Year-End Lists

The San Francisco Chronicle: 100 Recommended Books of 2018

[see also Favorite Books of 2022 • Top 10 Books of 2018 • 100 Recommended Books of 2016 • Top 10 Books of 2016 • Top 10 Books of 2015]

Nonfiction

• Anne Frank's Diary

  The Graphic Adaptation
  Ari Folman (adapter)
• Arthur Ashe

  A Life
  Raymond Arsenault
• Bad Blood

  Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
  John Carreyrou
• Becoming
  Michelle Obama
• Belonging

  A German Reckons with History and Home
  Nora Krug
• The Billionaire Raj

  A Journey Through India's New Gilded Age
  James Crabtree
• 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
• Born to Be Posthumous

  The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey
  Mark Dery
• Broad Band

  The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet
  Claire L. Evans
• The Browns of California

  The Family Dynasty that Transformed a State and Shaped a Nation
  Miriam Pawel
• Bruce Lee

  A Life
  Matthew Polly
• Call Them by Their True Names

  American Crises (and Essays)
  Rebecca Solnit
• Calypso
  David Sedaris
• No Immediate Danger

  Volume One of Carbon Ideologies
  William T. Vollmann
• No Good Alternative

  Volume Two of Carbon Ideologies
  William T. Vollmann
• Carleton Watkins

  Making the West American
  Tyler Green
• The Death of Truth

  Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump
  Michiko Kakutani
• Educated
  Tara Westover
• Empire of Guns

  The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution
  Priya Satia
• The End of the End of the Earth
  Jonathan Franzen
• Essential Essays

  Culture, Politics, and the Art of Poetry
  Adrienne Rich
• Evolution of Desire

  A Life of René Girard
  Cynthia L Haven
• Fear

  Trump in the White House
  Bob Woodward
• Feel Free
  Zadie Smith
• The Fifth Risk
  Michael Lewis
• The Good Neighbor

  The Life and Work of Fred Rogers
  Maxwell King
• Harvey Milk

  His Lives and Death
  Lillian Faderman
• Heartland

  A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
  Sarah Smarsh
• Hippie Food

  How Back-to-the-Landers, Longhairs, and Revolutionaries Changed the Way We Eat
  Jonathan Kauffman
• How to Change Your Mind

  What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence
  Michael Pollan
• Hunting the Truth

  Memoirs of Beate and Serge Klarsfeld
  Beate Klarsfeld and Serge Klarsfeld
• I Will Be Complete
  Glen David Gold
• Inseparable

  The Original Siamese Twins and Their Rendezvous with American History
  Yunte Huang
• The Last Cowboys

  A Pioneer Family in the New West
  John Branch
• The Last Englishmen

  Love, War, and the End of Empire
  Deborah Baker
• Lessons from a Dark Time and Other Essays
  Adam Hochschild
• The Library Book
  Susan Orlean
• The Line Becomes a River

  Dispatches from the Border
  Francisco Cantú
• Loaded

  A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
• The Monarchy of Fear

  A Philosopher Looks at Our Political Crisis
  Martha C. Nussbaum
• The Monk of Mokha
  Dave Eggers
• Old In Art School

  A Memoir of Starting Over
  Nell Painter
• Our Story

  A Memoir of Love and Life in China
  Rao Pingru
• Patriot Number One

  American Dreams in Chinatown
  Lauren Hilgers
• Pogrom

  Kishinev and the Tilt of History
  Steven J. Zipperstein
• The Poisoned City

  Flint's Water and the American Urban Tragedy
  Anna Clark
• Reader, Come Home

  The Reading Brain in a Digital World
  Maryanne Wolf
• The Real Lolita

  The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World
  Sarah Weinman
• Retablos

  Stories From a Life Lived Along the Border
  Octavio Solis
• Robin
  Dave Itzkoff
• Sharp
  Michelle Dean
• Trumpocracy

  The Corruption of the American Republic
  David Frum
• Valley of Genius

  The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley
  Adam Fisher
• We the Corporations

  How American Businesses Won Their Civil Rights
  Adam Winkler
• What Are We Doing Here?
  Marilynne Robinson
• The White Darkness
  David Grann

Fiction and Poetry

• America Is Not the Heart
  Elaine Castillo
• An American Marriage
  Tayari Jones
• Awayland
  Ramona Ausubel
• Be With
  Forrest Gander
• Belly Up
  Rita Bullwinkel
• Brass
  Xhenet Aliu
• Come with Me
  Helen Schulman
• The Ensemble
  Aja Gabel
• Evening in Paradise
  Lucia Berlin
• Extra Hidden Life, among the Days
  Brenda Hillman
• The Female Persuasion
  Meg Wolitzer
• Fire Sermon
  Jamie Quatro
• Florida
  Lauren Groff
• French Exit
  Patrick deWitt
• Friday Black
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Fruit of the Drunken Tree
  Ingrid Rojas Contreras
• Godsend
  John Wray
• The Golden State
  Lydia Kiesling
• The Great Believers
  Rebecca Makkai
• Gun Love
  Jennifer Clement
• History of Violence
  Édouard Louis
• The House of Broken Angels
  Luis Alberto Urrea
• The Incendiaries
  R.O. Kwon
• Killing Commendatore
  Haruki Murakami
• Kudos
  Rachel Cusk
• Last Stories
  William Trevor
• Motherhood
  Sheila Heti
• My Ex-Life
  Stephen McCauley
• My Year of Rest and Relaxation
  Ottessa Moshfegh
• Oceanic
  Aimee Nezhukumatathil
• The Only Story
  Julian Barnes
• The Overstory
  Richard Powers
• The Sadness of Beautiful Things
  Simon Van Booy
• semiautomatic
  Evie Shockley
• The Shape of the Ruins
  Juan Gabriel Vásquez
• A Shout in the Ruins
  Kevin Powers
• Some Trick

  Thirteen Stories
  Helen DeWitt
• The Sparsholt Affair
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Transcription
  Kate Atkinson
• The Travelling Cat Chronicles
  Hiro Arikawa
• Unsheltered
  Barbara Kingsolver
• Wade in the Water
  Tracy K. Smith
• Washington Black
  Esi Edugyan
• White Houses
  Amy Bloom
• You Think It, I'll Say It
  Curtis Sittenfeld