more than a millennium ago. The book is absolutely mesmerizing, both about the techniques she deploys, and the story she tells about the Viking skeletons she uses those techniques on.
See/Saw: Looking at Photographs
by Geoff Dyer
The wonderful Geoff Dyer, writer of genre-defying fiction and nonfiction, has gathered together his criticism in this photography book. His last photography book, The Ongoing Moment, won the ICP Infinity Award for Writing on Photography as well as being recommended on Five Books. Geoff spoke to us about five works of literary nonfiction which he described as 'unusual histories.'
On the Ho Chi Minh Trail
by Sherry Buchanan
The Ho Chi Minh Trail was the quasi-mythical network of roads, paths and tunnels that North Vietnam used, in its war against South Vietnam and the Americans, to transport military supplies to its supporters in the South, the Viet Cong. On the Ho Chi Minh Trail is a travelogue, charting American journalist, author and publisher Sherry Buchanan's trip down the trail in 2014, collecting the stories of the young women who played a vital role in keeping the trail open despite the constant American bombing. The book includes pictures of Vietnamese war art, maps and an itinerary (in case you want to follow in her footsteps!) and brings all of the author's knowledge of Vietnam to bear. It includes a photo of the author meeting with Võ Nguyên Giáp, the mastermind behind Vietnam's victory against both the French and the Americans, in 2006.
Untraceable
Sergei Lebedev and Antonina Bouis (translator)
Untraceable, by Russian novelist Sergei Lebedev (born 1981), is a thriller that investigates what leads people to develop lethal poisons and use them on others in the name of the state. In atmosphere, it's a mixture of Death in Venice and John le Carré. Its urgency comes not from its pace, but from the fact that this is going on in the real world: the Russian state really does seem to think that publicly poisoning some of its opponents is a good idea.
Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness
by Stephen Fleming
Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness by cognitive neuroscientist Stephen Fleming is a scientific, philosophical, and practical book that sheds lights on 'metacognition'—our thoughts about thoughts and the importance of self-awareness to almost anything we embark on.
Under a White Sky: The Nature of the Future
by Elizabeth Kolbert
Elizabeth Kolbert won the Pulitzer Prize for her 2014 bestselling book, The Sixth Extinction, and her 2006 book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe, has also been recommended on Five Books, so it's no surprise that Under a White Sky is one of the most anticipated environment/climate change books of 2021. It's a look at what scientists are doing to save the planet, which can be scary at times.
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
by George Saunders
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, the latest book by George Saunders, is the ultimate writing class. He goes through short stories by four Russian writers—Chekhov, Gogol, Tolstoy and Turgenev—paragraph by paragraph or page by page to understand how they work, how they keep our interest, how they surprise us and what they tell us. He breaks them down to their skeletons and then shows how they are built up again. The book is an amazing journey into the mechanics/engineering/physics of stories, and why it is they do what they do.
Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis
by Serhii Plokhy
In Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Harvard historian Serhii Plokhy turns his attention to events in the 1960s which nearly led to nuclear armageddon between the US and the USSR. Plokhy's last book, on the Chernobyl disaster, was so brilliant that it won the UK's Baillie Gifford Prize, awarded for the best nonfiction book of the entire year. There are a number of books on the Cuban Missile Crisis told from the American side—starting with Robert F Kennedy's own memoir of that scary period—Thirteen Days—but Plokhy, who is a historian of the Ukraine, offers a more international perspective, including previously classified KGB documents.
We spoke to Serhii in December 2020 about the best books on Russia, selected annually by the judges of the Pushkin House Book Prize.
Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders
by Dennis Rasmussen
In Fears of a Setting Sun: The Disillusionment of America's Founders, political theorist Dennis Rasmussen—whose research focuses on the virtues and shortcomings of liberal democracy and market capitalism—looks at the fears the Founding Fathers of the United States had about the future of democracy.
We spoke to Dennis about the best Adam Smith books and his previous book, The Infidel and the Professor, was one of our best philosophy books of 2017.
Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
by Andrea Pitzer
In Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World Andrea Pitzer takes on the terrible story of the 16th century Dutch explorer and navigator William Barents, after whom the sea is named.
We previously spoke to Andrea about the best books on concentration camps.
The Data Detective: Ten Easy Rules to Make Sense of Statistics
by Tim Harford
***One of the best books on critical thinking, recommended by Nigel Warburton***
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics," said Benjamin Disraeli (according to Mark Twain, anyway), in what has become one of the most well-known quotations in the English language, and certainly the only one most of us know about statistics. And yet...in practice many of us continue to be misled by them on a daily basis. In The Data Detective (called How to Make the World Add Up in the UK), British economist Tim Harford tries to equip us with tools to take on the latest misinformation.
We've also interviewed Tim, a Financial Times columnist and BBC Radio and TV presenter, about books on two topics: Unexpected Economics (including a comic book) and the best Introductions to Economics.
Philosophy through Science Fiction Stories: Exploring the Boundaries of the Possible
by Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt and Eric Schwitzgebel (editors)
Can you learn philosophy through science fiction? The authors of this book, Helen De Cruz, Johan De Smedt and Eric Schwitzgebel, think so. Eric also spoke to us about the best books on sci-fi and philosophy.
Eurasian Crossroads: A History of Xinjiang
by James Millward
It's hard not to be aware of what is going in Xinjiang (literally 'new province') in western China where concentration camps are making a comeback. It's where the Uyghurs live, a generally Muslim ethnic minority who have never appreciated being ruled from Beijing. Historically, relations between the Uyghurs and Beijing have tended to go downhill when the centre is too controlling, and the last two decades have been a disaster. In this updated edition of Eurasian Crossroads James Millward, a leading American historian of the region, explains the historical context of a situation we all have a responsibility to be aware of.
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery
by Seb Falk
The Light Ages: A Medieval Journey of Discovery, by Cambridge historian Seb Falk, is about science and technology in medieval times and, as the title suggests, argues that this period does not deserve to be written off as 'the Dark Ages.' The tale is told through the eyes of John of Westwyk, an interesting figure who was, among other things, a monk, a crusader and an astronomer.
Agent Sonya: Moscow's Most Daring Wartime Spy
by Ben Macintyre
Agent Sonya is the latest book by Ben Macintyre, who has made an art of writing nonfiction books about spies that read like thrillers (If you haven't read The Spy and the Traitor yet, you must). Agent Sonya was the codename of Ursula Kuczynski, a German Jew who ended up living in an English village and spying for the Russians.
“As the title indicates, it’s ‘all’ the sonnets of Shakespeare — not just the 154 from the 1609 quarto. This includes excerpts from the plays that are literal sonnets, as well as characters discussing the practice of ‘sonneting…Separately, they’ve speculated about the possible order of composition of those poems.” Read more...
The best books on Shakespeare’s Sonnets
Scott Newstok, Literary Scholar
Naturalist: A Graphic Adaptation
by C.M.Butzer, Edward O. Wilson & Jim Ottaviani
This book is a wonderful graphic adaptation of biologist EO Wilson's memoirs. It's touching and enlightening and leaves you feeling excited about the natural world. It's also interesting for the light it sheds on what makes someone a great scientist. Wilson, born in 1929, won two Pulitzer Prizes for nonfiction for his books, one in 1979 for On Human Nature, and one in 1991 for The Ants, co-authored with German biologist Bert Hölldobler. EO Wilson's books—he wrote many—have also been frequently recommended on Five Books.
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
Barack Obama is an experienced—and talented—audiobook narrator so it’s no surprise he’s the one reading aloud his presidential memoir. This is only the first volume and it’s already more than 29 hours, so it’s quite a commitment, but also a unique opportunity to be told, firsthand, what it’s actually like to be President of the United States (POTUS). Hint: you’re dealing with a lot of complicated things, like healthcare reform.
Narrator: Barack Obama
Length: 29hr 10mins
Twilight of Democracy
by Anne Applebaum
Anne Applebaum's latest book, Twilight of Democracy, is part polemic, part memoir, and tracks how and why so many people she knew (eg Viktor Orban, who has been prime minister of Hungary for the past decade) abandoned liberal democracy and became far right populists. Applebaum was a foreign correspondent in eastern Europe at the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall and continued to cover the region for many years.
We interviewed Anne Applebaum on the best Memoirs of Communism.
Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture
by Sudhir Hazareesingh
***Winner of the 2021 Wolfson History Prize***
Black Spartacus tells the extraordinary story of Toussaint Louverture, general and leader of a successful slave revolt in what is now Haiti. He was fighting—at various times—the Spanish, the British and the French. But beyond that, the book goes into detail about his worldview and how he drew on European Enlightenment ideas, but was also strongly influenced by Christianity and beliefs and cultural practices from Africa.
“This book is not hagiography at all. It’s very easy to look for a great liberation hero. But this book shows a deeply flawed man who clearly didn’t make the lives of those who became free, all that much freer. He wanted hard work. There’s a certain ‘Animal Farm-ness’ about the story. And yet, what an achievement it was for this little island to stand up to one of the great powers of 18th century Europe and create the first predominantly Black-run republic in the world. It’s extraordinary.” Read more...
The Best History Books: The 2021 Wolfson Prize Shortlist
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Theologians & Historians of Religion
The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers
by Eric Weiner
"‘Socrates’ is a stand-in for the kind of philosophy that I was interested in, that I write about, which is a practical, therapeutic, accessible philosophy. It was Cicero who famously said of him that he called philosophy down from the heavens and introduced it into people’s homes. That’s what I’m trying to do."
Bestselling author Eric Weiner talked to our philosophy editor, Nigel Warburton, about 'Life-Changing Philosophy Books'
The Philosopher Queens: The lives and legacies of philosophy's unsung women
by Lisa Whiting & Rebecca Buxton
***🏆 A Five Books Book of the Year ***
“This is the book of the year for me. Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting are both graduate students in philosophy and they’ve co-edited this amazing book, which is basically the book that they wish had existed when they started thinking about studying philosophy. It’s a book that has 20 short essays about significant women philosophers. It’s skewed towards political philosophy and ethics, which is where their interests lie, but not exclusively, and it goes from ancient Greece to more or less the present day. It’s a selection of philosopher queens, women philosophers who’ve been neglected by mainstream curricula in philosophy. It’s also an illustrated book, which is unusual in philosophy.” Read more...
The Best Philosophy Books of 2020
Nigel Warburton, Philosopher
Monkey King: Journey to the West
Wu Cheng'en and Julia Lovell (translator)
Monkey King or Journey to the West is one of the classics of Chinese literature, written at the end of the 16th century. The story is based on a real historical figure, Tripitaka, who in the late 620s travelled to India, bringing back Buddhist manuscripts to China. The 16th century, fantastical version of the story, attributed to Wu Cheng'en, may not correspond with historical reality, but offers a wonderful snapshot of imperial China and its very distinctive worldview.
This is a new, abridged translation by Julia Lovell, one of the West's leading Sinologists. As well as ensuring the book is very funny in modern English, she also gives us a very neat introduction to the book and what it tells us about Ming-era China. "Belying the old cliché of imperial China as self-sufficient, isolationist and xenophobic, Journey to the West—an odyssey out of China, to attain the wisdom of Indian Buddhist civilization—tells a different story: one of Chinese fascination with foreign exotica."
Editor's note: the Penguin clothbound edition of this book is beautiful.
