Year-End Lists

The Wall Street Journal: The 10 Best Books of 2021

[see also 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

  The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
  Rebecca Donner
• Finding the Mother Tree

  Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
  Suzanne Simard
• Harrow
  Joy Williams
• An Inventory of Losses
  Judith Schalansky
• Look for Me and I'll Be Gone
  John Edgar Wideman
• The Netanyahus

  An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
  Joshua Cohen
• Robert E. Lee

  A Life
  Allen C. Guelzo
• The Strategy of Denial

  American Defense in an Age of Great Power Conflict
  Elbridge A. Colby
• The Transcendentalists and Their World
  Robert A. Gross
• Voyagers

  The Settlement of the Pacific
  Nicholas Thomas

The New York Times: The 10 Best Books of 2021

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

Fiction

• How Beautiful We Were
  Imbolo Mbue
• Intimacies
  Katie Kitamura
• When We Cease to Understand the World
  Benjamin Labatut
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
  Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood

Nonfiction

• Red Comet

  The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
  Heather Clark
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• On Juneteenth
  Annette Gordon-Reed
• Invisible Child

  Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
  Andrea Elliott
• The Copenhagen Trilogy

  Childhood; Youth; Dependency
  Tove Ditlevsen

Kirkus Reviews: Best Nonfiction Books of 2021

[see also Best Fiction Books of 2021]

• Homo Irrealis
  André Aciman
• 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows
  Ai Weiwei
• Fear of a Black Universe

  An Outsider's Guide to the Future of Physics
  Stephon Alexander
• Boyz n the Void

  a mixtape to my brother
  G'Ra Asim
• The Sound of the Sea

  Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans
  Cynthia Barnett
• Welcome to Dunder Mifflin

  The Ultimate Oral History of The Office
  Brian Baumgartner and Ben Silverman
• Twelve Caesars

  Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern
  Mary Beard
• The Rise and Fall of Osama bin Laden
  Peter L. Bergen
• Carefree Black Girls
  Zeba Blay
• The Devil You Know

  A Black Power Manifesto
  Charles M Blow
• The Shattering

  America in the 1960s
  Kevin Boyle
• Liner Notes for the Revolution

  The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound
  Daphne A. Brooks
• Punch Me Up to the Gods
  Brian Broome
• Rock Me on the Water

  1974-The Year Los Angeles Transformed Movies, Music, Television, and Politics
  Ronald Brownstein
• Journey to the Edge of Reason

  The Life of Kurt Gödel
  Stephen Budiansky
• Unbound

  My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement
  Tarana Burke
• Surviving the White Gaze
  Rebecca Carroll
• Floating in a Most Peculiar Way
  Louis Chude-Sokei
• Unwell Women

  Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World
  Elinor Cleghorn
• How to Make an Apple Pie from Scratch

  In Search of the Recipe for Our Universe
  Harry Cliff
• Children Under Fire

  An American Crisis
  John Woodrow Cox
• What White People Can Do Next

  From Allyship to Coalition
  Emma Dabiri
• Nice White Ladies

  The Truth about White Supremacy, Our Role in It, and How We Can Help Dismantle It
  Jessie Daniels
• King of the Blues

  The Rise and Reign of B.B. King
  Daniel de Vise
• Letters to Camondo
  Edmund de Waal
• Belonging and Betrayal

  How Jews Made the Art World Modern
  Charles Dellheim
• Those We Throw Away Are Diamonds

  A Refugee's Search for Home
  Mondiant Dogon and Jenna Krajeski
• The Glitter in the Green

  In Search of Hummingbirds
  Jon Dunn
• Entertaining Race

  Performing Blackness in America
  Michael Eric Dyson
• The Ground Breaking

  An American City and Its Search for Justice
  Scott Ellsworth
• Covered with Night

  A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America
  Nicole Eustace
• A Human History of Emotion

  How the Way We Feel Built the World We Know
  Richard Firth-Godbehere
• Dress Codes

  How the Laws of Fashion Made History
  Richard Thompson Ford
• Being a Human

  Adventures in Forty Thousand Years of Consciousness
  Charles Foster
• The Black Church

  This Is Our Story, This Is Our Song
  Henry Louis Gates Jr.
• Featherhood

  A Memoir of Two Fathers and a Magpie
  Charlie Gilmour
• The Bomber Mafia

  A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War
  Malcolm Gladwell
• The Dawn of Everything

  A New History of Humanity
  David Graeber and David Wengrow
• Racism, Not Race

  Answers to Frequently Asked Questions
  Joseph L. Graves Jr. and Alan H. Goodman
• Read Until You Understand

  The Profound Wisdom of Black Life and Literature
  Farah Jasmine Griffin
• I Live a Life Like Yours

  A Memoir
  Jan Grue
• The 1619 Project

  A New Origin Story
  Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator)
• Operation Pedestal

  The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942
  Max Hastings
• There Is Nothing for You Here

  Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
  Fiona Hill
• Liberty Is Sweet

  The Hidden History of the American Revolution
  Woody Holton
• People Love Dead Jews

  Reports from a Haunted Present
  Dara Horn
• A Brave and Cunning Prince

  The Great Chief Opechancanough and the War for America
  James Horn
• Dvorak's Prophecy

  And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music
  Joseph Horowitz
• Mothers, Fathers, and Others

  Essays
  Siri Hustvedt
• The Letters of Shirley Jackson
  Shirley Jackson
• Empire of Pain

  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• Tacky

  Love Letters to the Worst Culture We Have to Offer
  Rax King
• Corruptible

  Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us
  Brian Klaas
• Under a White Sky

  The Nature of the Future
  Elizabeth Kolbert
• Everybody

  A Book about Freedom
  Olivia Laing
• Walk with Me

  A Biography of Fannie Lou Hamer
  Kate Clifford Larson
• Tom Stoppard

  A Life
  Hermione Lee
• Nuestra América

  My Family in the Vertigo of Translation
  Claudio Lomnitz
• State of Emergency

  How We Win in the Country We Built
  Tamika D. Mallory
• The Secret of Life

  Rosalind Franklin, James Watson, Francis Crick, and the Discovery of DNA's Double Helix
  Howard Markel
• A Worse Place Than Hell

  How the Civil War Battle of Fredericksburg Changed a Nation
  John Matteson
• Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul?

  Essays
  Jesse McCarthy
• All That She Carried

  The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake
  Tiya Miles
• The Power of Women

  A Doctor's Journey of Hope and Healing
  Denis Mukwege
• The Education of Corporal John Musgrave

  Vietnam and Its Aftermath
  John Musgrave
• Names for Light

  A Family History
  Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint
• A Bigger Picture

  My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis
  Vanessa Nakate
• A Ghost in the Throat
  Doireann Ní Ghríofa
• A Quantum Life

  My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars
  Hakeem Olusey and Joshua Horwitz
• Squirrel Hill

  The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood
  Mark Oppenheimer
• Wildland

  The Making of America's Fury
  Evan Osnos
• Last Best Hope

  America in Crisis and Renewal
  George Packer
• Disruption

  Inside the Largest Counterterrorism Investigation in History
  Aki J. Peritz
• Sometimes I Trip On How Happy We Could Be
  Nichole Perkins
• This Is Your Mind on Plants
  Michael Pollan
• The Baseball 100
  Joe Posnanski
• The Disordered Cosmos

  A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred
  Chanda Prescod-Weinstein
• Geniuses at War

  Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age
  David A. Price
• Becoming Abolitionists

  Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
  Derecka Purnell
• The Plant Hunter

  A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines
  Cassandra Leah Quave
• Seek You

  A Journey Through American Loneliness
  Kristen Radtke
• Mud Sweeter than Honey

  Voices of Communist Albania
  Margo Rejmer
• Letters to My White Male Friends
  Dax-devlon Ross
• Smile

  The Story of a Face
  Sarah Ruhl
• Every Day the River Changes

  Four Weeks Down the Magdalena
  Jordan Salama
• Looking for the Good War

  American Amnesia and the Violent Pursuit of Happiness
  Elizabeth D. Samet
• App Kid

  How a Child of Immigrants Grabbed a Piece of the American Dream
  Michael Sayman
• Toxic Legacy

  How the Weedkiller Glyphosate Is Destroying Our Health and the Environment
  Stephanie Seneff
• Economy Hall

  The Hidden History of a Free Black Brotherhood
  Fatima Shaik
• Smalltime

  A Story of My Family and the Mob
  Russell Shorto
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• The Young H. G. Wells

  Changing the World
  Claire Tomalin
• As You Were
  David Tromblay
• The Empathy Diaries

  A Memoir
  Sherry Turkle
• In the Midst of Civilized Europe

  The Pogroms of 1918–1921 and the Onset of the Holocaust
  Jeffrey Veidlinger
• Horizontal Vertigo

  A City Called Mexico
  Juan Villoro
• It's Better to Be Feared

  The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness
  Seth Wickersham
• Power and Liberty

  Constitutionalism in the American Revolution
  Gordon S. Wood
• The Plague Year

  America in the Time of Covid
  Lawrence Wright
• Pessoa
  Richard Zenith

Kirkus Reviews: Best Fiction Books of 2021, shown here in alphabetical order by author, but on their site Kirkus also lists the books in various groupings, like "Book Club Fiction" and "Fiction in Translation."

[see also Best Nonfiction Books of 2021]

• The Arsonists' City
  Hala Alyan
• Light From Uncommon Stars
  Ryka Aoki
• Foregone
  Russell Banks
• Northern Spy
  Flynn Berry
• Destroyer of Light
  Jennifer Marie Brissett
• What Storm, What Thunder
  Myriam J A Chancy
• Land of Big Numbers
  Te-Ping Chen
• Skinship
  Yoon Choi
• The Netanyahus

  An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
  Joshua Cohen
• Razorblade Tears
  S.A. Cosby
• What's Mine and Yours
  Naima Coster
• Second Place
  Rachel Cusk
• A Lot Like Adiós
  Alexis Daria
• Damnation Spring
  Ash Davidson
• Machinehood
  S.B. Divya
• Echo Tree

  The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas
  Henry Dumas
• Winter in Sokcho
  Elisa Shua Dusapin
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
  Mariana Enriquez
• The Sentence
  Louise Erdrich
• The Twilight Zone
  Nona Fernández
• Crossroads
  Jonathan Franzen
• Infinite
  Brian Freeman
• The Free Bastards
  Jonathan French
• Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
  Rivka Galchen
• Monkey Boy
  Francisco Goldman
• Matrix
  Lauren Groff
• Three Rooms
  Jo Hamya
• The Corpse Flower
  Anne Mette Hancock
• The Other Black Girl
  Zakiya Dalila Harris
• Early Morning Riser
  Katherine Heiny
• People We Meet on Vacation
  Emily Henry
• Act Your Age, Eve Brown
  Talia Hibbert
• Golden Girl
  Elin Hilderbrand
• The Removed
  Brandon Hobson
• The Rib King
  Ladee Hubbard
• Zorrie
  Laird Hunt
• Klara and the Sun
  Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
  Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• Kin
  Miljenko Jergovic
• My Monticello
  Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
• Palmares
  Gayl Jones
• Five Tuesdays in Winter
  Lily King
• Billy Summers
  Stephen King
• Intimacies
  Katie Kitamura
• Build Your House Around My Body
  Violet Kupersmith
• Reality and Other Stories
  John Lanchester
• The Soulmate Equation
  Christina Lauren
• Untraceable
  Sergei Lebedev
• Red Island House
  Andrea Lee
• The Great Mistake
  Jonathan Lee
• The War for Gloria
  Atticus Lish
• The Blizzard Party
  Jack Livings
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood
• Loop
  Brenda Lozano
• Bombshell
  Sarah MacLean
• How Beautiful We Were
  Imbolo Mbue
• The Fugitivities
  Jesse McCarthy
• The Souvenir Museum
  Elizabeth McCracken
• Lean Fall Stand
  Jon McGregor
• One Last Stop
  Casey McQuiston
• Milk Blood Heat
  Dantiel W. Moniz
• The Committed
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Walking on Cowrie Shells
  Nana Nkweti
• The Man Who Died Twice
  Richard Osman
• Battle Royal
  Lucy Parker
• Unthinkable
  Brad Parks
• A Radical Act of Free Magic
  H.G. Parry
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• A Lonely Man
  Chris Power
• Bewilderment
  Richard Powers
• The Five Wounds
  Kirstin Valdez Quade
• The Dating Playbook
  Farrah Rochon
• Beautiful World, Where Are You
  Sally Rooney
• American Estrangement
  Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
• Bina

  A Novel in Warnings
  Anakana Schofield
• The Queer Principles of Kit Webb
  Cat Sebastian
• Great Circle
  Maggie Shipstead
• Our Country Friends
  Gary Shteyngart
• Secrets of Happiness
  Joan Silber
• False Witness
  Karin Slaughter
• The Life of the Mind
  Christine Smallwood
• Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
  Wole Soyinka
• Wayward
  Dana Spiotta
• Trust
  Domenico Starnone
• Bolla
  Pajtim Statovci
• In Memory of Memory
  Maria Stepanova
• Lady Joker
  Kaoru Takamura
• Filthy Animals
  Brandon Taylor
• The Blackmailer's Guide to Love
  Marian Thurm
• Fight Night
  Miriam Toews
• The Lincoln Highway
  Amor Towles
• No Gods, No Monsters
  Cadwell Turnbull
• Hummingbird Salamander
  Jeff VanderMeer
• Afterparties
  Anthony Veasna So
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
  Dawnie Walton
• I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
  Claire Vaye Watkins
• Project Hail Mary
  Andy Weir
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• Harrow
  Joy Williams
• Seven Days in June
  Tia Williams

Christopher Borrelli: Best of Books 2021, as published by The Chicago Tribune, "in no particular order" but numbered as follows.

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

1. A Little Devil in America

   Notes in Praise of Black Performance
   Hanif Abdurraqib
2. Second Place
   Rachel Cusk
3. The Trees
   Percival Everett
4. Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
   Rivka Galchen
5. When We Cease to Understand the World
   Benjamin Labatut
6. Beloved Beasts

   Fighting for Life in an Age of Extinction
   Michelle Nijhuis
7. 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet
   Pamela Paul
8. Dirty Work

   Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
   Eyal Press
9. Smile

   The Story of a Face
   Sarah Ruhl
10. The Man Who Lived Underground
    Richard Wright

Chicago Public Library: Top 10 Books of 2021

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017 • 2016 • 2015 • 2014]

• Cloud Cuckoo Land
  Anthony Doerr
• Crying in H Mart
  Michelle Zauner
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• Empire of Pain

  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• The Five Wounds
  Kirstin Valdez Quade
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
  Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• Matrix
  Lauren Groff
• The Sentence
  Louise Erdrich

New York Public Library: Top 10 Books of 2021

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018]

• Act Your Age, Eve Brown
  Talia Hibbert
• All Her Little Secrets
  Wanda M. Morris
• The Dangers of Smoking in Bed
  Mariana Enriquez
• Hell of a Book
  Jason Mott
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• Light From Uncommon Stars
  Ryka Aoki
• Mama Phife Represents
  Cheryl Boyce-Taylor
• The Rock Eaters
  Brenda Peynado
• Shadow Life
  Hiromi Goto
• She Who Became the Sun
  Shelley Parker-Chan

The New York Times: 100 Notable Books of 2021

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 100 Notable Books of 2023 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 100 Notable Books of 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2020 • 100 Notable Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The 10 Best Books of 2014 • The 10 Best Books of 2013 • 100 Notable Books of 2012 • 10 Best Books of 2012 • 100 Notable Books of 2011 • Ten Best Books of 2011]

• Afterparties
  Anthony Veasna So
• Appleseed
  Matt Bell
• Beautiful World, Where Are You
  Sally Rooney
• Bewilderment
  Richard Powers
• The Book of Mother
  Violaine Huisman
• Build Your House Around My Body
  Violet Kupersmith
• Burnt Sugar
  Avni Doshi
• A Calling for Charlie Barnes
  Joshua Ferris
• Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth
  Wole Soyinka
• Cloud Cuckoo Land
  Anthony Doerr
• Crossroads
  Jonathan Franzen
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• Ghosts of New York
  Jim Lewis
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• How Beautiful We Were
  Imbolo Mbue
• Intimacies
  Katie Kitamura
• Kink
  R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell (editors)
• Klara and the Sun
  Kazuo Ishiguro
• Libertie
  Kaitlyn Greenidge
• A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself
  Peter Ho Davies
• Light Perpetual
  Francis Spufford
• The Lincoln Highway
  Amor Towles
• The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
  Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
• The Magician
  Colm Tóibín
• The Morning Star
  Karl Ove Knausgaard
• My Monticello
  Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
• My Year Abroad
  Chang-rae Lee
• The Netanyahus

  An Account of a Minor and Ultimately Even Negligible Episode in the History of a Very Famous Family
  Joshua Cohen
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood
• Oh William!
  Elizabeth Strout
• One Last Stop
  Casey McQuiston
• Our Country Friends
  Gary Shteyngart
• Playlist for the Apocalypse
  Rita Dove
• The Plot
  Jean Hanff Korelitz
• The Promise
  Damon Galgut
• The Prophets
  Robert Jones Jr.
• Razorblade Tears
  S.A. Cosby
• Send for Me
  Lauren Fox
• The Sentence
  Louise Erdrich
• Something New Under the Sun
  Alexandra Kleeman
• Strange Beasts of China
  Yan Ge
• The Sun Collective
  Charles Baxter
• The Trees
  Percival Everett
• Velvet Was the Night
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The War for Gloria
  Atticus Lish
• Wayward
  Dana Spiotta
• What Strange Paradise
  Omar El Akkad
• When We Cease to Understand the World
  Benjamin Labatut
• Winter Recipes from the Collective
  Louise Glück
• The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels
  India Holton
• All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days

  The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
  Rebecca Donner
• America and Iran

  A History, 1720 to the Present
  John Ghazvinian
• America on Fire

  The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s
  Elizabeth Hinton
• American Baby

  A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
  Gabrielle Glaser
• The American War in Afghanistan

  A History
  Carter Malkasian
• Beautiful Country
  Qian Julie Wang
• Better to Have Gone

  Love, Death, and the Quest for Utopia in Auroville
  Akash Kapur
• Between Two Kingdoms

  A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
  Suleika Jaouad
• Catching the Wind

  Edward Kennedy and the Liberal Hour, 1932-1975
  Neal Gabler
• The Chancellor

  The Remarkable Odyssey of Angela Merkel
  Kati Marton
• Churchill's Shadow

  The Life and Afterlife of Winston Churchill
  Geoffrey Wheatcroft
• The Contrarian

  Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
  Max Chafkin
• The Copenhagen Trilogy

  Childhood; Youth; Dependency
  Tove Ditlevsen
• Crying in H Mart
  Michelle Zauner
• Dirty Work

  Essential Jobs and the Hidden Toll of Inequality in America
  Eyal Press
• Doomed Romance

  Broken Hearts, Lost Souls, and Sexual Tumult in Nineteenth-Century America
  Christine Leigh Heyrman
• Empire of Pain

  The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
  Patrick Radden Keefe
• The Engagement

  America's Quarter-Century Struggle Over Same-Sex Marriage
  Sasha Issenberg
• Everything I Have Is Yours

  A Marriage
  Eleanor Henderson
• The Extended Mind

  The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
  Annie Murphy Paul
• The Family Roe

  An American Story
  Joshua Prager
• Festival Days
  Jo Ann Beard
• The Free World

  Art and Thought in the Cold War
  Louis Menand
• A Ghost in the Throat
  Doireann Ní Ghríofa
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America
  Kiese Laymon
• I Came As a Shadow
  John Thompson
• Invisible Child

  Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City
  Andrea Elliott
• JFK

  Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917-1956
  Fredrik Logevall
• Kindred

  Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
  Rebecca Wragg Sykes
• Last Best Hope

  America in Crisis and Renewal
  George Packer
• Let Me Tell You What I Mean
  Joan Didion
• Let the Record Show

  A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
  Sarah Schulman
• Life's Edge

  The Search for What It Means to Be Alive
  Carl Zimmer
• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib
• New York, New York, New York

  Four Decades of Success, Excess, and Transformation
  Thomas Dyja
• Now Beacon, Now Sea

  A Son's Memoir
  Christopher Sorrentino
• On Freedom

  Four Songs of Care and Constraint
  Maggie Nelson
• On Juneteenth
  Annette Gordon-Reed
• People Love Dead Jews

  Reports from a Haunted Present
  Dara Horn
• Punch Me Up to the Gods
  Brian Broome
• Putting It Together

  How Stephen Sondheim and I Created "Sunday in the Park with George"
  James Lapine
• Red Comet

  The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
  Heather Clark
• Say It Loud!

  On Race, Law, History, and Culture
  Randall Kennedy
• The Secret to Superhuman Strength
  Alison Bechdel
• Seeing Ghosts
  Kat Chow
• Somebody's Daughter
  Ashley C. Ford
• Three Girls from Bronzeville

  A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood
  Dawn Turner
• A Whole World

  Letters from James Merrill
  James Merrill
• Woke Racism

  How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America
  John McWhorter

The Washington Post: 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2021

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 10 Best Books of 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2020 • Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • The 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The Ten Best Books of 2014 • Top 10 Books of 2013 • The 10 Best Books of 2012]

• The 1619 Project

  A New Origin Story
  Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator)
• All In
  Billie Jean King
• The Almost Legendary Morris Sisters

  A True Story of Family Fiction
  Julie Klam
• Amazon Unbound

  Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire
  Brad Stone
• American Baby

  A Mother, a Child, and the Shadow History of Adoption
  Gabrielle Glaser
• American Republics

  A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850
  Alan Taylor
• Between Two Kingdoms

  A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
  Suleika Jaouad
• The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream

  The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer
  Dean Jobb
• Children Under Fire

  An American Crisis
  John Woodrow Cox
• The Code Breaker

  Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
  Walter Isaacson
• The Confidence Men

  How Two Prisoners of War Engineered the Most Remarkable Escape in History
  Margalit Fox
• Crying in H Mart
  Michelle Zauner
• The Extended Mind

  The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain
  Annie Murphy Paul
• Finding the Mother Tree

  Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest
  Suzanne Simard
• Forever Young
  Hayley Mills
• Four Hundred Souls

  A Community History of African America, 1619-2019
  Ibram X. Kendi and Keisha N. Blain (editors)
• The Free World

  Art and Thought in the Cold War
  Louis Menand
• Fuzz

  When Nature Breaks the Law
  Mary Roach
• Girlhood
  Melissa Febos
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• I Alone Can Fix It

  Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year
  Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker
• The Lyrics

  1956 to the Present
  Paul McCartney
• Nightmare Scenario

  Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History
  Yasmeen Abutaleb & Damian Paletta
• On Animals
  Susan Orlean
• On Freedom

  Four Songs of Care and Constraint
  Maggie Nelson
• On Juneteenth
  Annette Gordon-Reed
• Oscar Wilde

  A Life
  Matthew Sturgis
• Peril
  Bob Woodward and Robert Costa
• The Private Library

  The History of the Architecture and Furnishing of the Domestic Bookroom
  Reid Byers
• Real Estate

  A Living Autobiography
  Deborah Levy
• Red Roulette

  An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China
  Desmond Shum
• Reign of Terror

  How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump
  Spencer Ackerman
• The Secret to Superhuman Strength
  Alison Bechdel
• Shakespearean

  On Life and Language in Times of Disruption
  Robert McCrum
• Shooting Midnight Cowboy

  Art, Sex, Loneliness, Liberation, and the Making of a Dark Classic
  Glenn Frankel
• Smile

  The Story of a Face
  Sarah Ruhl
• The Sum of Us

  What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together
  Heather McGhee
• Susan, Linda, Nina, and Cokie

  The Extraordinary Story of the Founding Mothers of NPR
  Lisa Napoli
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

  In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
  George Saunders
• Tangled Up in Blue

  Policing the American City
  Rosa Brooks
• Taste

  My Life Through Food
  Stanley Tucci
• There Is Nothing for You Here

  Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
  Fiona Hill
• Think Again

  The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know
  Adam Grant
• This Is Your Mind on Plants
  Michael Pollan
• Three Girls from Bronzeville

  A Uniquely American Memoir of Race, Fate, and Sisterhood
  Dawn Turner
• The Triumph of Nancy Reagan
  Karen Tumulty
• Two-Way Mirror

  The Life of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  Fiona Sampson
• The Unquiet Englishman

  A Life of Graham Greene
  Richard Greene
• Vanderbilt

  The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
  Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe
• Zero Fail

  The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service
  Carol Leonnig

The Washington Post: 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2021

[see also The 10 Best Books of 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2023 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2022 • The 10 Best Books of 2022 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2021 • The 10 Best Books of 2021 • 10 Best Books of 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction in 2020 • 50 Notable Works of Fiction in 2020 • Best Books of 2019 • 10 Best Books of 2018 • 100 Notable Books of 2018 • 10 Best Books of 2017 • The 10 Best Books of 2016 • 10 Best Books of 2015 • The Ten Best Books of 2014 • Top 10 Books of 2013 • The 10 Best Books of 2012]

• Afterparties
  Anthony Veasna So
• Apples Never Fall
  Liane Moriarty
• Assembly
  Natasha Brown
• Beautiful World, Where Are You
  Sally Rooney
• Black Buck
  Mateo Askaripour
• The Chosen and the Beautiful
  Nghi Vo
• The Committed
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Creatures of Passage
  Morowa Yejidé
• Damnation Spring
  Ash Davidson
• Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch
  Rivka Galchen
• Fake Accounts
  Lauren Oyler
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
  Dawnie Walton
• The Four Winds
  Kristin Hannah
• Good Company
  Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney
• Great Circle
  Maggie Shipstead
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• Hell of a Book
  Jason Mott
• Hour of the Witch
  Chris Bohjalian
• How Beautiful We Were
  Imbolo Mbue
• How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House
  Cherie Jones
• Hummingbird Salamander
  Jeff VanderMeer
• I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
  Claire Vaye Watkins
• Infinite Country
  Patricia Engel
• Intimacies
  Katie Kitamura
• Land of Big Numbers
  Te-Ping Chen
• Libertie
  Kaitlyn Greenidge
• The Lincoln Highway
  Amor Towles
• Lorna Mott Comes Home
  Diane Johnson
• The Magician
  Colm Tóibín
• Malibu Rising
  Taylor Jenkins Reid
• My Monticello
  Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood
• Of Women and Salt
  Gabriela Garcia
• Oh William!
  Elizabeth Strout
• The Other Black Girl
  Zakiya Dalila Harris
• Our Country Friends
  Gary Shteyngart
• Outlawed
  Anna North
• The Personal Librarian
  Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray
• The Prophets
  Robert Jones Jr.
• Rites
  Savannah Johnston
• Secrets of Happiness
  Joan Silber
• The Sentence
  Louise Erdrich
• The Sweetness of Water
  Nathan Harris
• That Summer
  Jennifer Weiner
• Velvet Was the Night
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Vixen
  Francine Prose
• Wayward
  Dana Spiotta
• What Strange Paradise
  Omar El Akkad
• With Teeth
  Kristen Arnett
• A Woman of Intelligence
  Karin Tanabe