An Updated Canon: 72 Books Every Man Should Read
This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.
About this list
InsideHook, 72 Books
This list is a curated guide from InsideHook that presents an “updated canon” of 72 books intended to refresh the tired, traditional “books every man should read” bailiwick by spotlighting contemporary or newly framed works paired with older classics as thematic or spiritual complements; selections were made not as a definitive must-read syllabus but as an intensely edited bookshelf of staff recommendations, with each entry accompanied by a short staff note explaining why it was chosen and how it links to a classic predecessor. The Editors at InsideHook oversaw the project and the methodology is explicit: pick 72 new (broadly defined) titles, pair each with a classic that shares a theme or lineage, have members of the editorial team write the recommendation blurbs, and vet product links independently (affiliate links disclosed), with interactive UI features to expand each recommendation on the site.
Who Voted: 12 people voted -- Hanna Agro, Tobias Carroll, Amanda Gabriele, Tanner Garrity, Alex Lauer, Zoe de Leon, Logan Mahan, Kirk Miller, Lindsay Rogers, Paolo Sandoval, Joanna Sommer, Bonnie Stiernberg
This list was originally published in 2025 and was added to this site about 1 year ago.
| Rank | Book | Authors | Year | Country | Language | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17165 | The Wake | Paul Kingsnorth | 2014 | British | English | |
| 2844 | 10:04 | Ben Lerner | 2014 | American | English | |
| 3603 | A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing | Eimear McBride | 2013 | Irish | English | |
| 279 | The Secret History | Donna Tartt | 1992 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Porträt Eines Jungen Kochs | Maylis de Kerangal | 2014 | French | French | |
| 1330 | The Song of Achilles | Madeline Miller | 2011 | American | English | |
| 2806 | James | Percival Everett | 2024 | American | English | |
| 14985 | The Paper Palace | Miranda Cowley Heller | 2021 | American | English | |
| 13 | Pride and Prejudice | Jane Austen | 1813 | British | English | |
| 17165 | The Prophets | Robert F. Jones | 1991 | Unknown | English | |
| 4472 | Intermezzo | Sally Rooney | 2024 | Irish | English | |
| 2345 | Small Things Like These | Claire Keegan | 2021 | Irish | English | |
| 1206 | Pachinko | Min Jin Lee | 2017 | American | English | |
| 2338 | There There | Tommy Orange | 2018 | American | English | |
| 17165 | My Notorious Life | Kate Manning | 2013 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Stephen Florida | Gabe Habash | 2017 | American | English | |
| 6302 | Rejection | Tony Tulathimutte | 2024 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Melvill | Rodrigo Fresán | 2022 | Argentine | Spanish | |
| 17165 | Our Missing Hearts | Celeste Ng | 2022 | American | English | |
| 5805 | Martyr! | Kaveh Akbar | 2024 | American | English | |
| 922 | The Sympathizer | Viet Thanh Nguyen | 2015 | American | English | |
| 14232 | People Of The Book | Geraldine Brooks | 2008 | Australian | English | |
| 14985 | Crossroads | Jonathan Franzen | 2021 | American | English | |
| 10454 | Early Work | Andrew Martin | 2018 | American | English | |
| 13941 | The Story Of My Teeth | Valeria Luiselli | 2015 | Mexican | Spanish | |
| 103 | The Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath | 1963 | American | English | |
| 17165 | A Burning | Megha Majumdar | 2020 | American | English | |
| 7212 | Boy Swallows Universe | Trent Dalton | 2018 | Australian | English | |
| 17165 | Montpelier Parade | Karl Geary | 2017 | Irish | English | |
| 4590 | The Nickel Boys | Colson Whitehead | 2019 | American | English | |
| 2108 | Demon Copperhead | Barbara Kingsolver | 2022 | American | English | |
| 17165 | The Half Drowned King | Linnea Hartsuyker | 2017 | American | English | |
| 5189 | Stay True | Hua Hsu | 2022 | Chinese | English | |
| 14176 | My Life in France | Julia Child | 2006 | American | English | |
| 1818 | Barbarian Days | William Finnegan | 2015 | American | English | |
| 5269 | What I Talk About When I Talk About Running | Haruki Murakami | 2007 | Japanese | Japanese | |
| 17165 | Rough Magic | Lara Prior-Palmer | 2019 | British | English | |
| 17165 | The Tender Bar | J.R. Moehringer | 2005 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Love Is A Mix Tape | Rob Sheffield | 2007 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Easy Beauty | Chloé Cooper Jones | 2022 | British | English | |
| 17165 | Dog Songs | Mary Oliver | 2013 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Mayakovsky's Revolver | Matthew Dickman | 2012 | American | English | |
| 17165 | The Final Voicemails | Max Ritvo | American | English | ||
| 17165 | Don't Call Us Dead | Danez Smith | 2017 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Alive At The End Of The World | Saeed Jones | 2022 | American | English | |
| 1861 | Citizen | Claudia Rankine | 2014 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Drift | Caroline Bergvall | 2014 | Unknown | English | |
| 17165 | I Must Be Living Twice | Eileen Myles | 2015 | American | English | |
| 8889 | Monsters | Claire Dederer | 2023 | American | English | |
| 1844 | The Sixth Extinction | Elizabeth Kolbert | 2014 | American | English | |
| 909 | The Warmth Of Other Suns | Isabel Wilkerson | 2010 | American | English | |
| 10285 | They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us | Hanif Abdurraqib | 2017 | American | English | |
| 17165 | Blood Horses | John Jeremiah Sullivan | 2004 | American | English | |
| 6793 | Men Explain Things To Me | Rebecca Solnit | 2014 | American | English | |
| 14985 | Blood in the Water | Heather Ann Thompson | 2016 | American | English | |
| 8493 | Underland | Robert Macfarlane | 2019 | British | English | |
| 17165 | Watermark | Joseph Brodsky | 1989 | Unknown | English | |
| 580 | Black Lamb and Grey Falcon | Rebecca West | 1941 | British | English | |
| 9961 | The Book Of Delights | Ross Gay | 2019 | American | English | |
| 17165 | The Oregon Trail | Rinker Buck | 2015 | American | English | |
| 4979 | Klara And The Sun | Kazuo Ishiguro | 2021 | British | English | |
| 17165 | White Horse | Erika T. Wurth | 2022 | Unknown | English | |
| 4535 | Annihilation | Jeff VanderMeer | 2014 | American | English | |
| 14232 | The Passage | Justin Cronin | 2010 | American | English | |
| 4605 | Babel | R. F. Kuang | 2022 | American | English | |
| 2642 | The Power | Naomi Alderman | 2016 | British | English | |
| 14985 | Dark Matter | Blake Crouch | 2016 | American | English | |
| 3541 | Her Body and Other Parties | Carmen Maria Machado | 2017 | American | English | |
| 3848 | Piranesi | Susanna Clarke | 2020 | British | English | |
| 7584 | Orbital | Samantha Harvey | 2024 | Unknown | Unknown | |
| 1381 | Station Eleven | Emily St John Mandel | 2014 | Canadian | English | |
| 17165 | Version Control | Dexter Palmer | 2016 | American | English |