25 Books to Read Before you Die: 21st Century by Powell's Books
It’s hard for us to believe that it’s been 17 years since we first toasted the new millennium. In January 2001, a gallon of gas cost $1.46. Facebook was three years from launching. 9/11 hadn’t happened. Huge political and cultural shifts were only months away… and some of the best books we’ve ever read were waiting in the wings. This year, for our fifth annual 25 Books to Read Before You Die list, we’ve selected novels, poetry, short stories, and nonfiction that speak to central concerns of 21st-century life: among them, race, heredity, identity, war, and the vanishing wild. From double agents to Hurricane Katrina to intergalactic travel, these 25 vastly different books create a stunning portrait of the dislocation, perseverance, and hope at the heart of life in 21st-century America.
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The Blazing World by Siri Hustvedt
Named one of the New York Times Book Review’s 100 Notable Books of the Year ** Publishers Weekly’s Best Fiction Books of 2014 ** NPR Best Books of 2014 ** Kirkus Reviews Best Literary Fiction Books...
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The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber
The Book of Strange New Things is a 2014 science fiction novel by Dutch-born author Michel Faber. The work was first published in the United States on October 28, 2014 and concerns an English pasto...
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Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
Cloud Atlas (published in the United States as Cloud Atlas: A Novel) is a 2004 novel, the third book by British author David Mitchell. It won the British Book Awards Literary Fiction Award and the ...
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Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching by Mychal Denzel Smith
New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice How do you learn to be a black man in America? For young black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessin...
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The Empathy Exams: Essays by Leslie Jamison
From personal loss to phantom diseases, The Empathy Exams is a bold and brilliant collection, winner of the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Essay Collection of Spring 20...
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The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon is the debut non-fiction book by American author David Grann. The book was published in 2009 and recounts the activities of the British ...
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Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine
A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric. Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting ra...
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The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit
The Faraway Nearby is a 2013 book by Rebecca Solnit. Containing writing reminiscent of memoir, literary criticism, travelogue, prose poetry, as well as analyses of myth, fairytale and narratives mo...
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Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
The founder of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Alabama recounts his experiences as a lawyer working to assist those desperately in need, reflecting on his pursuit of the ideal of compas...
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Honored Guest by Joy Williams
With her singular brand of gorgeous dark humor, Joy Williams explores the various ways–comic, tragic, and unnerving—we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss. A masseuse breaks her rich client's...
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I Loved You More by Tom Spanbauer
Tom Spanbauer’s first novel in seven years is a love story triangle akin to The Marriage Plot and Freedom, only with a gay main character who charms gays and straights alike. I Loved You More is a ...
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The Invented Part by Rodrigo Fresán
"A kaleidoscopic, open-hearted, shamelessly polymathic storyteller, the kind who brings a blast of oxygen into the room."--Jonathan Lethem An aging writer, disillusioned with the state of literary ...
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Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity by Andrew Solomon
From the National Book Award–winning author of The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression comes a monumental new work, a decade in the writing, about family. In Far from the Tree, Andrew Solomon tel...
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Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is the first novel by British writer Susanna Clarke. An alternate history set in 19th-century England around the time of the Napoleonic Wars, it is based on the premis...
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Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Lincoln in the Bardo is a 2017 experimental novel by American writer George Saunders. It is Saunders's first full-length novel and was the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller for the week o...
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Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake is a 2003 novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood. She has described the novel as speculative fiction and adventure romance, rather than pure science fiction, because it does not de...
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March: Book One by John Lewis
Congressman John Lewis (GA-5) is an American icon, one of the key figures of the civil rights movement. His commitment to justice and nonviolence has taken him from an Alabama sharecropper's farm t...
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A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
A Short History of Nearly Everything (ISBN 0-7679-0817-1) is a general science book by Bill Bryson, which explains some areas of science, using a style of language more accessible to the general pu...
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The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
A profound, startling, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Sympathizer is the story of a man of two minds, someone whose political beliefs clash with his individual loyalties.
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Salvage the Bones: A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
Winner of the 2011 National Book Award A hurricane is building over the Gulf of Mexico, threatening the coastal town of Bois Sauvage, Mississippi, and Esch's father is growing concerned. A hard dri...
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War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning by Chris Hedges
As a veteran war correspondent, Chris Hedges has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza...
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall (2009) is a Man Booker Prize-winning novel by English author Hilary Mantel, published by Fourth Estate. Set in the 1520s, it is about Thomas Cromwell's rise to power in the Tudor court of...
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The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan
One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year Winner of the James Beard Award Author of #1 New York Times Bestsellers In Defense of Food and Food Rules Today, buffeted by one f...
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon
The Yiddish Policemen's Union is a 2007 novel by American author Michael Chabon. The novel is a detective story set in an alternative history version of the present day, based on the premise that d...
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The Echo Maker by Richard Powers
On a winter night on a remote Nebraska road, twenty-seven-year-old Mark Schluter flips his truck in a near-fatal accident. His older sister, Karin, his only near kin, returns reluctantly to their h...
