NY Times Editors Choice 1980-1989

This is one of the 759 lists we use to generate our main The Greatest Books list.

About this list

NY Times, 137 Books

Every year the New York Times puts together a "Best of the Year" list, and this is all the winners from the 1980s. I had to manually transcribe 1980 by looking at newspaper scans, which upsets me.

who voted:
Trade sources differ: a C-SPAN–based 2015 blog post tallied roughly 16 New York Times Book Review staffers, while a 2023 Publishers Weekly profile said the desk now has “more than 20 editors, critics and reporters” To keep our rankings conservative, we therefore credit each NYT list to 10 voters.

This list is a yearly book award, and was added to this site about 2 years ago.

View: List Grid Table
Rank Book Authors Year Country Language Actions
10081 Falling in Place Ann Beattie 1980 American English
11662 Christianity, Social Tolerance, And Homosexuality John Boswell 1980 American English
2172 Italian Folktales Italo Calvino 1956 Italian Italian
11662 Loon Lake E. L. Doctorow 1980 American English
4595 Man in the Holocene Max Frisch 1979 Swiss German
11662 Walt Whitman Justin Kaplan 1980 American English
11662 China Men Maxine Hong Kingston 1980 American English
11662 The Cost Of Good Intentions Charles R. Morris 1980 American English
11662 Conrad In The Nineteenth Century Ian Watt 1979 British English
1379 The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty Eudora Welty 1980 American English
6241 The Chaneysville Incident David Bradley 1981 American English
11662 Bad Blood James Jones 1981 American Unknown
11662 Haydn H. C. Robbins Landon 1976 British English
11662 Philosophical Explanations Robert Nozick 1981 American English
2632 Old Glory Jonathan Raban 1981 British English
331 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2205 The Gate of Heavenly Peace Jonathan Spence 1981 American English
1965 A Flag For Sunrise Robert Stone 1981 American English
4080 The White Hotel D. M. Thomas 1981 British English
10451 Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number Jacobo Timerman 1981 Argentinian Spanish
686 Rabbit Is Rich John Updike 1981 American English
6580 Zuckerman Bound Philip Roth 1985 American English
11662 World Without End Francine du Plessix Gray 1981 American English
11662 The Burning House Ann Beattie 1982 American English
471 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
11662 Tumultuous Years Robert J. Donovan 1983 American English
1028 Schindler's List Thomas Keneally 1982 Australian English
11662 Years Of Upheaval Henry A. Kissinger 1982 American English
11662 The Fate Of The Earth Jonathan Schell 1982 American English
11662 Bronx Primitive Kate Simon 1982 British English
3135 Ake Wole Soyinka 1981 Nigerian English
11662 Isak Dinesen Judith Thurman 1982 American English
1830 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler 1982 American English
11662 Bech Is Back John Updike 1982 American English
2000 Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Mario Vargas Llosa 1977 Peruvian Spanish
1331 Cathedral Raymond Carver 1983 American English
11662 During The Reign Of The Queen Of Persia Joan Chase 1983 American English
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
11662 Attlee Kenneth Harris 1982 British English
9261 The Price of Power Seymour M. Hersh 1983 American English
2435 Modern Times Paul Johnson 1983 British English
2302 Ironweed William Kennedy 1983 American English
2105 Chronicle of a Death Foretold Gabriel García Márquez 1981 Colombian Spanish
11662 The Moons Of Jupiter Alice Munro 1982 Canadian English
11662 The Rosenberg File Ronald Radosh, Joyce Milton 1983 American English
2531 The Anatomy Lesson Philip Roth 1983 American English
7904 The Social Transformation of American Medicine Paul Starr 1982 American English
11662 Hugging The Shore John Updike 1983 American English
11662 The Bourgeois Experience Peter Gay 1984 American English
11662 Brothers And Keepers John Edgar Wideman 1984 American English
11662 Dawn To The West Donald Keene 1984 American English
11662 Deadly Gambits Strobe Talbott 1984 American English
11662 Him With His Foot In His Mouth And Other Stories Saul Bellow 1984 American English
11662 In Her Own Right Elisabeth Griffith 1984 American English
1743 Life & Times of Michael K J. M. Coetzee 1983 South African English
11662 Lives Of The Poets E. L. Doctorow 2001 American English
2303 Machine Dreams Jayne Anne Phillips 1984 American English
7782 The Memory Palace Of Matteo Ricci Jonathan Spence 1984 American English
11662 The Quality Of Mercy William Shawcross 1994 British English
99 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
11662 Walt Whitman Paul Zweig 1984 American English
1081 The War of the End of the World Mario Vargas Llosa 1981 Peruvian Spanish
11662 With A Daughter's Eye Mary Catherine Bateson 1984 American English
11662 The Abandonment Of The Jews David S. Wyman 1984 American English
11662 All Fall Down Gary Sick 1985 American English
6485 Common Ground J. Anthony Lukas 1985 American English
988 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
10451 Footsteps Richard Holmes 1985 French English
10451 House Tracy Kidder 1985 American English
1318 Love Medicine Louise Erdrich 1984 American English
10451 Mr. Palomar Italo Calvino 1983 Italian Italian
7904 Move Your Shadow Joseph Lelyveld 1986 American English
2306 The Old Forest Peter Taylor 1985 American English
958 The Periodic Table Primo Levi 1975 Italian Italian
7904 Arab and Jew David K. Shipler 1986 American English
4983 Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez 1986 American English
11662 Crossing The Line William Finnegan 1986 American Unknown
11662 Fdr Kenneth S. Davis 1972 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
11662 Keynes Robert Skidelsky 1983 British English
10451 The Life Of Langston Hughes Arnold Rampersad 1986 American English
11662 A Machine That Would Go Of Itself Michael Kammen 1987 American English
1987 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks 1985 British English
11662 Out Of India Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1995 Indian English
1485 A Perfect Spy John le Carré 1986 British English
2923 The Progress of Love Alice Munro 1986 Canadian English
11662 Roger's Version John Updike 1986 American English
8176 Saints And Strangers Angela Carter 1985 British English
11662 The Vanished Imam Fouad Ajami 1986 Lebanese English
11662 Velazquez Jonathan Brown 1986 American English
11662 Whites Norman Rush 1986 American English
11662 An Arrow In The Wall Andrey Voznesensky 1987 Russian Russian
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
310 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
1474 Chaos James Gleick 1987 American English
2853 The Counterlife Philip Roth 1986 American English
11662 The Embarrassment Of Riches Simon Schama 1987 British English
11662 Evelyn Waugh Martin Stannard 1986 Unknown English
8891 The Fatal Shore Robert Hughes 1987 Australian English
11662 The Ice Stephen J. Pyne 1986 American English
4101 Life And Death In Shanghai Nien Cheng 1986 Chinese English
1750 The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 1986 American English
4369 More Die Of Heartbreak Saul Bellow 1987 American English
11662 Staring At The Sun Julian Barnes 1986 British English
4458 The Truly Disadvantaged William Julius Wilson 1987 American English
11662 Veil Bob Woodward 1987 American English
1912 World's End T. C. Boyle 1987 American English
11662 Arabesques Anton Shammas 1986 Israeli Hebrew
2382 Battle Cry of Freedom James M. McPherson 1988 American English
11662 Bernard Shaw, Vol. 1 Michael Holroyd 1988 British English
1122 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
4417 A Bright Shining Lie Neil Sheehan 1988 American English
6484 Coming of Age in the Milky Way Timothy Ferris 1988 American English
2851 Dictionary of the Khazars Milorad Pavic 1984 Serbian Serbian
2336 Libra Don DeLillo 1988 American English
166 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
11662 The Magic Lantern Ingmar Bergman 1987 Swedish Swedish
11662 Original Intent And The Framers' Constitution Leonard W. Levy 1988 American English
6248 Parting the Waters Taylor Branch 1988 American English