Books

Our columnists and staff writers recommend their top reads for the end of the year.

How Viktor Orban pulled off the unthinkable.

Stories about houses and the meaning of home, from Cape Cod to Kolkata.

A new book depicts a period of spy history—and U.S.-India cooperation—that bears some resemblance to our own.

History shows that security arrangements alone will not be enough.

An acclaimed English author offers his take on creativity and magic.

The writer’s new argument for left-wing foreign policy has earned a mainstream hearing.

Two new books issue fresh warnings about Silicon Valley ahead of the U.S. election.

From a modern twist on “The Magic Mountain” to Ethiopian American family secrets.

Kevin Rudd on the fragility of Xi’s long-term ideological project.

Washington’s hands-off currency policy has produced a dominant dollar—and collateral damage at home and abroad.

Devika Rege’s debut novel “Quarterlife” captures political truths about 21st-century India.

As long as the agency carries out needlessly covert operations, the public will suspect the worst.

The left-wing leader created a political cathedral for labor unions and progressive intellectuals.

The author’s decision to write about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict shouldn’t come as a surprise to his longtime readers.

Postmodernism is dead. Long live postmodernism.

Familial wealth and intrigue, from Japan to Palestine.

Nate Silver offers a disjointed paean to gambling and venture capitalists.

The Pentagon is warming up to commercial technologies, but it has a long way to go.

From Sicilian psychodrama to Qaddafi’s Libya.

Beneath the sex, a madcap novel about an art heist lays bare the realities of globalization.

A sequel to the acclaimed “River Town” can’t quite find its course.

A new book offers a masterful glimpse into the world of economic warfare.

For better and worse, one of America’s important grand strategists was singularly focused on military strength.

A South Korean presidential memoir reflects on tough diplomatic choices.

Ethiopia’s leader is both messianic and Machiavellian—and his reputation as a Nobel-winning peacemaker has been tainted by the brutal Tigray war.

How a terminally ill U.S. president negotiated the deal that cemented Soviet control over half of Europe.

New centers of power are emerging as a new generation in the global south looks beyond Washington and former European colonizers.

Global poverty and income divergence are set to rise again—a brutal indictment of the institution’s work.

In his life-affirming memoir “Knife,” the writer shows how society must respond to untrammeled hatred.

Today’s autocrats have formed a global network. Those fighting them will have to do the same.

The politics of xenophobic violence is fueled by a psychology of racialized fear.

Ten years on, there is still confusion over what, exactly, transpired on the last days of the Maidan.

An Italian sci-fi book buzzes with many issues that society still grapples with today.

Washington has switched from economic offense to defense.

New restraints on the prime minister’s mandate can’t undo his transformation of India.

But a green sports movement is pushing for change, eager to see if Paris will be different.

What the making of a national mail system reveals about the country’s push for modernization.

Since its founding, the country has been in a perpetual state of division.

Our columnists and reporters’ top picks, from a history of China’s tattooed soldiers to an ambitious modern epic.

A sweeping state-of-the-nation novel fails to convince the reader.

Its members were the country’s original illiberal democrats—before imploding into irrelevance.

Benjamin Franklin leveraged a soft touch—and humor—to further U.S. goals.

A new book explores parallel lives spent on its periphery.

The rodent’s reputation, revamped.

China’s sovereign funds are huge, powerful—and clumsy.

A new book traces the evolution of New Delhi’s quest for elusive global status.

‘The Boiling Moat’ is more interested in American arguments than the country itself.

The country’s failure to confront deadly extremists in the early 2000s should be a warning.

Britons tend to downplay the empire’s slave-trading history. But its links to Virginia tobacco are all over the landscape.

A critique of “technofeudalism” loses the plot.

A new book examines the past and present of Russian thinking on deterrence.

It’s time to ditch both romantic ideals of remaking the region and the policy of retrenchment.

A new history offers a sharp but limited critique.

Doomism robs people of the agency and incentive to participate in a solution to the climate crisis.

British politics may be bad, but they’re not unusual.

How our economy and culture became ever less mediated—and corroded our collective life.

A powerful new book challenges conventional wisdom about the role of the state in Beijing’s rise.

A new psychological analysis of Soviet leaders fundamentally alters 20th-century global history.

The pair are dangerously close to the edge of nuclear war over Taiwan—again.

In the Navy, you can do as you please.

Religions aren’t just spiritual communities. They’re also businesses.

The band leader broke new ground in U.S. cultural diplomacy even as he faced racism at home.

Two new books turn a spotlight on how the colonial past lives on in unacknowledged ways.

The pipeline bringing Russian gas to Europe was once seen as a triumph for borderless business—but Putin’s invasion of Ukraine put an end to that fantasy.

International agreements have not balanced our freedoms in the way that they should.

The underlying reason for the West’s democratic crisis may be a lost sense of open-ended time.

A new book unwittingly makes the case that they can’t.

Cyberspace has upended the old world order.

Is the world’s most populous country booming or broken?

What the bestselling novels of Amor Towles reveal about global nostalgia—and American anxieties.

In a new book, Fareed Zakaria explores how much the times are a-changin’. At risk, he says, is the entire global system.

The canny marketing of imports from vodka to basketballs transformed the U.S.-China trade relationship.

A landmark translation of a Ukrainian novel explores a nation caught between the jaws of empire.

A new book provides a detailed account of the colonial bureaucrats who made up the first generation of the Indian Foreign Service.

Britain’s center-left is descending into recriminations ahead of this year’s election—just like it always has.

What the Allied intervention in the Russian civil war teaches us about Ukraine today.

The idea of a special Chinese model rings increasingly hollow.

A new book accidentally puts forward a provocative thesis on the country’s entropy.

“Daybreak” is a nightmarish romance about the horrors of war.

A new political history reveals the dark side of foreign assistance.

Jade McGlynn’s books paint an unsettling picture of ordinary Russians’ support for the invasion and occupation of Ukraine.

The CCP uses manpower, not just technology, to limit speech.

Three books explore the failures of regulators—and sometimes journalists.

Dale C. Copeland’s new history of commerce is magisterial—and prescient.

Europe’s tumultuous year of 1848 is often forgotten, but a new book argues that it could teach us a lot about politics today.

Fanon is a global anti-colonial icon, but he could never truly embody the revolution he supported.

The U.S.-South Korea alliance perfectly illustrates the limits of independent action in an unstable world.

There’s no magic fix for Democrats at the ballot box.

Ex-spy Valerie Plame on the “secret history” of women in the agency.

The biggest releases in foreign affairs, history, and economics.

Our favorite book reviews of 2023.

As Congolese citizens go to the polls, Stuart Reid’s ‘Lumumba Plot’ reminds the world of a crime that reshaped the country’s future.

A new book looks at how Julius Caesar’s legacy informs the strongmen of today.

How one of the greatest scam artists of all time used Ghana’s colonial past to get rich.

A provocative history questions the relationship between the state, its secrets, and the people.

Espionage law hasn’t changed much since William Howard Taft—yet recent presidents have wielded it as a cudgel more than ever before.

A new book argues the Austrian capital produced the intellectual basis of much of the modern West—for better and sometimes for worse.

Our columnists and staff writers recommend their top reads for the end of the year.

Even experienced journalists got suckered by Sam Bankman-Fried.