Year-End Lists

Time Magazine: The 100 Must-Read Books of 2020

[see also The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2020 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the 2010s • The 10 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 • The 10 Best Fiction Books of 2019 • Best Books of 2018 • Top 20 Books of 2017]

• Actress
  Anne Enright
• The Address Book

  What Street Addresses Reveal About Identity, Race, Wealth, and Power
  Deirdre Mask
• African American Poetry

  250 Years of Struggle & Song
  Kevin Young (editor)
• Afterlife
  Julia Alvarez
• Agency
  William Gibson
• Begin Again

  James Baldwin's America and Its Urgent Lessons for Our Own
  Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
• Big Friendship

  How We Keep Each Other Close
  Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
• The Book of Eels

  Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World
  Patrik Svensson
• Breasts and Eggs
  Mieko Kawakami
• Brown Album

  Essays on Exile and Identity
  Porochista Khakpour
• A Burning
  Megha Majumdar
• Can't Even

  How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation
  Anne Helen Petersen
• Caste

  The Origins of Our Discontents
  Isabel Wilkerson
• A Children's Bible
  Lydia Millet
• The City We Became
  N.K. Jemisin
• Cleanness
  Garth Greenwell
• Conditional Citizens

  On Belonging in America
  Laila Lalami
• Crooked Hallelujah
  Kelli Jo Ford
• Culture Warlords

  My Journey Into the Dark Web of White Supremacy
  Talia Lavin
• Days of Distraction
  Alexandra Chang
• Deacon King Kong
  James McBride
• The Dead Are Arising

  The Life of Malcolm X
  Les Payne and Tamara Payne
• Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line
  Deepa Anappara
• The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
  Wayétu Moore
• Earthlings
  Sayaka Murata
• The End of White Politics

  How to Heal Our Liberal Divide
  Zerlina Maxwell
• Entangled Life

  How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures
  Merlin Sheldrake
• Enter the Aardvark
  Jessica Anthony
• Followers
  Megan Angelo
• A Girl is A Body of Water
  Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
• The Glass Hotel
  Emily St. John Mandel
• Golden Gates

  Fighting for Housing in America
  Conor Dougherty
• Having and Being Had
  Eula Biss
• Hidden Valley Road

  Inside the Mind of an American Family
  Robert Kolker
• His Only Wife
  Peace Adzo Medie
• Hitler: Downfall: 1939-1945
  Volker Ullrich
• Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick

  Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
  Zora Neale Hurston
• Homeland Elegies
  Ayad Akhtar
• Hood Feminism

  Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot
  Mikki Kendall
• How to Pronounce Knife
  Souvankham Thammavongsa
• I Don't Want to Die Poor
  Michael Arceneaux
• I Hold a Wolf by the Ears
  Laura van den Berg
• If I Had Your Face
  Frances Cha
• Interior Chinatown
  Charles Yu
• Intimations
  Zadie Smith
• Is Rape a Crime?

  A Memoir, an Investigation, and a Manifesto
  Michelle Bowdler
• Jack
  Marilynne Robinson
• Just Us

  An American Conversation
  Claudia Rankine
• Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982
  Cho Nam-Joo
• Leave the World Behind
  Rumaan Alam
• Let's Never Talk About This Again
  Sara Faith Alterman
• Luster
  Raven Leilani
• The Lying Life of Adults
  Elena Ferrante
• Memorial
  Bryan Washington
• Memorial Drive

  A Daughter's Memoir
  Natasha Trethewey
• Migrations
  Charlotte McConaghy
• Minor Feelings

  An Asian American Reckoning
  Cathy Park Hong
• The Mirror & the Light
  Hilary Mantel
• My Autobiography of Carson McCullers
  Jenn Shapland
• Nerve

  Adventures in the Science of Fear
  Eva Holland
• The Night Watchman
  Louise Erdrich
• Nights When Nothing Happened
  Simon Han
• Notes on a Silencing
  Lacy Crawford
• Obit
  Victoria Chang
• Oligarchy
  Scarlett Thomas
• One Mighty and Irresistible Tide

  The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965
  Jia Lynn Yang
• One to Watch
  Kate Stayman-London
• The Only Good Indians
  Stephen Graham Jones
• Open Book
  Jessica Simpson
• Party of Two
  Jasmine Guillory
• The Pink Line

  Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers
  Mark Gevisser
• Piranesi
  Susanna Clarke
• Postcolonial Love Poem
  Natalie Diaz
• The Purpose of Power

  How We Come Together When We Fall Apart
  Alicia Garza
• Reaganland

  America's Right Turn 1976-1980
  Rick Perlstein
• Recollections of My Nonexistence
  Rebecca Solnit
• Run Me to Earth
  Paul Yoon
• A Saint from Texas
  Edmund White
• Sex and Vanity
  Kevin Kwan
• She Come By It Natural

  Dolly Parton and the Women Who Lived Her Songs
  Sarah Smarsh
• Shuggie Bain
  Douglas Stuart
• The Splendid and the Vile

  A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
  Erik Larson
• The Sword and the Shield

  The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
  Peniel E. Joseph
• To Be a Man
  Nicole Krauss
• Tokyo Ueno Station
  Yu Miri
• Topics of Conversation
  Miranda Popkey
• The Undocumented Americans
  Karla Cornejo Villavicencio
• Unfree Speech

  The Threat to Global Democracy and Why We Must Act, Now
  Joshua Wong
• Vanguard

  How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
  Martha S. Jones
• The Vanishing Half
  Brit Bennett
• Vesper Flights
  Helen Macdonald
• Wandering in Strange Lands

  A Daughter of the Great Migration Reclaims Her Roots
  Morgan Jerkins
• Want
  Lynn Steger Strong
• We Ride Upon Sticks
  Quan Barry
• Weather
  Jenny Offill
• Where the Wild Ladies Are
  Aoko Matsuda
• Why We Swim
  Bonnie Tsui
• Wow, No Thank You.
  Samantha Irby
• You Never Forget Your First

  A Biography of George Washington
  Alexis Coe
• 150 Glimpses of the Beatles
  Craig Brown