NY Times Editors Choice 1980-1989

This is one of the 743 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
10064 Falling in Place Ann Beattie 1980 American English
11636 Christianity, Social Tolerance, And Homosexuality John Boswell 1980 American English
2161 Italian Folktales Italo Calvino 1956 Italian Italian
11636 Loon Lake E. L. Doctorow 1980 American English
4587 Man in the Holocene Max Frisch 1979 Swiss German
11636 Walt Whitman Justin Kaplan 1980 American English
11636 China Men Maxine Hong Kingston 1980 American English
11636 The Cost Of Good Intentions Charles R. Morris 1980 American English
11636 Conrad In The Nineteenth Century Ian Watt 1979 British English
1378 The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty Eudora Welty 1980 American English
6231 The Chaneysville Incident David Bradley 1981 American English
11636 Bad Blood James Jones 1981 American Unknown
11636 Haydn H. C. Robbins Landon 1976 British English
11636 Philosophical Explanations Robert Nozick 1981 American English
2628 Old Glory Jonathan Raban 1981 British English
330 Housekeeping Marilynne Robinson 1980 American English
64 Midnight's Children Salman Rushdie 1981 Indian English
2193 The Gate of Heavenly Peace Jonathan Spence 1981 American English
1960 A Flag For Sunrise Robert Stone 1981 American English
4074 The White Hotel D. M. Thomas 1981 British English
10424 Prisoner Without A Name, Cell Without A Number Jacobo Timerman 1981 Argentinian Spanish
684 Rabbit Is Rich John Updike 1981 American English
6567 Zuckerman Bound Philip Roth 1985 American English
11636 World Without End Francine du Plessix Gray 1981 American English
11636 The Burning House Ann Beattie 1982 American English
470 Waiting for the Barbarians J. M. Coetzee 1980 South African English
11636 Tumultuous Years Robert J. Donovan 1983 American English
1025 Schindler's List Thomas Keneally 1982 Australian English
11636 Years Of Upheaval Henry A. Kissinger 1982 American English
11636 The Fate Of The Earth Jonathan Schell 1982 American English
11636 Bronx Primitive Kate Simon 1982 British English
3130 Ake Wole Soyinka 1981 Nigerian English
11636 Isak Dinesen Judith Thurman 1982 American English
1829 Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant Anne Tyler 1982 American English
11636 Bech Is Back John Updike 1982 American English
1995 Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Mario Vargas Llosa 1977 Peruvian Spanish
1328 Cathedral Raymond Carver 1983 American English
11636 During The Reign Of The Queen Of Persia Joan Chase 1983 American English
114 The Name of the Rose Umberto Eco 1980 Italian Italian
11636 Attlee Kenneth Harris 1982 British English
9243 The Price of Power Seymour M. Hersh 1983 American English
2429 Modern Times Paul Johnson 1983 British English
2295 Ironweed William Kennedy 1983 American English
2099 Chronicle of a Death Foretold Gabriel García Márquez 1981 Colombian Spanish
11636 The Moons Of Jupiter Alice Munro 1982 Canadian English
11636 The Rosenberg File Ronald Radosh, Joyce Milton 1983 American English
2527 The Anatomy Lesson Philip Roth 1983 American English
7888 The Social Transformation of American Medicine Paul Starr 1982 American English
11636 Hugging The Shore John Updike 1983 American English
11636 The Bourgeois Experience Peter Gay 1984 American English
11636 Brothers And Keepers John Edgar Wideman 1984 American English
11636 Dawn To The West Donald Keene 1984 American English
11636 Deadly Gambits Strobe Talbott 1984 American English
11636 Him With His Foot In His Mouth And Other Stories Saul Bellow 1984 American English
11636 In Her Own Right Elisabeth Griffith 1984 American English
1741 Life & Times of Michael K J. M. Coetzee 1983 South African English
11636 Lives Of The Poets E. L. Doctorow 2001 American English
2296 Machine Dreams Jayne Anne Phillips 1984 American English
7765 The Memory Palace Of Matteo Ricci Jonathan Spence 1984 American English
11636 The Quality Of Mercy William Shawcross 1994 British English
101 The Unbearable Lightness of Being Milan Kundera 1984 Czech Czech
11636 Walt Whitman Paul Zweig 1984 American English
1077 The War of the End of the World Mario Vargas Llosa 1981 Peruvian Spanish
11636 With A Daughter's Eye Mary Catherine Bateson 1984 American English
11636 The Abandonment Of The Jews David S. Wyman 1984 American English
11636 All Fall Down Gary Sick 1985 American English
6473 Common Ground J. Anthony Lukas 1985 American English
987 Flaubert's Parrot Julian Barnes 1984 British English
10424 Footsteps Richard Holmes 1985 French English
10424 House Tracy Kidder 1985 American English
1316 Love Medicine Louise Erdrich 1984 American English
10424 Mr. Palomar Italo Calvino 1983 Italian Italian
7888 Move Your Shadow Joseph Lelyveld 1986 American English
2299 The Old Forest Peter Taylor 1985 American English
958 The Periodic Table Primo Levi 1975 Italian Italian
7888 Arab and Jew David K. Shipler 1986 American English
4973 Arctic Dreams Barry Lopez 1986 American English
11636 Crossing The Line William Finnegan 1986 American Unknown
11636 Fdr Kenneth S. Davis 1972 American English
132 The Handmaid's Tale Margaret Atwood 1985 Canadian English
11636 Keynes Robert Skidelsky 1983 British English
10424 The Life Of Langston Hughes Arnold Rampersad 1986 American English
11636 A Machine That Would Go Of Itself Michael Kammen 1987 American English
1981 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks 1985 British English
11636 Out Of India Ruth Prawer Jhabvala 1995 Indian English
1484 A Perfect Spy John le Carré 1986 British English
2917 The Progress of Love Alice Munro 1986 Canadian English
11636 Roger's Version John Updike 1986 American English
8160 Saints And Strangers Angela Carter 1985 British English
11636 The Vanished Imam Fouad Ajami 1986 Lebanese English
11636 Velazquez Jonathan Brown 1986 American English
11636 Whites Norman Rush 1986 American English
11636 An Arrow In The Wall Andrey Voznesensky 1987 Russian Russian
49 Beloved Toni Morrison 1987 American English
309 Bonfire of the Vanities Tom Wolfe 1987 American English
1473 Chaos James Gleick 1987 American English
2846 The Counterlife Philip Roth 1986 American English
11636 The Embarrassment Of Riches Simon Schama 1987 British English
11636 Evelyn Waugh Martin Stannard 1986 Unknown English
8875 The Fatal Shore Robert Hughes 1987 Australian English
11636 The Ice Stephen J. Pyne 1986 American English
4095 Life And Death In Shanghai Nien Cheng 1986 Chinese English
1748 The Making of the Atomic Bomb Richard Rhodes 1986 American English
4363 More Die Of Heartbreak Saul Bellow 1987 American English
11636 Staring At The Sun Julian Barnes 1986 British English
4453 The Truly Disadvantaged William Julius Wilson 1987 American English
11636 Veil Bob Woodward 1987 American English
1910 World's End T. C. Boyle 1987 American English
11636 Arabesques Anton Shammas 1986 Israeli Hebrew
2374 Battle Cry of Freedom James M. McPherson 1988 American English
11636 Bernard Shaw, Vol. 1 Michael Holroyd 1988 British English
1120 A Brief History of Time Stephen Hawking 1988 British English
4412 A Bright Shining Lie Neil Sheehan 1988 American English
6472 Coming of Age in the Milky Way Timothy Ferris 1988 American English
3454 Dictionary of the Khazars Milorad Pavic 1984 Serbian Serbian
2330 Libra Don DeLillo 1988 American English
168 Love in the Time of Cholera Gabriel García Márquez 1985 Colombian Spanish
11636 The Magic Lantern Ingmar Bergman 1987 Swedish Swedish
11636 Original Intent And The Framers' Constitution Leonard W. Levy 1988 American English
8710 Parting the Waters Taylor Branch 1988 American English