Year-End Lists

The New York Times Book Review: 100 Notable Books of 2018

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

Fiction & Poetry

• An American Marriage
  Tayari Jones
• Asymmetry
  Lisa Halliday
• Brown
  Kevin Young
• Cherry
  Nico Walker
• Crudo
  Olivia Laing
• Early Work
  Andrew Martin
• Eternal Life
  Dara Horn
• Everything Under
  Daisy Johnson
• The Female Persuasion
  Meg Wolitzer
• Freshwater
  Akwaeke Emezi
• Friday Black
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• The Friend
  Sigrid Nunez
• Go, Went, Gone
  Jenny Erpenbeck
• The Great Believers
  Rebecca Makkai
• The House of Broken Angels
  Luis Alberto Urrea
• Immigrant, Montana
  Amitava Kumar
• Improvement
  Joan Silber
• In Every Moment We Still Are Alive
  Tom Malmquist
• The Kites
  Romain Gary
• Kudos
  Rachel Cusk
• Lake Success
  Gary Shteyngart
• The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
  Denis Johnson
• Last Stories
  William Trevor
• Macbeth
  Jo Nesbø
• The Mars Room
  Rachel Kushner
• Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
  Dorthe Nors
• My Struggle

  Book 6
  Karl Ove Knausgaard
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• The Neighborhood
  Mario Vargas Llosa
• The Odyssey
  Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
• Only to Sleep

  A Philip Marlowe Novel
  Lawrence Osborne
• The Overstory
  Richard Powers
• The Parking Lot Attendant
  Nafkote Tamirat
• The Perfect Nanny
  Leila Slimani
• A Princess in Theory
  Alyssa Cole
• Property
  Lionel Shriver
• Pure Hollywood
  Christine Schutt
• Sabrina
  Nick Drnaso
• Severance
  Ling Ma
• Slave Old Man
  Patrick Chamoiseau
• The Sparsholt Affair
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Spinning Silver
  Naomi Novik
• A State of Freedom
  Neel Mukherjee
• There There
  Tommy Orange
• A View of the Empire at Sunset
  Caryl Phillips
• Wade in the Water
  Tracy K. Smith
• Warlight
  Michael Ondaatje
• Washington Black
  Esi Edugyan
• The Witch Elm
  Tana French
• Your Duck Is My Duck
  Deborah Eisenberg

Nonfiction

• Ali

  A Life
  Jonathan Eig
• American Dialogue

  The Founders and Us
  Joseph J. Ellis
• American Eden

  David Hosack, Botany and Medicine in the Garden of the Early Republic
  Victoria Johnson
• American Prison

  A Reporter’s Undercover Journey Into the Business of Punishment
  Shane Bauer
• Amity and Prosperity

  One Family and the Fracturing of America
  Eliza Griswold
• Arthur Ashe

  A Life
  Raymond Arsenault
• Bad Blood

  Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
  John Carreyrou
• Boom Town

  The Fantastical Saga of Oklahoma City, Its Chaotic Founding, Its Apocalyptic Weather, Its Purloined Basketball Team, and the Dream of Becoming a World-Class Metropolis
  Sam Anderson
• Brothers of the Gun

  A Memoir of the Syrian War
  Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple
• Calypso
  David Sedaris
• Churchill

  Walking With Destiny
  Andrew Roberts
• The Coddling of the American Mind

  How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
  Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt
• The Cost of Living

  A Working Autobiography
  Deborah Levy
• Crashed

  How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World
  Adam Tooze
• The Darkening Age

  The Christian Destruction of the Classical World
  Catherine Nixey
• Dead Girls

  Essays on Surviving an American Obsession
  Alice Bolin
• The Dinosaur Artist

  Obsession, Betrayal, and the Quest for Earth’s Ultimate Trophy
  Paige Williams
• Dopesick

  Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America
  Beth Macy
• Educated
  Tara Westover
• Enlightenment Now

  The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
  Steven Pinker
• Fatal Discord

  Erasmus, Luther and the Fight for the Western Mind
  Michael Massing
• Feel Free
  Zadie Smith
• The Field of Blood

  Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War
  Joanne B. Freeman
• The Fifth Risk
  Michael Lewis
• Fly Girls

  How Five Daring Women Defied All Odds and Made Aviation History
  Keith O’Brien
• Frederick Douglass

  Prophet of Freedom
  David W. Blight
• Gandhi

  The Years That Changed the World, 1914-1948
  Ramachandra Guha
• God Save Texas

  A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State
  Lawrence Wright
• Heavy

  An American Memoir
  Kiese Laymon
• How to Change Your Mind

  What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
  Michael Pollan
• In Pieces
  Sally Field
• Into the Raging Sea

  Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
  Rachel Slade
• The Library Book
  Susan Orlean
• Looking for Lorraine

  The Radiant and Radical Life of Lorraine Hansberry
  Imani Perry
• Ninety-Nine Glimpses of Princess Margaret
  Craig Brown
• No Ashes in the Fire

  Coming of Age Black and Free in America
  Darnell L. Moore
• No Turning Back

  Life, Loss, and Hope in Wartime Syria
  Rania Abouzeid
• Patriot Number One

  American Dreams in Chinatown
  Lauren Hilgers
• The Poison Squad

  One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
  Deborah Blum
• Rise and Kill First

  The Secret History of Israel’s Targeted Assassinations
  Ronen Bergman
• She Has Her Mother’s Laugh

  The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity
  Carl Zimmer
• Small Fry
  Lisa Brennan-Jobs
• The Souls of Yellow Folk
  Wesley Yang
• The Tangled Tree

  A Radical New History of Life
  David Quammen
• There Will Be No Miracles Here
  Casey Gerald
• These Truths

  A History of the United States
  Jill Lepore
• We the Corporations

  How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
  Adam Winkler
• What the Eyes Don’t See

  A Story of Crisis, Resistance, and Hope in an American City
  Mona Hanna-Attisha
• Why Comics?

  From Underground to Everywhere
  Hillary Chute
• Winners Take All

  The Elite Charade of Changing the World
  Anand Giridharadas