The 80 Books Every Man Should Read

This is one of the 743 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

Esquire, 80 Books

An unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the greatest works of literature ever published.

This list was originally published in 2015 and was added to this site over 12 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
1472 What We Talk About When We Talk About Love Raymond Carver 1981 American English
930 Deliverance James Dickey 1970 American English
26 The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1939 American English
198 Blood Meridian Cormac McCarthy 1985 American English
18 The Brothers Karamazov Fyodor Dostoevsky 1880 Russian Russian
574 The Known World Edward P. Jones 2003 American English
2480 The Good War Studs Terkel 1984 American English
378 American Pastoral Philip Roth 1997 American English
207 A Good Man Is Hard to Find Flannery O'Connor 1953 American English
653 The Things They Carried Tim O'Brien 1990 American English
717 A Sport and a Pastime James Salter 1967 American English
231 The Call of the Wild Jack London 1903 American English
9621 Time's Arrow Martin Amis 1991 British English
15786 A Sense of Where You Are John McPhee 1965 American English
6142 Hell's Angels Hunter S. Thompson 1966 American English
36 Invisible Man Ralph Ellison 1952 American English
338 Dubliners James Joyce 1914 Irish English
174 Rabbit, Run John Updike 1960 American English
467 The Postman Always Rings Twice James M. Cain 1934 American English
2961 Dog Soldiers Robert Stone 1974 American English
3604 Winter's Bone Daniel Woodrell 2006 American English
3587 Legends of The Fall Jim Harrison 1979 American English
62 Under the Volcano Malcolm Lowry 1947 British English
429 The Naked and the Dead Norman Mailer 1948 American English
14810 The Professional W. C. Heinz 1958 American English
97 For Whom the Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway 1940 American English
647 Dispatches Michael Herr 1977 American English
242 Tropic of Cancer Henry Miller 1934 American English
611 Revolutionary Road Richard Yates 1961 American English
79 As I Lay Dying William Faulkner 1930 American English
713 The Killer Angels Michael Shaara 1974 American English
85 Slaughterhouse-Five Kurt Vonnegut 1969 American English
149 All the King's Men Robert Penn Warren 1946 American English
153 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Ken Kesey 1962 American English
802 Sophie's Choice William Styron 1979 American English
13879 A Fan's Notes Frederick Exley 1968 American English
392 Lucky Jim Kingsley Amis 1954 British English
473 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Haruki Murakami 1994 Japanese Japanese
920 Master and Commander Patrick O'Brian 1969 British English
5333 Plainsong Kent Haruf 1999 American English
203 A Confederacy of Dunces John Kennedy Toole 1980 American English
4533 Affliction Russell Banks 1989 American English
2807 This Boy's Life Tobias Wolff 1989 American English
1372 Winter's Tale Mark Helprin 1983 American English
279 The Adventures of Augie March Saul Bellow 1953 American English
9889 Women Charles Bukowski 1978 American English
14901 Going Native Stephen Wright 1994 American English
31 Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad 1899 British English
234 The Spy Who Came in From the Cold John le Carré 1963 British English
2365 The Crack-Up F. Scott Fitzgerald 1945 American English
6143 CivilWarLand in Bad Decline George Saunders 1996 American English
13 War and Peace Leo Tolstoy 1869 Russian Russian
398 The Shining Stephen King 1977 American English
310 Winesburg, Ohio Sherwood Anderson 1919 American English
7 Moby-Dick Herman Melville 1851 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
311 Labyrinths Jorge Luis Borges 1962 Argentinian Spanish
3612 The Right Stuff Tom Wolfe 1979 American English
1635 The Sportswriter Richard Ford 1986 American English
6264 American Tabloid James Ellroy 1995 American English
304 The Autobiography of Malcolm X Alex Haley 1965 American English
2608 What It Takes Richard Ben Cramer 1992 American English
17008 The Continental Op Dashiell Hammett 1974 American English
187 The Power and the Glory Graham Greene 1940 British English
539 So Long, See You Tomorrow William Maxwell 1980 American English
106 Native Son Richard Wright 1940 American English
455 Let Us Now Praise Famous Men James Agee 1941 American English
657 Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 1971 American English
3236 The Great Bridge David McCullough 1972 American English
2850 The Dharma Bums Jack Kerouac 1958 American English
631 Lonesome Dove Larry McMurtry 1985 American English
14 Lolita Vladimir Nabokov 1955 American English
410 Underworld Don DeLillo 1997 American English
22 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1884 American English
291 The Road Cormac McCarthy 2006 American English
1984 Let the Great World Spin Colum McCann 2009 Irish English
3134 Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk Ben Fountain 2012 American English
8370 The Orphan Master's Son Adam Johnson 2012 American English
17008 Savages Don Winslow 2010 American English
678 The Stories of John Cheever John Cheever 1978 American English