The Atlantic's 10 Best Books of the Year
In making their annual selection of the top 10 books of the year, The Atlantic's literary editors asked themselves these two questions: "Which stories this year brought unexpected clarity to the subjects that most confounded our understanding? Which of them opened up new, enlivening ways of thinking about things we only thought we knew?" The selection, which we've added here alongside a quote from the editors, includes the National Book Award winner in fiction, a book that precisely dissects the chasm between two generations, and a posthumously published memoir of a monumental political figure who died speaking truth to power.
10 books
Creation Lake
Rachel Kushner"As a rule, [Kushner's] fiction features tough, smart, challenging women who rarely, if ever, let their guard down—but the protagonist of her new literary noir, Creation Lake, a spy-for-hire called Sadie, takes a startling turn toward vulnerability instead... Creation Lake is a raw, surprising reminder that cool isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be."
Ron Charles & Francisco GoldmanHardcover, 2024
$29.99Member price:$14.99 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Martyr!
Kaveh Akbar"Akbar’s novel, which is largely about death, is strangely life-affirming. It’s a full-throated, complex work that embraces sentimentality, melodrama, and our most uncontainable emotions."
Clint Smith & Garrett M. GraffHardcover, 2024
$28.00Member price:$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Patriot: A Memoir
Alexei Navalny"As he was writing his memoir, first in freedom and then from a cell, Navalny understood just how compelling the book would be, especially if he didn’t live to complete it... He did, in fact, die in state custody this year under mysterious circumstances. But this book continues to speak for him... Throughout, his words testify to the humor and optimism needed to withstand such an ordeal. Navalny displays these qualities in abundance, and in a moment when authoritarianism is on the rise, his attitude provides a valuable lesson on how resistance can sustain itself."
Alexandra Alter & The AtlanticHardcover, 2024
$35.00Member price:$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space
Adam Higginbotham"Challenger is a capable, accessible history of spaceflight that understands and admires what drives our species to reach for the stars. More pointedly, it’s a slow-motion tragedy in which each opportunity to avert death is described in riveting and anguishing detail, and it adds up to a sober warning about where ambition curdles into hubris."
Garrett M. Graff & The Stacks PodcastHardcover, 2024
$35.00Member price:$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
Whiskey Tender: A Memoir
Deborah Taffa"Taffa’s story, told in this lyrical yet refreshingly earthbound memoir, feels both extraordinary and, she writes, 'as common as dirt'... The result is a memoir that illuminates and burns, a story that speaks for generations and for one individual, who is unique but never alone."
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James (Pulitzer Prize Winner)
Percival Everett"James is a retelling of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that dashes its source material against the rocks. Everett arranges the resulting fragments into a grim picture: The folksy charm of Jim, Huck Finn’s loyal traveling companion on the run from slavery, is replaced with the devilish wit of James, a serious, erudite man making tough choices in deadly situations."
Barack Obama & Ron CharlesHardcover, 2024
$28.00Member price:$14.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels
Pamela Prickett"Every year, thousands of Americans die without anyone claiming their bodies, which are left to be buried in mass graves. In an era of widespread disconnection and loneliness, the phenomenon is only growing. With empathy and ambition, Prickett and Timmermans, both sociologists, examine how this kind of ending comes to be."
Hardcover, 2024
$30.00Member price:$15.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The Hypocrite
Jo Hamya"In showing how Sophia and her father are illegible to each other, The Hypocrite exposes a chasm separating frustrated young people, who resent the world they’ve inherited, from some of their elders, who see this cohort as irredeemably misguided."
Hillary Kelly & Dakota JohnsonHardcover, 2024
$26.00Member price:$13.00 + Free shipping50% off your first book
The Brush: Poems
Eliana Hernández-Pachón"The Brush is a book-length poem about people trapped and menaced by forces beyond their control... Hernández-Pachón, the youngest winner of Colombia’s national poetry prize, captures a community ruptured by violence, exemplified by two lovers caught in its churn."
Paperback, 2024
$17.00Member price:$8.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book
A Wilder Shore: The Romantic Odyssey of Fanny and Robert Louis Stevenson
Camille Peri"Peri’s joint biography is a thrilling, haunting yarn of the sort that the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson himself became famous for—and couldn’t have written without his wife, Fanny Vandegrift, a free spirit from Indiana."
Hardcover, 2024
$35.00Member price:$17.50 + Free shipping50% off your first book