Year-End Lists

The Economist: The Best Books of 2024, where it's followed by a list of books by Economist staff

[see also 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2012]

Biography and memoir

• The Editor

  How Publishing Legend Judith Jones Shaped Culture in America
  Sara B. Franklin
• Kingmaker

  Pamela Harriman's Astonishing Life of Power, Seduction, and Intrigue
  Sonia Purnell
• Maurice and Maralyn

  An Extraordinary True Story of Love, Shipwreck and Survival
  Sophie Elmhirst
• Metamorphoses

  In Search of Franz Kafka
  Karolina Watroba
• One Way Back

  A Memoir
  Christine Blasey Ford
• Patriot

  A Memoir
  Alexei Navalny
• Troubled

  A Memoir of Foster Care, Family, and Social Class
  Rob Henderson
• Wild Thing

  A Life of Paul Gauguin
  Sue Prideaux

Business, economics and technology

• The Afterlife of Data

  What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care
  Carl Öhman
• The Art of Uncertainty

  How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
  David Spiegelhalter
• Co-Intelligence

  Living and Working with AI
  Ethan Mollick
• Dark Wire

  The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever
  Joseph Cox
• How Economics Explains the World

  A Short History of Humanity
  Andrew Leigh
• Money

  A Story of Humanity
  David McWilliams
• Playing with Reality

  How Games Have Shaped Our World
  Kelly Clancy
• The Power and the Money

  The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry
  Tevi Troy
• Slow Productivity

  The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
  Cal Newport
• The Whole Story

  Adventures in Love, Life, and Capitalism
  John Mackey

Culture and arts

• All That Glitters

  A Story of Friendship, Fraud, and Fine Art
  Orlando Whitfield
• The Book-Makers

  A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives
  Adam Smyth
• Cue the Sun!

  The Invention of Reality TV
  Emily Nussbaum
• Get the Picture

  A Mind-Bending Journey Among the Inspired Artists and Obsessive Art Fiends Who Taught Me How to See
  Bianca Bosker
• Gobsmacked!

  The British Invasion of American English
  Ben Yagoda
• The Haunted Wood

  A History of Childhood Reading
  Sam Leith
• Origin Uncertain

  Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology
  Anatoly Liberman
• Reading Genesis
  Marilynne Robinson
• Stranger Than Fiction

  Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel
  Edwin Frank
• Written in Water

  The Ephemeral Life of the Classic in Art
  Rochelle Gurstein

Fiction

• Creation Lake
  Rachel Kushner
• The Empusium

  A Health Resort Horror Story
  Olga Tokarczuk
• Fire Exit
  Morgan Talty
• Going Home
  Tom Lamont
• The Granddaughter
  Bernhard Schlink
• The Heart in Winter
  Kevin Barry
• Help Wanted
  Adelle Waldman
• Hum
  Helen Phillips
• Intermezzo
  Sally Rooney
• James
  Percival Everett
• Karla's Choice
  Nick Harkaway
• Long Island
  Colm Tóibín
• Mania
  Lionel Shriver
• Our Evenings
  Alan Hollinghurst
• Playground
  Richard Powers
• The Road to the Country
  Chigozie Obioma
• The Safekeep
  Yael van der Wouden
• The Silence of the Choir
  Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

History

• The Eastern Front

  A History of the First World War
  Nick Lloyd
• Every Living Thing

  The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life
  Jason Roberts
• The Forbidden Garden

  The Botanists of Besieged Leningrad and Their Impossible Choice
  Simon Parkin
• The Horse

  A Galloping History of Humanity
  Timothy C. Winegard
• How the World Made the West

  A 4,000 Year History
  Josephine Quinn
• Impossible Monsters

  Dinosaurs, Darwin, and the Battle Between Science and Religion
  Michael Taylor
• The Invention of Good and Evil

  A World History of Morality
  Hanno Sauer
• Medieval Horizons

  Why the Middle Ages Matter
  Ian Mortimer
• Nexus

  A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI
  Yuval Noah Harari
• Raiders, Rulers, and Traders

  The Horse and the Rise of Empires
  David Chaffetz
• Reagan

  His Life and Legend
  Max Boot
• Revolusi

  Indonesia and the Birth of the Modern World
  David Van Reybrouck
• Smoke and Ashes

  A Writer's Journey through Opium's Hidden Histories
  Amitav Ghosh
• Spycraft

  Tricks and Tools of the Dangerous Trade from Elizabeth I to the Restoration
  Nadine Akkerman & Pete Langman
• The Siege

  A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World
  Ben Macintyre
• Venice

  The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City
  Dennis Romano
• Why War?
  Richard Overy
• The Wide Wide Sea

  Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
  Hampton Sides

Politics and current affairs

• Autocracy, Inc.
  Anne Applebaum
• Born to Rule

  The Making and Remaking of the British Elite
  Aaron Reeves & Sam Friedman
• Counter-Intelligence

  What the Secret World Can Teach Us About Problem-solving and Creativity
  Robert Hannigan
• Failed State

  Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It
  Sam Freedman
• How Tyrants Fall

  And How Nations Survive
  Marcel Dirsus
• Infantilised

  How Our Culture Killed Adulthood
  Keith J. Hayward
• Our Enemies Will Vanish
  Yaroslav Trofimov
• Twenty Years

  Hope, War, and the Betrayal of an Afghan Generation
  Sune Engel Rasmussen
• World on the Brink

  How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century
  Dmitri Alperovitch with Garrett M. Graff
• The Year of Living Constitutionally

  One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution's Original Meaning
  A.J. Jacobs

Science and health

• The Anxious Generation

  How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
  Jonathan Haidt
• The Catalyst

  RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets
  Thomas R. Cech
• The Genetic Book of the Dead

  A Darwinian Reverie
  Richard Dawkins
• Gray Matters

  A Biography of Brain Surgery
  Theodore H. Schwartz
• More and More and More

  An All-Consuming History of Energy
  Jean-Baptiste Fressoz
• Origin Story

  The Trials of Charles Darwin
  Howard Markel
• Reentry

  SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age
  Eric Berger
• Tits Up

  What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us about Breasts
  Sarah Thornton
• Twelve Trees

  The Deep Roots of Our Future
  Damien Lewis
• The Underworld

  Journeys to the Depths of the Ocean
  Susan Casey