Year-End Lists

Foreign Affairs: The Best of Books 2023

Editors' Picks

• Against the World

  Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars
  Tara Zahra
• Judgment at Tokyo

  World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia
  Gary J. Bass
• The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism
  Martin Wolf

Political and Legal

• Human Rights for Pragmatists

  Social Power in Modern Times
  Jack Snyder
• Geopolitics and Democracy

  The Western Liberal Order from Foundation to Fracture
  Peter Trubowitz & Brian Burgoon
• The Project-State and Its Rivals

  A New History of the Twentieth and Twenty-first Centuries
  Charles S. Maier

• The Economic Government of the World

  1933-2023
  Martin Daunton
• The Corporation and the Twentieth Century

  The History of American Business Enterprise
  Richard N. Langlois
• Chip War

  The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology
  Chris Miller

Military and Scientific and Technological

• Armada

  The Spanish Enterprise and England’s Deliverance in 1588
  Colin Martin & Geoffrey Parker
• Spies

  The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West
  Calder Walton
• Road to Surrender

  Three Men and the Countdown to the End of World War II
  Evan Thomas

The United States

• King

  A Life
  Jonathan Eig
• Dying by the Sword

  The Militarization of US Foreign Policy
  Monica Duffy Toft and Sidita Kushi
• Pandemic Politics

  The Deadly Toll of Partisanship in the Age of COVID
  Shana Kushner Gadarian, Sara Wallace Goodman, Thomas B. Pepinsky

Western Europe

• Democracy Erodes from the Top

  Leaders, Citizens, and the Challenge of Populism in Europe
  Larry M. Bartels
• Keeping friends closer

  Why the EU should address new geoeconomic realities and get its neighbours back in the fold
  various authors
• Tainted Democracy

  Viktor Orbán and the Subversion of Hungary
  Zsuzsanna Szelényi

Western Hemisphere

• The Rebel Scribe

  Carleton Beals and the Progressive Challenge to U.S. Policy in Latin America
  Christopher Neal
• Cooperating with the Colossus

  A Social and Political History of US Military Bases in World War II Latin America
  Rebecca Herman
• Solito

  A Memoir
  Javier Zamora

Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Republics

• On the Edge

  Life along the Russia-China Border
  Franck Billé and Caroline Humphrey
• German Blood, Slavic Soil

  How Nazi Königsberg Became Soviet Kaliningrad
  Nicole Eaton
• Intermarriage and the Friendship of Peoples

  Ethnic Mixing in Soviet Central Asia
  Adrienne Edgar

Middle East

• A New Vision for Islamic Pasts and Futures
  Shahzad Bashir
• Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East

  Deception, Disinformation and Social Media
  Marc Owen Jones
• Locked Out of Development

  Insiders and Outsiders in Arab Capitalism
  Steffen Hertog

Asia and Pacific

• Dictatorship and Information

  Authoritarian Regime Resilience in Communist Europe and China
  Martin K. Dimitrov
• How Asia Found Herself

  A Story of Intercultural Understanding
  Nile Green
• The Rise and Fall of the East

  How Exams, Autocracy, Stability, and Technology Brought China Success, and why They Might Lead to Its Decline
  Yasheng Huang

Africa

• The Scarce State

  Inequality and Political Power in the Hinterland
  Noah L. Nathan
• History of South Africa

  From 1902 to the Present
  Thula Simpson
• The Lumumba Plot

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