best biographies of 2023

ADMIN AREA MY BOOKSHELF MY DASHBOARD MY PROFILE SIGN OUT SIGN IN

Best Biographies of 2023

MAY 16, 2023

by Jonathan Eig

An extraordinary achievement and an essential life of the iconic warrior for social justice. Full review >

SEPT. 12, 2023

by Tracy Daugherty

A definitive life of the novelist/bookseller/scriptwriter/curmudgeon of interest to any McMurtry fan. Full review >

APRIL 11, 2023

by Robert Greenfield

A masterful look at the wild life of an enigmatic artist that shows how captivating the truth can be. Full review >

AUG. 15, 2023

by Patti Hartigan

An authoritative portrait of a defiant champion of Black theater. Full review >

OCT. 3, 2023

by Will Hermes

An engrossing, fully dimensional portrait of an influential yet elusive performer. Full review >

by Walter Isaacson

Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator. Full review >

by Sally H. Jacobs

An essential book about an incomparably authentic American pioneer and the times in which she lived. Full review >

APRIL 4, 2023

by Robert "Mack" McCormick ; edited by John W. Troutman

A worthwhile investigation into a true legend of the blues. Full review >

MAY 2, 2023

by Jonny Steinberg

A magnificent portrait of two people joined in the throes of making South African history. Full review >

DEC. 5, 2023

by Judith Tick

As masterful and wonderful as its subject. Full review >

OCT. 31, 2023

by Ronald C. White

A revealing portrait of an American hero who deserves even wider recognition. Full review >

More Book Lists

Great Books & News Curated For You

Be the first to read books news and see reviews, news and features in Kirkus Reviews . Get awesome content delivered to your inbox every week.

Discover Books Fiction Thriller & Suspense Mystery & Detective Romance Science Fiction & Fantasy Nonfiction Biography & Memoir Teens & Young Adult Children's
News & Features Bestsellers Book Lists Profiles Perspectives Awards Seen & Heard Book to Screen Kirkus TV videos In the News
Kirkus Prize Winners & Finalists About the Kirkus Prize Kirkus Prize Judges
Magazine Current Issue All Issues Manage My Subscription Subscribe
Writers’ Center Hire a Professional Book Editor Get Your Book Reviewed Advertise Your Book Launch a Pro Connect Author Page Learn About The Book Industry
More Kirkus Diversity Collections Kirkus Pro Connect My Account/Login
About Kirkus History Our Team Contest FAQ Press Center Info For Publishers
Privacy Policy
Terms & Conditions
Reprints, Permission & Excerpting Policy

Popular in this Genre

Hey there, book lover.

We’re glad you found a book that interests you!

Please select an existing bookshelf

Create a new bookshelf.

We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!

Please sign up to continue.

It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!

Already have an account? Log in.

Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.

Almost there!

Industry Professional

Welcome Back!

Sign in using your Kirkus account

Don’t fret. We’ll find you.

Magazine Subscribers ( How to Find Your Reader Number )

If You’ve Purchased Author Services

Don’t have an account yet? Sign Up.

The Best New Biographies of 2023

CJ Connor is a cozy mystery and romance writer whose main goal in life is to make their dog proud. They are a Pitch Wars alumnus and an Author Mentor Match R9 mentor. Their debut mystery novel BOARD TO DEATH is forthcoming from Kensington Books. Twitter: @cjconnorwrites | cjconnorwrites.com

View All posts by CJ Connor

Read on to discover nine of the best biographies published within the last year. Included are life stories of singular people, including celebrated artists and significant historical figures, as well as collective biographies.

The books included in this list have all been released as of writing, but biography lovers still have plenty to look forward to before the year is out. A few to keep your eye out for in the coming months:

The World According to Joan Didion by Evelyn McDonnell (HarperOne, September 26)
Einstein in Time and Space by Samuel Graydon (Scribner, November 14)
Overlooked: A Celebration of Remarkable, Underappreciated People Who Broke the Rules and Changed the World by Amisha Padnani (Penguin Random House, November 14).

Without further ado, here are the best biographies of 2023 so far!

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom by Ilyon Woo

Ellen and William Craft were a Black married couple who freed themselves from slavery in 1848 by disguising themselves as a traveling white man and an enslaved person. Author Ilyon Woo recounts their thousand-mile journey to seek safety in the North and their escape from the United States in the months following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

Written over a period of 11 years with exclusive journalistic access to the subject, author Michael Finkel explores the motivations, heists, and repercussions faced by the notorious and prolific art thief Stéphane Breitwieser. Of special focus is his relationship with his girlfriend and accomplice, Anne-Catherine Kleinklaus.

King: A Life by Jonathan Eig

While recently published, King: A Life is already considered to be the most well-researched biography of Civil Rights activist Martin Luther King Jr. published in decades. New York Times bestselling journalist Jonathan Eig explores the life and legacy of Dr. King through thousands of historical records, including recently declassified FBI documents.

Why Willie Mae Thornton Matters by Lynnée Denise

This biography is part of the Why Music Matters series from the University of Texas. It reflects on the legendary blues singer’s life through an essay collection in which the author (also an accomplished musician) seeks to recreate the feeling of browsing through a box of records.

Young Queens: Three Renaissance Women and the Price of Power by Leah Redmond Chang

Historian Leah Redmond Chang’s latest book release focuses on three aristocratic women in Renaissance Europe: Catherine de’ Medici, Elizabeth de Valois, and Mary, Queen of Scots. As a specific focus, she examines the juxtaposition between the immense power they wielded and yet the ways they remained vulnerable to the patriarchal, misogynistic societies in which they existed.

Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang

Anna May Wong was a 20th-century actress who found great acclaim while still facing discrimination and typecasting as a Chinese woman. University of California professor Yunte Huang explores her life and impact on the American film industry and challenges racist depictions of her in accounts of Hollywood history in this thought-provoking biography.

Twice as Hard: The Stories of Black Women Who Fought to Become Physicians, from the Civil War to the 21st Century by Jasmine Brown

Written by Rhodes Scholar and University of Pennsylvania medical student Jasmine Brown, this collective biography shares the experiences and accomplishments of nine Black women physicians in U.S. history — including Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first Black American woman to earn a medical degree in the 1860s, and Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

Larry McMurtry: A Life by Tracy Daugherty

Two years after the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s death, this biography presents a comprehensive history of Larry McMurtry’s life and legacy as one of the most acclaimed Western writers of all time.

The Kneeling Man: My Father’s Life as a Black Spy Who Witnessed the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. by Leta McCollough Seletzky

Journalist Leta McCollough Seletzky examines her father, Marrell “Mac” McCollough’s complicated legacy as a Black undercover cop and later a member of the CIA. In particular, she shares his account as a witness of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel.

Are you a history buff looking for more recommendations? Try these.

Best History Books by Era
Books for a More Inclusive Look at American History
Fascinating Food History Books

Moms For Liberty Lose Big In Florida and Other Library News, August 23, 2024

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.

The Best Memoirs of 2023

These ten books explore what it means to be a person..

The beauty of memoir is its resistance to confinement: We contain multitudes, so our methods of introspection must, too. This year’s best memoirs perfectly showcase such variety. Some are sparse, slippery — whole lives pieced together through fragmented memories, letters to loved ones, recipes, mythology, scripture. Some tease the boundary between truth and fiction. Others elevate straightforward narratives by incorporating political theory, philosophy, and history. The authors of each understand that one’s life — and more significantly, one’s self — can’t be contained in facts. After all, the facts as we remember them aren’t really facts. It’s their openness and experimentation that allow, at once, intimacy and universality, provoking some of our biggest questions: How does a person become who they are? What makes up an identity? What are the stories we tell ourselves, and why do they matter? These books might not spell out the answers for you, but they’ll certainly push you toward them.

10. Hijab Butch Blues , by Lamya H

NYC-based organizer Lamya H (a pseudonym) has described her memoir as “unapologetically queer and unapologetically Muslim .” What this looks like is a book that isn’t so much grappling with or reconciling two conflicting identities, but rather lovingly examining the ways each has supported and strengthened the other. Lamya provides close, queer readings of the Quran, drawing connections between its stories and her own experiences of persecution as a brown girl growing up in an (unnamed) Arab country with strict colorist hierarchies. Beginning with her study of the prophet Maryam — whose virgin pregnancy and general rejection of men brings a confused 14-year-old Lamya real relief during Quran class — Lamya draws on various religious figures to track her political, spiritual, and sexual coming of age, jumping back and forth in time as she grows from a struggling child into a vital artist and activist.

9. Better Living Through Birding , by Christian Cooper

On May 25, 2020, birder Christian Cooper was walking the Central Park Ramble when he asked a white woman on the same path to leash her dog. She refused, he started recording, and after both he and his sister posted the video on social media , the whole world saw her call 911 and falsely claim that an African American man was threatening both her and her dog. Cooper quickly found himself at the center of an urgent conversation about weaponized whiteness and police brutality against Black men in the U.S., amplified by another devastating video circulating that same day: George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. Many will pick up Cooper’s memoir for his account of the interaction that captured international attention and forever changed his life — and it is a powerful, damning examination — but it is far from the main event. By the time it shows up, Cooper has already given us poignant recollections of growing up Black and gay (and in the closet) in 1970s Long Island, a loving analysis of science fiction, a behind-the-scenes look at the comic-book industry as it broke through to the mainstream, and most significantly, an impassioned ode to and accessible education on recreational birding. (The audiobook comes with interstitial birdsong!) Recalling his time at Harvard, Cooper turns repeatedly to his love of his English classes, and this background comes through in his masterful writing. An already prolific writer in the comic-book space, his memoir marks his first (and hopefully not last) foray into the long-form territory.

8. Love and Sex, Death and Money , by McKenzie Wark

McKenzie Wark is one of the sharpest, most exciting voices writing at the intersections of capitalism, community, gender, and sex — more broadly, everything in this title — and she is also criminally underread. In her epistolary memoir Love and Sex … , she looks at a lifetime of transitions — journeys not only through her gender, but also politics, art, relationships, and aging — and reflects on all the ways she has become the woman she is today, in letters to the people who helped shape her. Wark’s first letter is, fittingly, directed to her younger self. She acknowledges their infinite possible futures and that, in this way, this younger Wark on the brink of independence is the one most responsible for setting her on the path to this specific future. In theory, it’s a letter to offer clarity, even guidance, to this younger self, but really it’s a means of listening to and learning from her. Her letters to mothers, lovers, and others are as much, if not more, about Wark as they are about the recipients, but that self-reflection doubles as a testament to the recipients’ power. What comes across most strongly is Wark’s belief in ongoing evolution and education, and it’s hard not to leave inspired by that possibility.

7. A Man of Two Faces , by Viet Thanh Nguyen

Pulitzer Prize winner Viet Thanh Nguyen’s memoir maintains the singular voice of his fiction: audacious, poetic, self-aware. Written in nonlinear second-person stream of consciousness — its disjointedness represented on the page by paragraphs volleying from left to right alignment across the page — A Man of Two Faces recounts his life as a Vietnamese refugee in the U.S. When his family moves from wartime Vietnam to San Jose, California, 4-year-old Nguyen is placed in a different sponsor home than the rest of his family. The separation is brief, but it sets a tone of alienation that continues throughout his life — both from his parents, who left their home in pursuit of safety but landed in a place with its own brand of violence, and from his new home. As he describes his journey into adulthood and academia, Nguyen incorporates literary and cultural criticism, penetrating analyses of political history and propaganda, and poignant insights about memory and trauma.

6. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere , by Maria Bamford

It’s safe to say alt-comedian Maria Bamford’s voice isn’t for everyone. Those who get her anti-stand-up stand-up get it and those who don’t, don’t. Her absurdist, meta series Lady Dynamite revealed the work of a woman learning to recognize and love her brilliant weirdness, and in Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult , she channels that weirdness into a disarmingly earnest, more accessible account of both fame and mental illness. Centered on Bamford’s desperate pursuit of belonging, and the many, often questionable places it’s led her — church, the comedy scene, self-actualization conferences, 12-step groups, each of which she puts under the umbrella of the titular “cults” — Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult is egoless, eye-opening, uncomfortable, and laugh-out-loud funny. These are among the best qualities — maybe even prerequisites — of an effective mental-illness memoir, and Bamford’s has earned its keep in the top tier. If you’re thinking of skipping it because you haven’t connected with Bamford’s work before: don’t.

5. In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation , by Isabel Zapata

In Isabel Zapata’s intimate, entrancing memoir In Vitro , the Mexican poet brazenly breaks what she calls “the first rule of in vitro fertilization”: never talk about it. Originally published in Spanish in 2021, and with original drawings woven throughout, In Vitro is a slim collection of short, discrete pieces. Its fragments not only describe the invasive process and its effects on her mind and body, but also contextualize its lineage, locating the deep-seated draw of motherhood and conception, analyzing the inheritances of womanhood, and speaking directly to her potential child. All together, it becomes something expansive — an insightful personal history but also a brilliant philosophical text about the very nature of sacrifice and autonomy.

4. The Night Parade , by Jami Nakamura Lin

When Jami Nakamura Lin was 17 years old, she checked herself into a psych ward and was diagnosed bipolar. After years experiencing disorienting periods of rage, the diagnosis offers validation — especially for her historically dismissive parents — but it doesn’t provide the closure that mainstream depictions of mental illness promise. In The Night Parade , intriguingly categorized as a speculative memoir, Lin explains that if a story is good, it “collapses time”; in other words, it has no beginning or end. Chasing this idea, Lin turns to the stories of her Japanese, Taiwanese, and Okinawan heritage, using their demons, spirits, and monsters to challenge ideas of recovery and resituate her feelings of otherness. Intertwined in this pursuit is her grappling with the young death of her father and the birth of her daughter after a traumatic miscarriage. Extensively researched — citing not only folklore but also scholars of history, literary, and mythology — and elevated by her sister Cori Nakamura Lin’s lush illustrations, The Night Parade is both an entirely new perspective on bipolar disorder and a fascinating education in mythology by an expert who so clearly loves the material. It might be Lin’s first book, but it possesses the self-assurance, courage, and mastery of a seasoned writer.

3. Doppelganger , by Naomi Klein

After the onset of the COVID pandemic, as the U.S. devolved into frenzied factions, sociopolitical analyst Naomi Klein found herself in the middle of her own bewildering drama: A substantial population, especially online, began to either confuse or merge her with Naomi Wolf, a writer who’d gone from feminist intellectual to anti-vaxx conspiracy theorist. Klein’s initial bemusement becomes real concern verging on obsession as she fixates on her sort-of doppelgänger and starts questioning the stability of her identity. Klein becomes entangled in the world of her opposite, tracing the possible pipelines from leftism to alt-right and poking at the cracks in our convictions. Throughout, she nails the uncanniness of our digital existence, the ways constant performance of life both splinters and constrains the self. What happens when we sacrifice our humanity in the pursuit of a cohesive personal brand? And when we’re this far gone, is there any turning back?

2. The Woman in Me , by Britney Spears

Throughout the yearslong campaign to release Britney Spears from a predatory conservatorship , the lingering conspiracy theories questioning its success , and the ongoing cultural discourse about the ways public scrutiny has harmed her, what has largely been missing is Spears’s own voice. In her highly anticipated memoir, she lays it all out: her upbringing in a family grappling with multiple generations of abuse, the promise and betrayal of stardom, her exploitation and manipulation by loved ones, and the harrowing, dehumanizing realities of her conservatorship . These revelations are tempered by moments of genuine joy she’s found in love, motherhood, and singing, though it’s impossible to read these recollections without anticipating the loss — or at least the complication — of these joys. Most touching are her descriptions of her relationships with her sons; her tone is conversational, but it resonates with deep, undying devotion. It’s an intimate story, and one that forces questions about our treatment of mental illness, the ethics of psychiatric practices, the relationships between public figures and their fans, and the effects of fame — especially on young women. Justice for Britney, forever.

1. Pulling the Chariot of the Sun , by Shane McCrae

When Shane McCrae was 3 years old, his white maternal grandparents told his Black father they were taking Shane on a camping trip. It wasn’t the first time they’d done so, but this time, they never returned. What followed was a life full of instability, abuse, and manipulation, while his grandparents — including a grandfather who had, more than once, trawled cities for Black men to attack — convinced McCrae his father had abandoned him and that his Blackness was a handicap. It’s clear McCrae is first and foremost a poet; the rhythm of his prose and his hypnotic evocation of sensory memory reveals the way a lifetime of lies affected his grasp on his past. Maybe he can’t trust the facts of his past, but he certainly knows what it felt like, what it looked like. As he excavates and untangles muddied memories, contends with ambivalent feelings about his grandmother and mother, and ultimately comes to terms with their unforgivable robbery of a relationship with both his father and his true, full self, McCrae’s pain bleeds through his words — but so too does a gentle sense of acceptance. We are lucky to bear witness.

vulture section lede
celebrity memoirs
britney spears
maria bamford
year in culture
best of 2023

Editor’s Picks

Most Popular

What is your email.

This email will be used to sign into all New York sites. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy and to receive email correspondence from us.

Sign In To Continue Reading

Create your free account.

Password must be at least 8 characters and contain:

Lower case letters (a-z)
Upper case letters (A-Z)
Numbers (0-9)
Special Characters (!@#$%^&*)

As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York , which you can opt out of anytime.

NONFICTION BOOKS
BEST NONFICTION 2023
BEST NONFICTION 2024
Historical Biographies
The Best Memoirs and Autobiographies
Philosophical Biographies
World War 2
World History
American History
British History
Chinese History
Russian History
Ancient History (up to 500)
Medieval History (500-1400)
Military History
Art History
Travel Books
Ancient Philosophy
Contemporary Philosophy
Ethics & Moral Philosophy
Great Philosophers
Social & Political Philosophy
Classical Studies
New Science Books
Maths & Statistics
Popular Science
Physics Books
Climate Change Books
How to Write
English Grammar & Usage
Books for Learning Languages
Linguistics
Political Ideologies
Foreign Policy & International Relations
American Politics
British Politics
Religious History Books
Mental Health
Neuroscience
Child Psychology
Film & Cinema
Opera & Classical Music
Behavioural Economics
Development Economics
Economic History
Financial Crisis
World Economies
Investing Books
Artificial Intelligence/AI Books
Data Science Books
Sex & Sexuality
Death & Dying
Food & Cooking
Sports, Games & Hobbies
FICTION BOOKS
BEST NOVELS 2024
BEST FICTION 2023
New Literary Fiction
World Literature
Literary Criticism
Literary Figures
Classic English Literature
American Literature
Comics & Graphic Novels
Fairy Tales & Mythology
Historical Fiction
Crime Novels
Science Fiction
Short Stories
South Africa
United States
Arctic & Antarctica
Afghanistan
Myanmar (Formerly Burma)
Netherlands
Kids Recommend Books for Kids
High School Teachers Recommendations
Prizewinning Kids' Books
Popular Series Books for Kids
BEST BOOKS FOR KIDS (ALL AGES)
Ages Baby-2
Books for Teens and Young Adults
THE BEST SCIENCE BOOKS FOR KIDS
BEST KIDS' BOOKS OF 2023
BEST BOOKS FOR TEENS OF 2023
Best Audiobooks for Kids
Environment
Best Books for Teens of 2023
Best Kids' Books of 2023
Political Novels
New History Books
New Historical Fiction
New Biography
New Memoirs
New World Literature
New Economics Books
New Climate Books
New Math Books
New Philosophy Books
New Psychology Books
New Physics Books
THE BEST AUDIOBOOKS
Actors Read Great Books
Books Narrated by Their Authors
Best Audiobook Thrillers
Best History Audiobooks
Nobel Literature Prize
Booker Prize (fiction)
Baillie Gifford Prize (nonfiction)
Financial Times (nonfiction)
Wolfson Prize (history)
Royal Society (science)
Pushkin House Prize (Russia)
Walter Scott Prize (historical fiction)
Arthur C Clarke Prize (sci fi)
The Hugos (sci fi & fantasy)
Audie Awards (audiobooks)

Nonfiction Books » Best Biographies

Browse book recommendations:

Best Biographies

Ancient Biographies
Artists' Biographies
Group Biographies
Literary Biographies
Scientific Biographies

Last updated: August 20, 2024

Whether you're looking for new biographies , or outstanding works written decades or even centuries ago, we have some recommendations. To help find a book about a specific person or group of people, we've set up the following lists:

The best historical biographies Some of our favourite philosophical biographies Lives of the classical composers The best literary biographies (Separately, we also have a section with interviews dedicated to specific literary figures , including, for example, an interview on Shakespeare’s life , recommended by James Shapiro of Columbia University). The lives of scientists Artists' lives

The Best Memoirs: The 2024 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist , recommended by May-lee Chai

I would meet you anywhere: a memoir by susan kiyo ito, secret harvests: a hidden story of separation and the resilience of a family farm by david mas masumoto, rotten evidence: reading and writing in an egyptian prison by ahmed naji, translated by katharine halls, how to say babylon: a memoir by safiya sinclair, story of a poem: a memoir by matthew zapruder.

It's been a "phenomenal" year for autobiographical writing, says May-lee Chai —the award-winning author and chair of the judges for this year's National Book Critics Circle prize for autobiography. Here she offers us a tour of the five memoirs that made their 2024 shortlist.

It’s been a “phenomenal” year for autobiographical writing, says May-lee Chai—the award-winning author and chair of the judges for this year’s National Book Critics Circle prize for autobiography. Here she offers us a tour of the five memoirs that made their 2024 shortlist.

The Best Biographies of 2023: The National Book Critics Circle Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

G-man: j. edgar hoover and the making of the american century by beverly gage, the grimkés: the legacy of slavery in an american family by kerri k. greenidge, mr. b: george balanchine’s twentieth century by jennifer homans, metaphysical animals: how four women brought philosophy back to life by clare mac cumhaill & rachael wiseman, up from the depths: herman melville, lewis mumford, and rediscovery in dark times by aaron sachs.

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor —chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Talented biographers examine the interplay between individual qualities and greater social forces, explains Elizabeth Taylor—chair of the judges for the 2023 National Book Critics Circle award for biography. Here, she offers us an overview of their five-book shortlist, including a garlanded account of the life of J. Edgar Hoover and a group biography of post-war female philosophers.

Notable Memoirs of 2023 , recommended by Cal Flyn

Stay true by hua hsu, still pictures: on photography and memory by janet malcolm, pageboy: a memoir by elliot page, the light room: on art and care by kate zambreno, o brother by john niven.

Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn selects the best recent autobiographical writing in this round-up of notable memoirs of 2023—taking in new work from such literary giants as Janet Malcolm and Annie Ernaux, the writer other writers are raving about, and a humorous debut depicting life in a haunted antiquarian bookshop.

The Best Literary Biographies , recommended by Lyndall Gordon

Selected essays by t s eliot, the ballad of dorothy wordsworth by frances wilson, reading chekhov by janet malcolm, lost in translation by eva hoffman, jane's fame by claire harman.

The inner life is a mystery but the best biographies expose the hidden kernel of a person, says literary biographer and academic, Lyndall Gordon . She picks five books that push the boundaries of the genre.

The inner life is a mystery but the best biographies expose the hidden kernel of a person, says literary biographer and academic, Lyndall Gordon. She picks five books that push the boundaries of the genre.

Award Winning Biographies of 2022 , recommended by Sophie Roell

All the frequent troubles of our days: the true story of the woman at the heart of the german resistance to hitler by rebecca donner, the last king of america: the misunderstood reign of george iii by andrew roberts, burning boy: the life and work of stephen crane by paul auster, the escape artist: the man who broke out of auschwitz to warn the world by jonathan freedland, super-infinite: the transformations of john donne by katherine rundell, chasing me to my grave: an artist's memoir of the jim crow south by winfred rembert.

In telling stories of lives that are often very different from our own and yet connected to us by our common humanity, biographies are some of the most compelling nonfiction books around. Five Books editor Sophie Roell rounds up some of the biographies that have won or been shortlisted for prizes in 2022.

The Best Memoirs: The 2022 NBCC Autobiography Shortlist , recommended by Marion Winik

A little devil in america: notes in praise of black performance by hanif abdurraqib, gay bar: why we went out by jeremy atherton lin, a farewell to gabo and mercedes: a son's memoir of gabriel garcía márquez and mercedes barcha by rodrigo garcia, a ghost in the throat by doireann ní ghríofa, concepcion: an immigrant family’s fortunes by albert samaha.

Autobiography is evolving; increasingly we find the field dominated by 'genre-fluid' books that plait memoir together with strands of cultural criticism, history, journalism or even poetry. Here, Marion Winik , the memoirist and critic, talks us through the five books that have been shortlisted in the National Book Critic's Circle autobiography category—and describes the face of memoir in 2022.

Autobiography is evolving; increasingly we find the field dominated by 'genre-fluid' books that plait memoir together with strands of cultural criticism, history, journalism or even poetry. Here, Marion Winik, the memoirist and critic, talks us through the five books that have been shortlisted in the National Book Critic's Circle autobiography category—and describes the face of memoir in 2022.

The Best Biographies: the 2021 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Stranger in the shogun's city: a japanese woman and her world by amy stanley, the price of peace: money, democracy, and the life of john maynard keynes by zachary d. carter, the dead are arising: the life of malcolm x by les payne & tamara payne, red comet: the short life and blazing art of sylvia plath by heather clark, the equivalents: a story of art, female friendship, and liberation in the 1960s by maggie doherty.

Elizabeth Taylor , the author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee, discusses their 2021 shortlist for the title of the best biography—including a revelatory new book about the life of Malcolm X, a group biography of artists in the 1960s, and a book built from a cache of letters written in Japan's shogun era.

Elizabeth Taylor, the author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics’ Circle biography committee, discusses their 2021 shortlist for the title of the best biography—including a revelatory new book about the life of Malcolm X, a group biography of artists in the 1960s, and a book built from a cache of letters written in Japan’s shogun era.

The Best of Biography: the 2020 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Gods of the upper air: how a circle of renegade anthropologists reinvented race, sex, and gender in the twentieth century by charles king, the queen: the forgotten life behind an american myth by josh levin, l.e.l.: the lost life and scandalous death of letitia elizabeth landon, the celebrated "female byron" by lucasta miller, our man: richard holbrooke and the end of the american century by george packer, a woman of no importance: the untold story of the american spy who helped win world war ii by sonia purcell.

How do you find the perfect subject for a biography? “Pick a real bitch, or real bastard, and make sure they're dead,” a famous biographer once told Elizabeth Taylor . The author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee talks us through the books that made their 2020 shortlist.

How do you find the perfect subject for a biography? “Pick a real bitch, or real bastard, and make sure they're dead,” a famous biographer once told Elizabeth Taylor. The author, critic and chair of the National Book Critics' Circle biography committee talks us through the books that made their 2020 shortlist.

The Best Fashion Biographies , recommended by Justine Picardie

The allure of chanel by paul morand, dior by dior by christian dior, shocking life by elsa schiaparelli, the unexpurgated beaton by cecil beaton (author), hugo vickers (editor), diana vreeland by eleanor dwight.

Justine Picardie , editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar UK and author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life , chooses her favourite fashion biographies, and considers whether fashion and art are inextricably linked.

Justine Picardie, editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar UK and author of Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life , chooses her favourite fashion biographies, and considers whether fashion and art are inextricably linked.

The Best Biographies: the 2019 NBCC Shortlist , recommended by Elizabeth Taylor

Flash: the making of weegee the famous by christopher bonanos, ninety-nine glimpses of princess margaret by craig brown, inseparable: the original siamese twins and their rendezvous with american history by yunte huang, the man in the glass house: philip johnson, architect of the modern century by mark lamster, the big fella: babe ruth and the world he created by jane leavy.

Biography is booming, says the longtime book critic and biographer Elizabeth Taylor . Here she highlights the five fantastic books shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle 2019 biography award, and how historical lives provide insight into contemporary culture.

Biography is booming, says the longtime book critic and biographer Elizabeth Taylor. Here she highlights the five fantastic books shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle 2019 biography award, and how historical lives provide insight into contemporary culture.

We ask experts to recommend the five best books in their subject and explain their selection in an interview.

This site has an archive of more than one thousand seven hundred interviews, or eight thousand book recommendations. We publish at least two new interviews per week.

Five Books participates in the Amazon Associate program and earns money from qualifying purchases.

10 Best Biographies/Memoirs of 2023

10 best biographies of 2023.

It’s been a big year for biographies, with everything from Prince Harry to Britney Spear delivering their own books. There have been a lot of excellent books in this category this year .

In this curated list, we delve into the best biographies that captivated us this year. As usual, the books below are listed in no particular order but of course, do let us know your favourites in the comments below!

So join us as we celebrate the narratives that have defined 2023, each a unique testament to the enduring power of storytelling.

The Woman in Me – Britney Spears

The Woman in Me is an intimate and courageous memoir that chronicles the remarkable journey for one of pop music’s most iconic figures, Britney Spears. This deeply personal narrative unfolds against the backdrop of her historic June 2021 court testimony, a moment that not only altered Britney’s trajectory in life, but also resonated with people around the globe. Spears’s story is one of resilience and transformation, capturing the essence of freedom, motherhood, and survival.

Spears opens up about her life in this book with honesty and humor that is both refreshing and profound. She shares her experiences in the limelight, detailing the struggles and triumphs that have defined her career and personal life. Her account goes beyond the sensational headlines, offering readers a glimpse into the heart and soul of an artist who has captivated millions.

Spears’s narrative is more than a memoir; it’s a powerful testament to the strength and resilience inherent in her character. “The Woman in Me” is a celebration of the healing power of music and love, and the vital importance of autonomy in storytelling. Britney’s voice—clear, unfiltered, and unapologetic—echoes throughout the pages, emphasizing the significance of a woman taking control of her narrative and speaking her truth.

This book is not only a milestone in Spears’s life but also an inspiring tale of hope and empowerment, making it a must-read for her fans and supporters of women’s rights alike.

A Memoir of My Former Self – Hilary Mantel

A Memoir of My Former Self is a rich collection of Hilary Mantel’s finest journalistic and personal writings, spanning four decades. Known for her distinguished career as a novelist, Mantel brings her keen insight and eloquent prose to a variety of subjects, offering readers a glimpse into both her life and the broader world as she sees it. Embracing her belief that “ink is a generative fluid,” she crafts essays that resonate with intention and depth.

Mantel’s work traverses a wide array of themes. She reflects on nationalism and her own sense of identity, delves into the interplay between our dreams and waking life, and revisits the enduring mythos of Princess Diana.

From her unique childhood to her obsession with Thomas Cromwell, which culminated in the acclaimed Wolf Hall trilogy, this memoir presents the evolution of Hilary Mantel’s life and thoughts. A Memoir of My Former Self is a wonderful book and certainly one of the best released this year.

The Forgotten Girls – Monica Potts

In this poignant and revealing book, an accomplished journalist revisits her roots in a small Arkansas town to unravel the stark contrast between her life and that of her childhood best friend, Darci.

Growing up in the economically declining Ozarks, both Monica and Darci were bright, working-class girls with dreams that stretched far beyond the confines of their troubled community. United by their love for reading and learning, they faced the harsh realities of their town: broken homes, alcoholism, and the gradual decay of local businesses and factories.

While Monica managed to break free, attending college and pursuing her dreams, Darci’s story took a tragically different turn. Years later, as Monica covers poverty and its impacts, she learns of the alarming decrease in life expectancy among women in rural areas like her hometown.

Darci represents a harrowing statistic: a single mother battling meth and prescription drug addiction, struggling with unemployment and near homelessness. Through her narrative, she sheds light on the critical issues affecting poor, rural white women in America, offering an intimate and eye-opening look at the realities often overlooked in national discourse.

Abroad in Japan – Chris Broad

In Abroad in Japan, Chris Broad shares his adventurous journey into Japan in his often humorous journey of adapting to life in rural northern Japan. Arriving with no experience in teaching and little command of the Japanese language, Chris wonders if his stint as an English teacher might be short-lived. Instead, what unfolds is a decade of rich experiences in one of the world’s most intriguing and complex cultures.

This is a captivating narrative that spans all forty-seven prefectures of Japan, from tranquil rice fields to the vibrant streets of Tokyo. Chris recounts a variety of extraordinary experiences, including a nerve-wracking North Korean missile scare, an embarrassing encounter in a love hotel, and an unforgettable week with Japan’s biggest movie star. His stories are not just entertaining; they offer a deep dive into the heart of Japanese culture.

Chris’s journey is a testament to the transformative power of travel and the value of embracing the unknown with an open mind and heart.

Strong Female Character – Fern Brady

Strong Female Character is a ground-breaking memoir by Fern Brady that confronts the intersection of sexism and neurodiversity. Brady, a neurodivergent, working-class woman from Scotland, offers an eye-opening exploration of how societal expectations clash with the realities of being an autistic woman. The book challenges the preconceived notions of both autism and femininity, highlighting the unique struggles and triumphs that come with navigating these identities.

Brady’s narrative is unflinchingly honest, delving into deeply personal experiences such as sex work, abusive relationships, and her time in teenage mental health units. She critically examines the Manic Pixie Dream Girl stereotype, a trope often misleadingly associated with neurodiverse women, and dismantles it with the force of her lived experience.

This memoir is not just a personal account; it’s a powerful statement on the complexities of being a neurodivergent woman in a world that often misunderstands and overlooks such experiences.

Friendaholic – Elizabeth Day

In Friendaholic: Confessions of a Friendship Addict, Elizabeth Day delves into the oft-overlooked yet vital world of friendships, challenging the societal emphasis on romantic love.

Growing up with few friends, Elizabeth equated the number of friendships with being loved and secure. As an adult, she prides herself on being a Good Friend, only to realize that this pursuit sometimes comes at the cost of her own boundaries and mental health.

The onset of the global pandemic in 2020 sees Elizabeth re-evaluate her understanding of friendship. Confronted with the reality that her closest friends weren’t necessarily those she spent the most time with, she begins to question the nature of these relationships. This introspection leads to broader inquiries: Is there such a thing as having too many friends? How well does one truly understand the role they play as a friend?

The Strength of Love – Kate Garraway

Kate Garraway’s The Strength of Love offers a profound and moving account of resilience and hope amidst life’s most challenging circumstances. This deeply personal narrative unfolds in the wake of her husband Derek’s battle with the severe impacts of Covid, a struggle that has dramatically altered their family life, requiring 24-hour care and frequent hospitalizations.

Kate’s journey is one of constant uncertainty and daily challenges, testing her strength and that of her family at every turn.

Garraway’s book delves into universal themes that resonate with many: the nature of trauma, the critical role of resilience and adaptability, and the power of staying curious and positive in the face of adversity. She candidly discusses the concepts of identity and purpose, offering insights into how to embrace uncertainty and regain control in times of turmoil. Her experiences and reflections provide solace and wisdom to those grappling with loneliness, loss, or fear of the unknown.

Spare – Prince Harry

Much has been made of Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, with opinion swinging like a pendulum between outright hatred to incredulous disbelief. Following their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey and the subsequent fall-out with the Royal Family, Harry and Meghan have attempted to lift the curtain and explain exactly what’s happened and what’s led them to where we are today.

Spare is a revealing and deeply personal memoir in that respect, ghost-written by J.R. Moehringer but written in first-person perspective to authenticate the feel of what’s in here. Prince Harry’s book is split across three parts in this 410 page book. After a brief prologue starting at Prince Philip’s death, we cut back to just before Princess Diana’s death, leading through Harry’s years growing up as the “Spare” to Prince William (the “heir”) along with his time in the military and up to the Queen’s death.

The writing itself is mostly reserved to short and snappy sub-chapters, which are split into three parts, the first focusing on the past and growing up, the second on Harry’s time in the military and the third on Harry’s love life and meeting Meghan Markle.

It’s a book that reveals far more about the underbelly of the Royal Family than you’re likely to see anywhere else. Quite how this story will eventually end is anyone’s guess but for anyone remotely interested in the Royal Family, this is an absolute must-read.

Elon Musk – Walter Isaacson

In his latest biography, the acclaimed author of “Steve Jobs” presents an intimate and compelling portrait of Elon Musk, one of the most enigmatic and influential figures of our time. This book delves deep into Musk’s journey from a bullied child in South Africa to a visionary entrepreneur reshaping the future with electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. It also explores his dramatic takeover of Twitter, a platform that symbolizes both a personal and professional battleground for him.

Author Isaacson provides an unprecedented look into Musk’s world, having shadowed him for two years, witnessing first-hand the workings of his mind and operations. Through extensive interviews with Musk, as well as those who know him best—family, friends, co-workers, and rivals—the biography paints a vivid picture of a man who is as complex as he is visionary. It raises probing questions: Are the very traits that make Musk a relentless innovator also the sources of his deepest struggles? This biography offers a fascinating exploration of Musk’s life, achievements, and the inner demons that drive him, making it a standout addition to the best biographies of 2023.

Seventeen – Joe Gibson

Seventeen is a shocking and eye-opening memoir, written by Joe Gibson. In this revealing book, we’re whisked back to 1992. Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life. He’s looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university. Only, there’s a problem. When Joe’s teacher – attractive, mid-thirties – takes an interest in him, it seems like a fantasy come true.

For his final two years at school, Joe is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain’s major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing.

With a heady dose of nostalgia for the 90’s, and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the legacy of deceit and indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.

Closing Thoughts

2023 has been a big year for biography fans. There have been some great selections this year and above our just our favourite picks!

What will 2024 have in store for us? Hopefully more of the same!

So, there we have it, our picks for the best biographies of 2023! Let us know what you think of our choices in the comments below and remind us of any others you enjoyed this year above all others!

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Accessibility Links

13 best biographies and memoirs of 2023

All human life is here. helen davies and robbie millen delve into the lives of prince harry, elizabeth taylor and elon musk.

T oo much information, some cried! The most talked-about book of the year was Prince Harry’s memoir, Spare . It was like eavesdropping on a particularly intense therapy session. If royal gossip isn’t to your taste try books about two very different love stories — the mad, maddening, molten affair between Richard Burton and Liz Taylor, or the gentle constancy of Timothy West and Prunella Scales.

Spare us from royal revelations of petty privileges and frostbitten penises, I hear you scream — but bear with me. Prince Harry’s book is the bestselling memoir of the year , and for all the hype and hysteria both on and off the page, it is a rattling page-turner. There are the confessions of drug use, sexual escapades, mawkish misery

Post author: Archie Black
Post published: December 28, 2023
Post category: News / Recommendations

You are currently viewing 10 Best Biographies Released in 2023

2023 was a huge year for new biographies. With newly published works from some of the most well-known biographers, and some not-so-well-known biographers finding their way onto our curated list of 10 Best Biographies Released in 2023.

This page contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase using links on this page, we may earn a commission.

In published order here are the 10 best biographies released in 2023

Master slave husband wife: an epic journey from slavery to freedom, by ilyon woo.

Book cover: Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo

Released on January 17, 2023 by Simon & Schuster

What’s it about

Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo chronicles Ellen and William Craft’s daring escape from slavery in 1848, disguised as master and slave, followed by their fight for freedom. The book explores love, courage, anti-slavery activism, and the global struggle for equality, offering a captivating and important piece of American history.

Rough Sleepers, by Tracy Kidder

Released on January 17, 2023 by Random House

Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder chronicles Dr. Jim O’Connell’s mission to bring medical care to Boston’s homeless population, specifically those enduring the harsh realities of street life. Kidder illuminates the struggles, resilience, and humanity of the homeless. Challenging readers to re-evaluate societal biases and consider the ethical imperative of caring for our most vulnerable members.

The Confidante: The Untold Story of the Woman Who Helped Win WWII and Shape Modern America, by Christopher C. Gorham

Book cover: The Confidante by Christopher C. Gorham

Released on February 21, 2023 by Citadel

The Confidante is a biography that illuminates the extraordinary life of Anna Marie Rosenberg, a Hungarian Jewish immigrant who became FDR’s closest advisor during World War II, shaping critical national policies and leaving an indelible mark on 20th-century America, while exploring the challenges she faced as a woman, immigrant, and Jewish figure in the corridors of power.

King: A Life, by Jonathan Eig

Released on May 16, 2023 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Jonathan Eig’s King: A Life is a vivid and meticulously researched biography of Martin Luther King Jr., the iconic civil rights leader. The first major biography in decades, it incorporates recently declassified FBI files. Eig paints an intimate and revealing portrait of the courageous yet emotionally troubled King, shedding light on his complex relationships and personal struggles. From MLK’s family origins to his activism in Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, the biography captures the journey of a man who reshaped American race relations and emerged as a modern-day founding father and mourned martyr.

The Book of Charlie: Wisdom from the Remarkable American Life of a 109-Year-Old Man, by David von Drehle

Book cover: The Book of Charlie by David von Drehle

Released on May 23, 2023 by Simon & Schuster

David von Drehle chronicles the extraordinary life of 109-year-old Charlie White, weaving his adventures as a doctor, jazz musician, and world traveler with timeless wisdom on resilience, curiosity, and the power of optimism. Through Charlie’s journey from Midwestern farm boy to centenarian sage, the book offers a heartwarming and inspiring celebration of living life to the fullest, embracing challenges with grit, and always seeking new experiences with wonder and joy.

The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts, by Loren Grush

Released on September 12, 2023 by Scribner

In the 1960s, NASA initially excluded women from its astronaut corps but later rectified the decision, selecting six elite women in 1978—Sally Ride, Judy Resnik, Anna Fisher, Kathy Sullivan, Shannon Lucid, and Rhea Seddon. Loren Grush’s “The Six” highlights their struggles with media scrutiny, sexism, and intensive training, showcasing their significant contributions to the space program.

Elon Musk, by Walter Isaacson

Released September 11, 2023 by Simon & Schuster

Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson rockets you into the mind of a visionary entrepreneur, charting his audacious goals from electric cars to Mars, while unmasking the risk-taker, complex man, and his world-altering legacy.

Astor: The Rise and Fall of an American Fortune, by Anderson Cooper, Katherine Howe

Released on September 19, 2023 by Harper

A compelling tale of ambition, invention, and reinvention spanning from 1783, when German immigrant John Jacob Astor arrived in the U.S., to 2009, marked by Brooke Astor’s son’s conviction for defrauding her; tracing the family’s ascent from a beaver trapping business to Gilded Age prominence, entwined with pivotal moments like the Titanic tragedy, all skillfully chronicled by bestselling authors Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe in a page-turning historical biography, unveiling the profound impact of the Astor name on American history.

Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon, by Michael Lewis

Book cover: Going Infinite by Michael Lewis

Released on October 3, 2023 by W. W. Norton & Company

In Michael Lewis ‘ Going Infinite , the enigma of Sam Bankman-Fried unfolds – a mathematical prodigy turned crypto-billionaire who built an empire (FTX) on daring bets and altruistic ideals, only to see it crumble under allegations of fraud, hubris, and the murky regulations of the digital frontier. This roller coaster ride delves into the mind of a tech icon, dissecting his unorthodox strategies, the allure of limitless wealth, and the ethical cracks that eventually brought it all crashing down.

The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend, by Rob Copeland

Released November 7, 2023 by St. Martin’s Press

Explore the untold story of Wall Street titan Ray Dalio in The Fund , a gripping exposé by New York Times journalist Rob Copeland. Despite Dalio’s global acclaim, Copeland unveils a darker reality behind the hedge-fund magnate’s cultivated image, revealing the toxicity of his promoted “principles.” Through interviews and captivating anecdotes, the book sheds light on the consequences of Dalio’s “ radical transparency ,” offering a cautionary tale about the intersection of wealth, power, and human nature.

As we wrap up 2023, it’s clear that the year brought a wealth of new biographies. Our curated list, the 10 Best Biographies Released in 2023, features works from both well-known and lesser-known biographers. We hope you find these stories as intriguing and diverse as we did. Cheers to a year of compelling narratives, and here’s to more great reads in the years to come.

Enjoyed this article? Please share it! Share this content

Opens in a new window

David Grann’s Books Ranked According to Goodreads Rating

Nathaniel Philbrick’s Best Books Ranked According to Goodreads

The Splendid and the Vile, by Erik Larson – A Review

Entertainment

The Best Books of 2023 So Far

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

The best books of the year so far serve as a great reminder to always question the stories we hear. Where do they come from? And who gets to tell them? When we deconstruct history and look at its pieces in a new light, as many of these books do, we see things differently. In his page-turning new biography of Martin Luther King Jr. , Jonathan Eig provides an illuminating window into the activist’s emotional core . In Dyscalculia , Camonghne Felix reconsiders her romantic past to better understand her relationship with love. And in Biography of X , Catherine Lacey reveals how easily the ideas we hold as truths can fall apart through her protagonist’s quest to learn about her wife’s mysterious past. Here, the best books of the year so far.

A Living Remedy , Nicole Chung

In her first memoir, TIME contributor Nicole Chung described her experience growing up as a Korean American adoptee in a predominantly white town. Her follow-up, A Living Remedy , continues her exploration into identity, this time focusing on her grief after losing both of her parents. Chung’s father died of diabetes and kidney disease in 2018. Then, less than a year later, her mother is diagnosed with cancer and later dies during the COVID-19 pandemic. As Chung wrestles with these overwhelming losses in A Living Remedy , she dissects the inequities inherent to American society by recounting the challenges her parents faced in accessing medical care. The result is a moving portrait of a daughter reckoning with her place in a broken world—and making sense of life without her parents in it.

Buy Now : A Living Remedy on Bookshop | Amazon

King: A Life , Jonathan Eig

Jonathan Eig’s book on Martin Luther King Jr. is the first biography of the civil rights icon in decades. It’s a refreshing portrait of King, offering an intimate look inside the life of a man whose massive contributions to American history are known but whose emotional complexities are less so. Eig digs into everything—King’s family origins, his relationship with his wife, the pressures he faced from being so influential so early in his career—to create a portrait of the late activist that captures the dynamic and flawed human that he was. It’s a deftly researched and highly accessible account of a leader, and a new view into the many overlooked parts of King’s story.

Buy Now : King on Bookshop | Amazon

Our Share of Night , Mariana Enriquez

Spanning multiple decades, Argentine author Mariana Enriquez’s weird and wonderful novel, newly translated into English by Megan McDowell, doesn’t fit into just one genre. Oscillating seamlessly between historical fiction and supernatural horror, Our Share of Night centers on Juan and Gaspar, a father and son who are grieving Rosario, the wife and mother they just lost in a car accident. Complicating things is the fact that they are also on the run from the ruthless cult from which Rosario descends. Better known as the Order, the cult will do just about anything to achieve immortality, and Gaspar has developed powers that would make him a valuable asset. Set against a comprehensive backdrop of Argentine history, Our Share of Night offers an absorbing window into a terrifying, fantastical world.

Buy Now : Our Share of Night on Bookshop | Amazon

Dyscalculia , Camonghne Felix

In her debut memoir, poet Camonghne Felix details how a devastating breakup propels her into deep despair, forcing her to confront lingering childhood trauma and struggles with her mental health. Throughout, she returns to the learning disorder she faced as a child, “dyscalculia,” which made it difficult for her to understand math. In holding her dissolved relationship to the light, Felix wonders about the miscalculations she’s made when it comes to love. Her memoir is a striking meditation on pain, heartbreak, and what it takes to truly heal.

Buy Now : Dyscalculia on Bookshop | Amazon

The Wager , David Grann

In 1740, a British vessel called His Majesty’s Ship the Wager departed England on a mission to capture a Spanish galleon. But the Wager wrecked near the coast of Patagonia, and those who survived endured months of starvation and hardship. At least, that’s what the 30 sailors who made it out alive explained when they eventually arrived in Brazil. But months later, when a trio of castaways from another ship land in the same spot, they share a very different version of the events that took place in Patagonia. David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon and The Lost City of Z , peels back the layers of a complex maritime drama in a masterfully drawn work of narrative nonfiction.

Buy Now : The Wager on Bookshop | Amazon

This Other Eden , Paul Harding

Inspired by real-life events that took place on Maine’s Malaga Island, one of the first racially integrated communities in the Northeast, Pulitzer Prize winner Paul Harding tells a grueling tale of isolation and injustice. In 1792, a formerly enslaved man and his Irish wife first arrived on the fictional Apple Island. More than a century later, the couple’s descendants are still there, and while their lives aren’t easy, they are at least far from the dangers happening inland. But any measure of peace they’ve secured is upturned by the presence of a missionary. The residents face eviction—and the threat of being institutionalized on the mainland. Harding follows a cast of characters through this horrifying upheaval as they grapple with what it means to belong.

Buy Now : This Other Eden on Bookshop | Amazon

The Half Known Life , Pico Iyer

Does paradise really exist? The question is at the center of Pico Iyer’s dazzling new work of nonfiction, which examines the many ways different cultures search for purposeful existence, and the paradoxical struggle for peace in a violent and fractured world. From Japan’s mountain temples to the streets of Belfast, Iyer wonders where utopia begins and how we can access it. In doing so, he suggests that paradise may not be a destination, but instead a journey.

Buy Now : The Half Known Life on Bookshop | Amazon

Greek Lessons , Han Kang

After losing her mother and custody of her son, the unnamed narrator of Han Kang’s stirring novel, newly translated into English by Deborah Smith and Emily Yae Won, decides to learn a new language. Then, one day while in her Greek class, she attempts to say something, but no words come out. Her voice is gone. In the same moment, across the room, her teacher is facing a battle against his depreciating vision. As the two bond over their puzzling sensory losses, they form an intense connection. Kang captures their relationship—and the relationships they both have with language and love—in quietly beautiful detail.

Buy Now : Greek Lessons on Bookshop | Amazon

Biography of X , Catherine Lacey

X is one of the most iconic and prolific artists and writers of the 20th century. The world is familiar with her work as a creative visionary—though no one, not even her wife, knows her real name or where she was born. After X suddenly dies, her wife, CM, decides she’s overdue to learn that information, and attempts to find answers to the questions that have been haunting her. X is a fictional character, but Catherine Lacey’s propulsive and kaleidoscopic novel makes her story feel plausible, piecing together the character’s life with an engrossing alternate history of the United States that’s full of references to real-life artists and writers. As CM uncovers more of X’s delectably illustrated past, Lacey unfurls a wholly original celebration of art, identity, and grief.

Buy Now : Biography of X on Bookshop | Amazon

Lone Women , Victor LaValle

It’s 1915 and mystery is swirling around Adelaide Henry, the daughter of Black farmers in California. When Victor LaValle introduces the character in his bruising fifth novel, she’s just set her family’s home ablaze. She’s on her way to Montana as a homesteader to collect on the promise of free land being offered by the government to “lone women” who are able to make it habitable. As Adelaide makes the trek, she brings with her a large trunk containing a secret that threatens to upend her life. Blending magical realism, history, and suspense, LaValle unravels a startling narrative about a woman running away from her troubled past and the horrors she faces as she tries to forge a better future.

Buy Now : Lone Women on Bookshop | Amazon

After Sappho , Selby Wynn Schwartz

Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and published in the U.S. this January, After Sappho is a tale of creativity, desire, and sexuality. Though it’s technically a novel, to categorize it as such would undermine Selby Wynn Schwartz’s thrilling reimagination of history and literary criticism, which culminates in a work of fiction that is deeply rooted in reality. In the book, Schwartz revisits the lives of groundbreaking early 20th-century feminists, from writers to actors to dancers, to explore the challenges they faced as queer artists with great contributions to make to the world. Schwartz weaves a tapestry of their voices to create a timeless yet timely narrative.

Buy Now : After Sappho on Bookshop | Amazon

The Covenant of Water , Abraham Verghese

Abraham Verghese, the best-selling author of the 2009 novel Cutting for Stone , returns with another epic tale, this time focusing on the fate of a cursed family in southern India. The Covenant of Water begins in 1900 as a 12-year-old girl marries a 40-year-old widower with a young son. Some years after their wedding, the girl discovers her husband’s son drowned in a ditch. It’s a cruel suffering that the family can’t seem to shake—they keep losing more of their own to the same fate—and they become determined to figure out the source of this strange affliction. Verghese follows the family over the course of nearly 80 years in this powerful and sweeping story about love, loss, and the strength of the human spirit.

Buy Now : The Covenant of Water on Bookshop | Amazon

Y/N , Esther Yi

The unnamed narrator of Esther Yi’s electric debut novel is obsessed with a K-pop idol named Moon. Bored with her life in Berlin, the narrator writes fan fiction about Moon, describing an imagined relationship with one of the most famous musicians in the world. Then the lines of reality start to blur: as the protagonist of her stories travels to Seoul to be with Moon, the narrator decides to make the journey, too. Yi weaves these threads together in sharp prose, offering an inventive novel about the strange and surprising stakes of worshiping a pop idol.

Buy Now : Y/N on Bookshop | Amazon

More Must-Reads from TIME

Breaking Down the 2024 Election Calendar
Heman Bekele Is TIME’s 2024 Kid of the Year
The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris
What a $129 Frying Pan Says About America’s Eating Habits
A Battle Over Fertility Law in China
The 1 Heart-Health Habit You Should Start When You’re Young
Cuddling Might Help You Get Better Sleep
The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now

Write to Annabel Gutterman at [email protected]

100 Notable Books of 2023

Each year, we pore over thousands of new books, seeking out the best novels, memoirs, biographies, poetry collections, stories and more. Here are the standouts, selected by the staff of The New York Times Book Review.

Chosen by the staff of The New York Times Book Review Nov. 21, 2023

After Sappho by Selby Wynn Schwartz

Inspired by Sappho’s work, Schwartz’s debut novel offers an alternate history of creativity at the turn of the 20th century, one that centers queer women artists, writers and intellectuals who refused to accept society’s boundaries.

All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby

In his earlier thrillers, Cosby worked the outlaw side of the crime genre. In his new one — about a Black sheriff in a rural Southern town, searching for a serial killer who tortures Black children — he’s written a crackling good police procedural.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray

In Murray’s boisterous tragicomic novel, a once wealthy Irish family struggles with both the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash and their own inner demons.

Biography of X by Catherine Lacey

Lacey rewrites 20th-century U.S. history through the audacious fictional life story of X, a polarizing female performance artist who made her way from the South to New York City’s downtown art scene.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton

In this action-packed novel from a Booker Prize winner, a collective of activist gardeners crosses paths with a billionaire doomsday prepper on land they each want for different purposes.

Blackouts by Justin Torres

This lyrical, genre-defying novel — winner of the 2023 National Book Award — explores what it means to be erased and how to persist after being wiped away.

Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll

In her third and most assured novel, Knoll shifts readers’ attention away from a notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy, and onto the lives — and deaths — of the women he killed. Perhaps for the first time in fiction, Knoll pooh-poohs Bundy's much ballyhooed intelligence, celebrating the promise and perspicacity of his victims instead.

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

This satire — in which prison inmates duel on TV for a chance at freedom — makes readers complicit with the bloodthirsty fans sitting ringside. The fight scenes are so well written they demonstrate how easy it might be to accept a world this sick.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Verghese’s first novel since “Cutting for Stone” follows generations of a family across 77 years in southwestern India as they contend with political strife and other troubles — capped by a shocking discovery made by the matriarch’s granddaughter, a doctor.

Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead

Returning to the world of his novel “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead again uses a crime story to illuminate a singular neighborhood at a tipping point — here, Harlem in the 1970s.

The Deluge by Stephen Markley

Markley’s second novel confronts the scale and gravity of climate change, tracking a cadre of scientists and activists from the gathering storm of the Obama years to the super-typhoons of future decades. Immersive and ambitious, the book shows the range of its author’s gifts: polyphonic narration, silken sentences and elaborate world-building.

Eastbound by Maylis de Kerangal

In de Kerangal’s brief, lyrical novel, translated by Jessica Moore, a young Russian soldier on a trans-Siberian train decides to desert and turns to a civilian passenger, a Frenchwoman, for help.

book cover for Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

The world-building in this tale of a woman documenting a new kind of faerie is exquisite, and the characters are just as textured and richly drawn. This is the kind of folkloric fantasy that remembers the old, blood-ribboned source material about sacrifices and stolen children, but adds a modern gloss.

Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad

In Hammad’s second novel, a British Palestinian actor returns to her hometown in Israel to recover from a breakup and spend time with her family. Instead, she’s talked into joining a staging of “Hamlet” in the West Bank, where she has a political awakening.

Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes

A best-selling novelist and prominent anti-Fascist in her native Italy, de Céspedes has lately fallen into unjust obscurity. Translated by Ann Goldstein, this elegant novel from the 1950s tells the story of a married mother, Valeria, whose life is transformed when she begins keeping a secret diary.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

Based on a celebrated 19th-century trial in which the defendant was accused of impersonating a nobleman, Smith’s novel offers a vast panoply of London and the English countryside, and successfully locates the social controversies of an era in a handful of characters.

From From by Monica Youn

In her fourth book of verse, a svelte, intrepid foray into American racism, Youn turns a knowing eye on society’s love-hate relationship with what it sees as the “other.”

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll

After a lonely young woman marries a mild-mannered widower and moves into his home, she begins to wonder how his first wife actually died. This graphic novel alternates between black-and-white and overwhelming colors as it explores the mundane and the horrific.

book cover for The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store

The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

McBride’s latest, an intimate, big-hearted tale of community, opens with a human skeleton found in a well in the 1970s, and then flashes back to the past, to the ’20s and ’30s, to explore the town’s Black, Jewish and immigrant history.

Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano

In her radiant fourth novel, Napolitano puts a fresh spin on the classic tale of four sisters and the man who joins their family. Take “Little Women,” move it to modern-day Chicago, add more intrigue, lots of basketball and a different kind of boy next door and you’ve got the bones of this thoroughly original story.

A History of Burning by Janika Oza

This remarkable debut novel tells the story of an extended Indo-Ugandan family that is displaced, settled and displaced again.

Holly by Stephen King

The scrappy private detective Holly Gibney (who appeared in “The Outsider” and several other novels) returns, this time taking on a missing-persons case that — in typical King fashion — unfolds into a tale of Dickensian proportions.

A House for Alice by Diana Evans

This polyphonic novel traces one family’s reckoning after the patriarch dies in a fire, as his widow, a Nigerian immigrant, considers returning to her home country and the entire family re-examines the circumstances of their lives.

The Iliad by Homer

Emily Wilson’s propulsive new translation of the “Iliad” is buoyant and expressive; she wants this version to be read aloud, and it would certainly be fun to perform.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

The sisters in Törzs's delightful debut have been raised to protect a collection of magic books that allow their keepers to do incredible things. Their story accelerates like a fugue, ably conducted to a tender conclusion.

Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck

This tale of a torrid, yearslong relationship between a young woman and a much older married man — translated from the German by Michael Hofmann — is both profound and moving.

Kantika by Elizabeth Graver

Inspired by the life of Graver’s maternal grandmother, this exquisitely imagined family saga spans cultures and continents as it traces the migrations of a Sephardic Jewish girl from turn-of-the-20th-century Constantinople to Barcelona, Havana and, finally, Queens, N.Y.

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang

Zhang’s lush, keenly intelligent novel follows a chef who’s hired to cook for an “elite research community” in the Italian Alps, in a not-so-distant future where industrial-agricultural experiments in America’s heartland have blanketed the globe in a crop-smothering smog.

Lone Women by Victor LaValle

The year is 1915, and the narrator of LaValle’s horror-tinged western has arrived in Montana to cultivate an unforgiving homestead. She’s looking for a fresh start as a single Black woman in a sparsely populated state, but the locked trunk she has in stow holds a terrifying secret.

Monica by Daniel Clowes

In Clowes’s luminous new work, the titular character, abandoned by her mother as a child, endures a life of calamities before resolving to learn about her origins and track down her parents.

book cover for The Most Secret Memory of Men

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

Based on a true story and translated by Lara Vergnaud, Sarr’s novel — about a Senegalese writer brought low by a plagiarism scandal — asks sharp questions about the state of African literature in the West.

The New Naturals by Gabriel Bump

In Bump’s engrossing new novel, a young Black couple, mourning the loss of their newborn daughter and disillusioned with the world, start a utopian society — but tensions both internal and external soon threaten their dreams.

North Woods by Daniel Mason

Mason’s novel looks at the occupants of a single house in Massachusetts over several centuries, from colonial times to present day. An apple farmer, an abolitionist, a wealthy manufacturer: The book follows these lives and many others, with detours into natural history and crime reportage.

Not Even the Dead by Juan Gómez Bárcena

An ex-conquistador in Spanish-ruled, 16th-century Mexico is asked to hunt down an Indigenous prophet in this novel by a leading writer in Spain, splendidly translated by Katie Whittemore. The epic search stretches across much of the continent and, as the author bends time and history, lasts centuries.

The Nursery by Szilvia Molnar

“I used to be a translator and now I am a milk bar.” So begins Molnar’s brilliant novel about a new mother falling apart within the four walls of her apartment.

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

This dazzling, epic narrative, translated from the Spanish by Megan McDowell, is a bewitching brew of mystery and myth, peopled by mediums who can summon “the Darkness” for a secret society of wealthy occultists seeking to preserve consciousness after death.

Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson

Jackson’s smart, dishy debut novel embeds readers in an upper-crust Brooklyn Heights family — its real estate, its secrets, its just-like-you-and-me problems. Does money buy happiness? “Pineapple Street” asks a better question: Does it buy honesty?

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due

Due’s latest — about a Black boy, Robert, who is wrongfully sentenced to a fictionalized version of Florida’s infamous and brutal Dozier School — is both an incisive examination of the lingering traumas of racism and a gripping, ghost-filled horror novel. “The novel’s extended, layered denouement is so heart-smashingly good, it made me late for work,” Randy Boyagoda wrote in his review. “I couldn’t stop reading.”

book cover for The Saint of Bright Doors

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera

Trained to kill by his mother and able to see demons, the protagonist of Chandrasekera’s stunning and lyrical novel flees his destiny as an assassin and winds up in a politically volatile metropolis.

book cover for Same Bed Different Dreams

Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park

Double agents, sinister corporations, slasher films, U.F.O.s — Park’s long-awaited second novel is packed to the gills with creative elements that enliven his acerbic, comedic and lyrical odyssey into Korean history and American paranoia.

Take What You Need by Idra Novey

This elegant novel resonates with implication beyond the taut contours of its central story line. In Novey’s deft hands, the complex relationship between a young woman and her former stepmother hints at the manifold divisions within America itself.

This Other Eden by Paul Harding

In his latest novel, inspired by the true story of a devastating 1912 eviction in Maine that displaced an entire mixed-race fishing community, Harding turns that history into a lyrical tale about the fictional Apple Island on the cusp of destruction.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Locked down on the family’s northern Michigan cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother, a former actress whose long-ago summer fling went on to become a movie star, reflect on love and regret in Patchett’s quiet and reassuring Chekhovian novel.

The Unsettled by Ayana Mathis

This novel follows three generations across time and place: a young mother trying to create a home for herself and her son in 1980s Philadelphia, and her mother, who is trying to save their Alabama hometown from white supremacists seeking to displace her from her land.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie

Rushdie’s new novel recounts the long life of Pampa Kampana, who creates an empire from magic seeds in 14th-century India. Her world is one of peace, where men and women are equal and all faiths welcome, but the story Rushdie tells is of a state that forever fails to live up to its ideals.

We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian

This queer midcentury romance — about reporters who meet at work, become friends, move in together and fall in love — lingers on small, everyday acts like bringing home flowers with the groceries, things that loom large because they’re how we connect with others.

Western Lane by Chetna Maroo

In this polished and disciplined debut novel, an 11-year-old Jain girl in London who has just lost her mother turns her attention to the game of squash — which in Maroo’s graceful telling becomes a way into the girl’s grief.

Witness by Jamel Brinkley

Set in Brooklyn, and featuring animal rescue workers, florists, volunteers, ghosts and UPS workers, Brinkley’s new collection meditates on what it means to see and be seen.

Y/N by Esther Yi

In this weird and wondrous novel, a bored young woman in thrall to a boy band buys a one-way ticket to Seoul.

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang

Kuang’s first foray outside of the fantasy genre is a breezy and propulsive tale about a white woman who achieves tremendous literary success by stealing a manuscript from a recently deceased Asian friend and passing it off as her own.

The 272 by Rachel L. Swarns

Building on her groundbreaking work for The Times, Swarns fashions a complex portrait of 19th-century American Catholicism through the story of the nearly 300 people enslaved on Jesuit plantations who were sold in 1838 to save Georgetown University from ruin.

Anansi’s Gold by Yepoka Yeebo

Yeebo, a journalist, tracks down the elusive story of John Ackah Blay-Miezah, who revolutionized the “advance fee” scam (say, a Nigerian prince wants to wire you money), and contextualizes it within a Ghana — and a world — that allowed him to thrive.

Battle of Ink and Ice by Darrell Hartman

This fast paced, true-life adventure revives the headline-grabbing debate over which explorer reached the North Pole first — and which newspaper broke the news.

The Best Minds by Jonathan Rosen

A literary and compassionate examination of the porous line between brilliance and insanity, this riveting memoir traces the author’s childhood friendship and sometime rivalry with a neighbor and Yale classmate who is now in prison for murdering his girlfriend.

book cover for Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs by Kerry Howley

Howley writes about the national security state and those who get entangled in it — fabulists, truth tellers, combatants, whistle-blowers. Like many of us, they have left traces of themselves in the digital ether by making a phone call, texting a friend, looking something up online.

Built From the Fire by Victor Luckerson

This ambitious history, by a journalist based in Tulsa, provides an authoritative account of the prosperous Black neighborhood decimated by the city’s 1921 race massacre and a gripping portrait of the community resurrected in its aftermath.

Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara

Cobalt is essential to the tech industry, but as Kara’s harrowing account demonstrates, it comes at a high cost: Much of the mineral is mined in toxic conditions for subsistence wages in Congo — all too often, by children.

Crossings by Ben Goldfarb

Goldfarb, an environmental journalist, crafts a fascinating and sensitive look at the costs of roads, both for wild animals and for the humans whose cities are divided by highways along racial lines.

Daughter of the Dragon by Yunte Huang

Huang’s new book, a biography embedded in cultural criticism, is an absorbing account of the life and times of the Chinese American starlet Anna May Wong, whose career spanned silent movies, talkies and television.

Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

After she was repeatedly confused online with the feminist scholar turned anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf, Klein turned the experience into this sober, stylish account of the lure of disdain and paranoia.

book cover for Easily Slip Into Another World

Easily Slip Into Another World by Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards

The jazz artist Henry Threadgill’s ardent memoir ranges from his maddening wartime experiences in Vietnam to his boundary-pushing musical career.

The Exceptions by Kate Zernike

Zernike’s excellent and infuriating tale of the fight for fairness at M.I.T. and beyond is not merely a fast-paced account of one woman’s accomplishments but a larger history of women in STEM (or lack thereof).

Fire Weather by John Vaillant

This timely and riveting account of the 2016 McMurray wildfire explores not just that Canadian inferno but what it bodes for the future. Vaillant has a chillingly serious message: This is the inevitable result of climate change, and it will happen again and again.

The Great Escape by Saket Soni

In this gripping account, Soni, a labor organizer, details the story of several hundred Indian men lured to this country on promises of work and green cards, who ended up in semi-captivity in Mississippi until his efforts to free them.

The Half Known Life by Pico Iyer

In talking to people the world over about what paradise means to them, Iyer provides hours of thought-provoking meditations. “Paradise becomes something different in every neighbor’s head,” he says.

How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair

In this breathless, scorching memoir of a girlhood spent becoming the perfect Rasta daughter and an adolescence spent becoming one of Jamaica’s most promising young poets, Montego Bay drips with as much tender sensuality and complexity as the buoyant patois of Sinclair’s parents’ banter.

Humanly Possible by Sarah Bakewell

In earlier books, Bakewell has written about Montaigne and the existentialists; here, she manages to wrangle seven centuries of humanist thought into a brisk narrative with characteristic wit and clarity, resisting the traps of windy abstraction and glib oversimplification.

Judgment at Tokyo by Gary J. Bass

This comprehensive treatment of the prosecution of Japanese war crimes after World War II is an elegantly written and immersive account of a moment that shaped not just the politics of the region, but of the Cold War to come.

King by Jonathan Eig

The first comprehensive biography of Martin Luther King Jr. in decades, Eig’s book draws on a landslide of recently released government documents as well as letters and interviews. This is a book worthy of its subject: both an intimate study of a complex and flawed human being and a journalistic account of a civil rights titan.

book cover for The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory

The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory by Tim Alberta

Having detailed how President Trump's rise to power occurred amid a years-long civil war within the Republican party in his 2019 book "American Carnage," Alberta, a staff writer for The Atlantic, turns his eye on another institution that has become split in two as a result of the former president: the American evangelical movement.

book cover for The Land of Hope and Fear

The Land of Hope and Fear by Isabel Kershner

Published months before the Israel-Hamas war, this book by a longtime correspondent in Jerusalem presents a complicated portrait of the many communities and faiths that constitute Israel three-quarters of a century into its existence.

book cover for Liliana’s Invincible Summer

Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza

In 1990, Rivera Garza’s 20-year-old sister was murdered in Mexico. That case is the inspiration and launching point for this memoir, a personal and cultural look at femicide in Mexico.

Lives of the Wives by Carmela Ciuraru

The relationships at the center of Ciuraru’s lively and absorbing new literary history vary widely, but are united by questions of ego and agency, competition and resentment.

A Living Remedy by Nicole Chung

Chung’s powerful second memoir is a look at family, illness and grief, and the way systemic issues like access to health care, capitalism and racism exacerbate loss.

book cover for Master Slave Husband Wife

Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo

Woo’s book recounts a daring feat: the successful flight north from Georgia in 1848 by an enslaved couple disguised as a sickly young white planter and his male slave. But her meticulous retelling is equally a feat — of research, storytelling, sympathy and insight.

Monsters by Claire Dederer

“Everyone alive is either canceled or about to be canceled,” writes the author of this sometimes maddening, always challenging meditation on polarizing cultural figures (Nabokov, Polanski, et al.) and the struggle to reconcile great art with the misdeeds of its creators.

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

“I’m the greatest star!” the 21-year-old actress defiantly sang in Broadway’s 1964 hit “Funny Girl.” Nearly six decades later, over 992 pages, Streisand chronicles how she delivered on that promise, a rocket ride from Brooklyn to Malibu.

book cover for The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley by David Waldstreicher

A beautiful and cogently argued biography offers a radical new vision of the life and work of colonial America’s brilliant Black female poet.

Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe

In this volume of 248 numbered notes, Sharpe assembles memories and insights, artifacts and artworks, balancing the persistence of racism and brutality with a rich variety of Black life.

Oscar Wars by Michael Schulman

A deeply researched and compulsively readable history digs into the scandal-soaked history of the Academy Awards.

Our Migrant Souls by Héctor Tobar

Tobar, a longtime journalist, delivers a kaleidoscopic account of Latino American experience, dispelling stereotypes and underscoring diversity in prose that is by turns lyrical, outraged, scholarly and affectingly personal.

Pageboy by Elliot Page

The Oscar-nominated actor offers a brutally honest account of child stardom, the pressure to conform in Hollywood and, ultimately, the announcement of his gender transition in 2020.

Poverty, by America by Matthew Desmond

The central claim of this manifesto by the Princeton sociologist is that poverty in the United States is the product not only of larger economic shifts, but of choices and actions by more fortunate Americans.

book cover for The Rediscovery of America

The Rediscovery of America by Ned Blackhawk

This ambitious retelling of the American story, by a historian who is also a Native American, places Indigenous populations at the center, a shift in perspective that yields fresh insights and thought-provoking questions.

The Rigor of Angels by William Egginton

Challenging, ambitious and elegant, this mind-expanding book explores nothing less than “the ultimate nature of reality” through the work of three figures: the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, the German quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg and the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant.

Schoenberg by Harvey Sachs

Sachs has written well for decades about conventional classical music. This impassioned defense of Arnold Schoenberg — creator of some of the most challenging music ever — might seem surprising from him, but Schoenberg’s life was one of the 20th century’s great narratives.

Sink by Joseph Earl Thomas

The lush prose of this memoir perfectly suits the author’s tender, teeming boyhood imagination, in which video-game and manga characters offered more guidance than volatile adults did. Most remarkable is Thomas’s matter-of-fact depiction of the daily depredations he faced without losing his spirit or his abundant creative gifts.

The Slip by Prudence Peiffer

From Ellsworth Kelly to Agnes Martin to Robert Indiana, a group of scrappy artists gathered in illegal studios at the tip of Lower Manhattan in the 1950s, trying to provide an answer to Abstract Expressionism. This group biography reflects the excitement of those years — and our debt to them.

Some People Need Killing by Patricia Evangelista

In powerful, gripping prose, a Philippine journalist recounts her investigation into the campaign of extrajudicial murders under former President Rodrigo Duterte.

Spoken Word by Joshua Bennett

Bennett’s engaging history of a literary and cultural movement that took hold in many realms — including music, theater, film, television and, of course, poetry — tracks its evolution from the earliest days of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Lower East Side to the first iterations of slam poetry and beyond.

A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell

O’Connell brings literary flourish and a philosophical bent to this investigation of an infamous and confounding Irish murder case.

Time’s Echo by Jeremy Eichler

This cultural history takes up works by Schoenberg, Britten, Shostakovich and Richard Strauss that reflect on World War II and the Holocaust, urging listeners to consider the link between music and remembrance.

The Undertow by Jeff Sharlet

Anxious about America’s political divides, and fearful that they presage the end of the union, Sharlet spent a year speaking with conservative pastors, gun fanatics and QAnon adherents, among others. The result is an eloquent cri de coeur by a writer struggling to meet political and moral unreason with compassion and grace.

Unscripted by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

This jaw-dropping chronicle by two Times reporters of the final years of Sumner Redstone, the head of Paramount, is an epic tale of toxic wealth and greed populated by connivers and manipulators, not least Redstone himself.

Up Home by Ruth J. Simmons

Simmons’s evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of 12 children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with tenderness and dignity.

The Wager by David Grann

After the H.M.S. Wager was shipwrecked off the coast of Patagonia in 1742, surviving crew members returned to England with dramatic — and starkly conflicting — tales about what had transpired. Grann recreates the voyage in all its enthralling horror.

book cover for Waiting to Be Arrested at Night

Waiting to Be Arrested at Night by Tahir Hamut Izgil

Offering a rare glimpse into the life and culture of China’s brutally persecuted Muslim Uyghur minority, this eloquent memoir by a poet who escaped with his family to the United States (and translated by Joshua L. Freeman) unfolds a horror story with calm restraint.

What An Owl Knows by Jennifer Ackerman

There are some 260 species of owls spread across every continent except Antarctica, and in this fascinating book, Ackerman explains why the birds are both naturally wondrous and culturally significant.

Wifedom by Anna Funder

Even George Orwell, whose dealings with women were often problematic, admitted that he behaved badly toward his first wife, Eileen O’Shaughnessy. This book focuses on O’Shaughnessy, and combines her story with a bravura analysis of female invisibility.

book cover for You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live

You Have to Be Prepared to Die Before You Can Begin to Live by Paul Kix

The 1963 campaign to integrate Birmingham, Ala., led to shocking brutality: youths blasted by fire hoses and set upon by snarling police dogs. Kix, a journalist, weaves those images into a harrowing narrative of a crucial juncture in the civil rights movement.

Share full article

To help us provide you with free impartial advice, we may earn a commission if you buy through links on our site. Learn more

Home & garden

The best biographies to read in 2023

Nik Rawlinson

Discover what inspired some of history’s most familiar names with these comprehensive biographies

The best biographies can be inspirational, can provide important life lessons – and can warn us off a dangerous path. They’re also a great way to learn more about important figures in history, politics, business and entertainment. That’s because the best biographies not only reveal what a person did with their life, but what effect it had and, perhaps most importantly, what inspired them to act as they did.

Where both a biography and an autobiography exist, you might be tempted to plump for the latter, assuming you’d get a more accurate and in-depth telling of the subject’s life story. While that may be true, it isn’t always the case. It’s human nature to be vain, and who could blame a celebrity or politician if they covered up their embarrassments and failures when committing their lives to paper? A biographer, so long as they have the proof to back up their claims, may have less incentive to spare their subject’s blushes, and thus produce a more honest account – warts and all.

That said, we’ve steered clear of the sensational in selecting the best biographies for you. Rather, we’ve focused on authoritative accounts of notable names, in each case written some time after their death, when a measured, sober assessment of their actions and impact can be given.

Best biographies: At a glance

Best literary biography: Agatha Christie: A Very Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley | £20
Best showbiz biography: Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood | £6.78
Best political biography: Hitler by Ian Kershaw | £14

How to choose the best biography for you

There are so many biographies to choose from that it can be difficult knowing which to choose. This is especially true when there are several competing titles focused on the same subject. Try asking yourself these questions.

Is the author qualified?

Wikipedia contains potted biographies of every notable figure you could ever want to read about. So, if you’re going to spend several hours with a novel-sized profile it must go beyond the basics – and you want to be sure that the author knows what they’re talking about.

That doesn’t mean they need to have been personally acquainted with the subject, as Jasper Rees was with Victoria Wood. Ian Kershaw never met Adolf Hitler (he was, after all, just two years old when Hitler killed himself), but he published his first works on the subject in the late 1980s, has advised on BBC documentaries about the Second World War, and is an acknowledged expert on the Nazi era. It’s no surprise, then, that his biography of the dictator is extensive, comprehensive and acclaimed.

Is there anything new to say?

What inspires someone to write a biography – particularly of someone whose life has already been documented? Sometimes it can be the discovery of new facts, perhaps through the uncovering of previously lost material or the release of papers that had been suppressed on the grounds of national security. But equally, it may be because times have changed so much that the context of previous biographies is no longer relevant. Attitudes, in particular, evolve with time, and what might have been considered appropriate behaviour in the 1950s would today seem discriminatory or shocking. So, an up-to-date biography that places the subject’s actions and motivations within a modern context can make it a worthwhile read, even if you’ve read an earlier work already.

Does it look beyond the subject?

The most comprehensive biographies place their subject in context – and show how that context affected their outlook and actions or is reflected in their work. Lucy Worsley’s new biography of Agatha Christie is a case in point, referencing Christie’s works to show how real life influenced her fiction. Mathew Parker’s Goldeneye does the same for Bond author Ian Fleming – and in doing so, both books enlarge considerably on the biography’s core subject.

READ NEXT: Best reading lights to brighten up your page

1. Let’s Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood by Jasper Rees: Best showbiz biography

Price: £6.78 | Buy now from Amazon

It’s hardly surprising Victoria Wood never got around to writing her own autobiography. Originator of countless sketches, songs, comedy series, films, plays, documentaries and a sitcom, she kept pushing back the mammoth job of chronicling her life until it was too late. Wood’s death in 2016 came as a surprise to many, with the entertainer taking her final bow in private at the end of a battle with cancer she had fought away from the public eye.

In the wake of her death, her estate approached journalist Jasper Rees, who had interviewed her on many occasions, with the idea of writing the story that Wood had not got around to writing herself. With their backing, Rees’ own encounters with Wood, and the comic’s tape-recorded notes to go on, the result is a chunky, in-depth, authoritative account of her life. It seems unlikely that Wood could have written it more accurately – nor more fully – herself.

Looking back, it’s easy to forget that Wood wasn’t a constant feature on British TV screens, that whole years went by when her focus would be on writing or performing on stage, or even that her career had a surprisingly slow start after a lonely childhood in which television was a constant companion. This book reminds us of those facts – and that Wood wasn’t just a talented performer, but a hard worker, too, who put in the hours required to deliver the results.

Let’s Do It, which takes its title from a lyric in one of Wood’s best-known songs, The Ballad of Barry & Freda, is a timely reminder that there are two sides to every famous character: one public and one private. It introduces us to the person behind the personality, and shows how the character behind the characters for which she is best remembered came to be.

Key specs – Length: 592 pages; Publisher: Trapeze; ISBN: 978-1409184119

Let's Do It: The Authorised Biography of Victoria Wood

2. the chief: the life of lord northcliffe, britain’s greatest press baron by andrew roberts: best business biography.

Lord Northcliffe wasn’t afraid of taking risks – many of which paid off handsomely. He founded a small paper called Answers to Correspondents, branched out into comics, and bought a handful of newspapers. Then he founded the Daily Mail, and applied what he’d learned in running his smaller papers on a far grander scale. The world of publishing – in Britain and beyond – was never the same again. The Daily Mail was a huge success, which led to the founding of the Daily Mirror, primarily for women, and his acquisition of the Observer, Times and Sunday Times.

By then, Northcliffe controlled almost half of Britain’s daily newspaper circulation. Nobody before him had ever enjoyed such reach – or such influence over the British public – as he did through his titles. This gave him sufficient political clout to sway the direction of government in such fundamental areas as the establishment of the Irish Free State and conscription in the run-up to the First World War. He was appointed to head up Britain’s propaganda operation during the conflict, and in this position he became a target for assassination, with a German warship shelling his home in Broadstairs. Beyond publishing, he was ahead of many contemporaries in understanding the potential of aviation as a force for good, as a result of which he funded several highly valuable prizes for pioneers in the field.

He achieved much in his 57 years, as evidenced by this biography, but suffered both physical and mental ill health towards the end. The empire that he built may have fragmented since his passing, with the Daily Mirror, Observer, Times and Sunday Times having left the group that he founded, but his influence can still be felt. For anyone who wants to understand how and why titles like the Daily Mail became so successful, The Chief is an essential read.

Key specs – Length: 556 pages; Publisher: Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 978-1398508712

The Chief: The Life of Lord Northcliffe Britain's Greatest Press Baron

3. goldeneye by matthew parker: best biography for cinema fans.

The name Goldeneye is synonymous with James Bond. It was the title of both a film and a video game, a fictional super weapon, a real-life Second World War plan devised by author Ian Fleming, and the name of the Jamaican estate where he wrote one Bond book every year between 1952 and his death in 1964. The Bond film makers acknowledged this in 2021’s No Time To Die, making that estate the home to which James Bond retired, just as his creator had done at the end of the war, 75 years earlier.

Fleming had often talked of his plan to write the spy novel to end all spy novels once the conflict was over, and it’s at Goldeneye that he fulfilled that ambition. Unsurprisingly, many of his experiences there found their way into his prose and the subsequent films, making this biography as much a history of Bond itself as it is a focused retelling of Fleming’s life in Jamaica. It’s here, we learn, that Fleming first drinks a Vesper at a neighbour’s house. Vesper later became a character in Casino Royale and, in the story, Bond devises a drink to fit the name. Fleming frequently ate Ackee fish while in residence; the phonetically identical Aki was an important character in You Only Live Twice.

Parker finds more subtle references, too, observing that anyone who kills a bird or owl in any of the Bond stories suffers the spy’s wrath. This could easily be overlooked, but it’s notable, and logical: Fleming had a love of birds, and Bond himself was named after the ornithologist James Bond, whose book was on Fleming’s shelves at Goldeneye.

So this is as much the biography of a famous fictional character as it is of an author, and of the house that he occupied for several weeks every year. So much of Fleming’s life at Goldeneye influenced his work that this is an essential read for any Bond fan – even if you’ve already read widely on the subject and consider yourself an aficionado. Parker’s approach is unusual, but hugely successful, and the result is an authoritative, wide-ranging biography about one of this country’s best-known authors, his central character, an iconic location and a country in the run-up to – and immediately following – its independence from Britain.

Key specs – Length: 416 pages; Publisher: Windmill Books; ISBN: 978-0099591740

Goldeneye: Where Bond was Born: Ian Fleming's Jamaica

4. hitler by ian kershaw: best political biography.

The latter portion of Adolf Hitler’s life, from his coming to power in 1933 to his suicide in 1945, is minutely documented, and known to a greater or lesser degree by anyone who has passed through secondary education. But what of his earlier years? How did this overlooked art student become one of the most powerful and destructive humans ever to have existed? What were his influences? What was he like?

Kershaw has the answers. This door stopper, which runs to more than 1,000 pages, is an abridged compilation of two earlier works: Hitler 1889 – 1936: Hubris, and Hitler 1936 – 1946: Nemesis. Yet, abridged though it may be, it remains extraordinarily detailed, and the research shines through. Kershaw spends no time warming his engines: Hitler is born by page three, to a social-climbing father who had changed the family name to something less rustic than it had been. As Kershaw points out, “Adolf can be believed when he said that nothing his father had done pleased him so much as to drop the coarsely rustic name of Schicklgruber. ‘Heil Schicklgruber’ would have sounded an unlikely salutation to a national hero.”

There’s no skimping on context, either, with each chapter given space to explore the political, economic and social influences on Hitler’s development and eventual emergence as leader. Kershaw pinpoints 1924 as the year that “can be seen as the time when, like a phoenix arising from the ashes, Hitler could begin his emergence from the ruins of the broken and fragmented volkisch movement to become eventually the absolute leader with total mastery over a reformed, organisationally far stronger, and internally more cohesive Nazi Party”. For much of 1924, Hitler was in jail, working on Mein Kampf and, by the point of his release, the movement to which he had attached himself had been marginalised. Few could have believed that it – and he – would rise again and take over first Germany, then much of Europe. Here, you’ll find out how it happened.

If you’re looking for an authoritative, in-depth biography of one of the most significant figures in modern world history, this is it. Don’t be put off by its length: it’s highly readable, and also available as an audiobook which, although it runs to 44 hours, can be sped up to trim the overall running time.

Key specs – Length: 1,072 pages; Publisher: Penguin; ISBN: 978-0141035888

5. Stalin’s Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow by Deyan Sudjic: Best historical biography

Boris Iofan died in 1976, but his influence can still be felt today – in particular, through the architectural influences evident in many mid-century buildings across Eastern Europe. Born in Odessa in 1891, he trained in architecture and, upon returning to Russia after time spent in Western Europe, gained notoriety for designing the House on the Embankment, a monumental block-wide building containing more than 500 flats, plus the shops and other facilities required to service them.

“Iofan’s early success was based on a sought-after combination of characteristics: he was a member of the Communist Party who was also an accomplished architect capable of winning international attention,” writes biographer Deyan Sudjic. “He occupied a unique position as a bridge between the pre-revolutionary academicians… and the constructivist radicals whom the party saw as bringing much-needed international attention and prestige but never entirely trusted. His biggest role was to give the party leadership a sense of what Soviet architecture could be – not in a theoretical sense or as a drawing, which they would be unlikely to understand, but as a range of built options that they could actually see.”

Having established himself, much of the rest of his life was spent working on his designs for the Palace of the Soviets, which became grander and less practical with every iteration. This wasn’t entirely Iofan’s fault. He had become a favourite of the party elite, and of Stalin himself, who added to the size and ambition of the intended building over the years. Eventually, the statue of Lenin that was destined to stand atop its central tower would have been over 300ft tall, and would have had an outstretched index finger 14ft long. There was a risk that this would freeze in the winter, and the icicles that dropped from it would have been a significant danger to those going into and out of the building below it.

Although construction work began, the Palace of the Soviets was never completed. Many of Iofan’s other buildings remain, though, and his pavilions for the World Expos in Paris and New York are well documented – in this book as well as elsewhere. Lavishly illustrated, it recounts Iofan’s life and examines his work in various stages, from rough outline, through technical drawing, to photographs of completed buildings – where they exist.

Key specs – Length: 320 pages; Publisher: Thames and Hudson; ISBN: 978-0500343555

Stalin's Architect: Power and Survival in Moscow

6. agatha christie: a very elusive woman by lucy worsley: best literary biography.

Agatha Christie died in 1976 but, with more than 70 novels and 150 short stories to her name, she remains one of the best-selling authors of all time. A new biography from historian Lucy Worsley is therefore undoubtedly of interest. It’s comprehensive and highly readable – and opinionated – with short chapters that make it easy to dip into and out of on a break.

Worsley resists the temptation to skip straight to the books. Poirot doesn’t appear until chapter 11 with publication of The Mysterious Affair at Styles, which Christie wrote while working in a Torquay hospital. Today, Poirot is so well known, not only from the books but from depictions in film and television, that it’s easy to overlook how groundbreaking the character was upon his arrival.

As Worsley explains, “by choosing to make Hercule Poirot a foreigner, and a refugee as well, Agatha created the perfect detective for an age when everyone was growing surfeited with soldiers and action heroes. He’s so physically unimpressive that no-one expects Poirot to steal the show. Rather like a stereotypical woman, Poirot cannot rely upon brawn to solve problems, for he has none. He has to use brains instead… There’s even a joke in his name. Hercules, of course, is a muscular classical hero, but Hercule Poirot has a name like himself: diminutive, fussy, camp, and Agatha would show Poirot working in a different way to [Sherlock] Holmes.” Indeed, where Holmes rolls around on the floor picking up cigar ash in his first published case, Poirot, explains Worsley, does not stoop to gather clues: he needs only his little grey cells. Worsley’s approach is thorough and opinionated, and has resulted not only in a biography of Christie herself, but also her greatest creations, which will appeal all the more to the author’s fans.

As with Matthew Parker’s Goldeneye, there’s great insight here into what influenced Christie’s work, and Worsley frequently draws parallels between real life events and episodes, characters or locations in her novels. As a result of her experiences as a medical volunteer during the First World War, for example, during which a rigid hierarchy persisted and the medics behaved shockingly, doctors became the most common culprit in her books; the names of real people found their way into her fiction; and on one occasion Christie assembled what today might be called a focus group to underpin a particular plot point.

Worsley is refreshingly opinionated and, where events in the author’s life take centre stage, doesn’t merely re-state the facts, but investigates Christie’s motivations to draw her own conclusions. This is particularly the case in the chapters examining Christie’s disappearance in 1926, which many previous biographers have portrayed as an attempt to frame her husband for murder. Worsley’s own investigation leads to alternative conclusions, which seem all the more plausible today, when society has a better understanding of – and is more sympathetic towards – the effects of psychological distress.

Key specs – Length: 432 pages; Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton; ISBN: 978-1529303889

Buy now from Waterstones

You have exceeded your limit for simultaneous device logins.

Your current subscription allows you to be actively logged in on up to three (3) devices simultaneously. click on continue below to log out of other sessions and log in on this device., best memoir & biography of 2023.

The best memoirs and biographies of 2023 have three traits in common: they’re insightful, evocative, and direct.

Chin’s memoir is a book of dizzying, disturbing contrasts, inspired by the ways her parents’ and grandparents’ oral histories were elided by her school’s textbooks. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 kept her Chinese family from gaining U.S. citizenship for six decades, but the nation welcomed their backbreaking labor. There’s love and unity within the New York City building where many of her ancestors lived, and evidence of blunt racism outside of it.

Dixon’s sensory, evocative memoir displays an angle of loneliness as she openly talks about her own moments of solitude and isolation, through moving stories written in the lyrical language for which the award-winning poet is known. But there’s also beauty and power in her conclusion that loneliness is a shared experience, which could be a life-altering revelation for many.

Award-winning Eig’s latest biography is unprecedented in the way it portrays Martin Luther King Jr. What’s different is his close examination of declassified FBI files, tons of archival material, and personally conducted interviews that uncover the intimate complexities of King, the person. Its nearly 700 pages read like a novel, and Eig isn’t afraid to show that the man many put on a pedestal was human. This is the best definitive biography about King to date.

Graybeal’s book focuses on how her rare genetic connective-tissue disorder affects her daily life. She spills her emotions on the page as she is forced to navigate through life with chronic pain, little to no support, and obstacles from an unaccommodating world. So fine is this offering that readers will want more works by this debut memoirist.

Adoption, the meaning of family, secrets, and the right to know one’s origins are major themes of this riveting memoir about Ito’s closed adoption and quest for answers. She knows only that her birth mother is Japanese American, and her father is white. She eventually finds and meets her mother, only to then grapple with the ups, downs, and conflicting needs of their relationship.

Pulitzer Prize winner Nguyen told LJ that he wasn’t drawn to the memoir genre, but readers will feel he’s treated them with one that’s far different from others. He plays with font sizes and how words are arranged on the page, while on the periphery of his stories about fleeing Vietnam with his family and becoming refugees in the United States are observations about politics, war, immigration, and mental health.

Semenya, Caster. The Race To Be Myself: A Memoir. Norton. ISBN 9781324035770.

World-champion track star Semenya understandably takes an unapologetic, un-flinching tone when she describes all she’s endured to prove that she lives as a woman. She’s had to expose, literally and figuratively, her body to sports officials due to her naturally high testosterone levels and other features she’s had since birth. Her memoir screams of the unfairness inherent in elite sporting competitions and asks readers to look within at their own biases.

Poet Sinclair, whom Rita Dove called her literary heir, flexes her prose muscles in this entrancing memoir about her upbringing in a Rastafarian household in Jamaica. She writes about colonialism and her reggae musician father, who thinks women should obey strict guidelines to fend off the corrupting Western world. But Sinclair doesn’t demonize him; she understands his wish for her to be “the perfect daughter” but refuses to let go of her dreams. An inspiring read seasoned with wordsmith expertise.

Award-winning poet Smith’s memoir is, in a word, art. Sometimes written in first-person, sometimes third, sometimes in verse and other times in prose, it serves as a master class on how to write about the end of a marriage and the embrace and practice of self-love. Smith’s real-life reinvention is beautifully conveyed on the page. It will take readers through an emotional landscape.

Novelist Wheatle brilliantly tackles non-fiction in this memoir that demonstrates the healing power of music. The medicinal sounds and salvation come from reggae legends as Wheatle faces racism, physical and sexual abuse, and police brutality, after his parents abandoned him when he was a baby, and he was placed in the British foster care system. His discovery that he has Jamaican heritage is a wonderful full-circle moment for Wheatle and for readers.

Get Print. Get Digital. Get Both!

Add comment :-, comment policy:.

Be respectful, and do not attack the author, people mentioned in the article, or other commenters. Take on the idea, not the messenger.
Don't use obscene, profane, or vulgar language.
Stay on point. Comments that stray from the topic at hand may be deleted.
Comments may be republished in print, online, or other forms of media.
If you see something objectionable, please let us know. Once a comment has been flagged, a staff member will investigate.

First Name should not be empty !!!

Last Name should not be empty !!!

email should not be empty !!!

Comment should not be empty !!!

You should check the checkbox.

Please check the reCaptcha

Ethan Smith

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Posted 6 hours ago REPLY

Jane Fitgzgerald

Posted 6 hours ago

Michael Woodward

Libraries are always evolving. Stay ahead. Log In.

Added To Cart

Related , fabulous first impressions | top 10 book covers of the year, best pop fiction of 2023, best crime fiction of 2023, best sf/fantasy of 2023, best horror of 2023, best romance of 2023, "what is this" design thinking from an lis student.

Run Your Week: Big Books, Sure Bets & Titles Making News | July 17 2018

Materials on Hand | Materials Handling

LGBTQ Collection Donated to Vancouver Archives

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, --> Log In

You did not sign in correctly or your account is temporarily disabled

REGISTER FREE to keep reading

If you are already a member, please log in.

Passwords must include at least 8 characters.

Your password must include at least three of these elements: lower case letters, upper case letters, numbers, or special characters.

The email you entered already exists. Please reset your password to gain access to your account.

Create a Password to complete your registration. Get access to:

Uncommon insight and timely information

Thousands of book reviews

Blogs, expert opinion, and thousands of articles

Research reports, data analysis, -->