Year-End Lists

The Economist: The Best Books of 2023

[see also 2022 • 2021 • 2012]

Current affairs and politics

• Deadly Quiet City

  True Stories from Wuhan
  Murong Xuecun
• Fear Is Just a Word

  A Missing Daughter, a Violent Cartel, and a Mother's Quest for Vengeance
  Azam Ahmed
• Flowers of Fire

  The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women's Rights Worldwide
  Hawon Jung
• The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

  American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism
  Tim Alberta
• Some People Need Killing

  A Memoir of Murder in My Country
  Patricia Evangelista
• Sparks

  China's Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future
  Ian Johnson

Business and economics

• Anansi's Gold

  The Man Who Looted the West, Outfoxed Washington, and Swindled the World
  Yepoka Yeebo
• Best Things First
  Bjørn Lomborg
• The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level
  John Cochrane
• The Geek Way

  The Radical Mindset Transforming the Future of Business
  Andrew McAfee
• How Big Things Get Done

  The Surprising Factors That Determine the Fate of Every Project, from Home Renovations to Space Exploration and Everything In Between
  Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner
• Material World

  The Six Raw Materials That Shape Modern Civilization
  Ed Conway
• The Missing Billionaires

  A Guide to Better Financial Decisions
  Victor Haghani and James White
• Scaling People

  Tactics for Management and Company Building
  Claire Hughes Johnson
• Unscripted

  The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy
  James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

Biography and memoir

• Hitler, Stalin, Mum and Dad

  A Family Memoir of Miraculous Survival
  Daniel Finkelstein
• Ian Fleming

  The Complete Man
  Nicholas Shakespeare
• Into the Amazon

  The Life of Cândido Rondon, Trailblazing Explorer, Scientist, Statesman, and Conservationist
  Larry Rohter
• J.L. Austin

  Philosopher and D-Day Intelligence Officer
  M.W. Rowe
• King

  A Life
  Jonathan Eig
• Milton Friedman

  The Last Conservative
  Jennifer Burns
• Monet The Restless Vision
  Jackie Wullschlager
• Still Pictures

  On Photography and Memory
  Janet Malcolm
• Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

  A Uyghur Poet's Memoir of China's Genocide
  Tahir Hamut Izgil
• Wifedom

  Mrs. Orwell's Invisible Life
  Anna Funder

History

• A Day in the Life of Abed Salama

  Anatomy of a Jerusalem Tragedy
  Nathan Thrall
• The Blazing World

  A New History of Revolutionary England, 1603-1689
  Jonathan Healey
• Emperor of Rome

  Ruling the Ancient Roman World
  Mary Beard
• In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors: A Past, Present and Personal Story
  Rachel Hewitt
• Judgment at Tokyo

  World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
  Gary J. Bass
• The Lumumba Plot

  The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination
  Stuart A. Reid
• Revolutionary Spring

  Europe Aflame and the Fight for a New World, 1848-1849
  Christopher Clark
• On Savage Shores

  How Indigenous Americans Discovered Europe
  Caroline Dodds Pennock
• The Wager

  A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder
  David Grann

Fiction

• The Bee Sting
  Paul Murray
• The Fraud
  Zadie Smith
• Kairos
  Jenny Erpenbeck
• North Woods
  Daniel Mason
• Prophet Song
  Paul Lynch
• Soldier Sailor
  Claire Kilroy
• Western Lane
  Chetna Maroo

Culture and ideas

• Eight Bears

  Mythic Past and Imperiled Future
  Gloria Dickie
• Gradual

  The Case for Incremental Change in a Radical Age
  Greg Berman & Aubrey Fox
• High Caucasus

  A Mountain Quest in Russia’s Haunted Hinterland
  Tom Parfitt
• The Identity Trap

  A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time
  Yascha Mounk
• Magisteria

  The Entangled Histories of Science & Religion
  Nicholas Spencer
• Pandora's Box

  How Guts, Guile, and Greed Upended TV
  Peter Biskind
• Sailing Alone

  A History
  Richard J. King
• A Thread of Violence

  A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder
  Mark O'Connell

Science and technology

• The Coming Wave

  Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma
  Mustafa Suleyman
• The Heat Will Kill You First

  Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
  Jeff Goodell
• Outlive

  The Science and Art of Longevity
  Peter Attia
• Time to Think

  The Inside Story of the Collapse of the Tavistock's Gender Service for Children
  Hannah Barnes
• Ultra-Processed People

  The Science Behind Food That Isn't Food
  Chris van Tulleken
• What an Owl Knows

  The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds
  Jennifer Ackerman