Critic’s Choice: Our Best Books of 2024
Discover our top picks of the year! Celebrated in recent 2024 Best Books round-ups in The New Yorker and Financial Times and reviewed in outlets like The New York Times, The Observer, and The Herald, these books are not to be missed!
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The Crisis of Narration
by Byung-Chul Han
“Like a Sartre for the age of screens, Han puts words to our prevailing condition of not-quite-hopeless digital despair.”
The New Yorker
The Privileged Few
by Clive Hamilton and Myra Hamilton
“The strength of the Hamiltons’ forensics is the thoroughness of the exposé; our emperors are left with no clothes at all. Many readers will be left thinking: I knew it was bad but I didn’t realise it was that bad.”
Inside Story
Don’t Go
by Tonika Lewis Johnson and Maria Krysan
“Firsthand accounts provide a fascinating window into the bizarre emotionality of racism … a deeply revealing examination of the psyche of a city.”
Publishers Weekly
The New Antisemitism
by Shalom Lappin
“Offers a superb primer of antisemitism’s past and a sharp analysis of its present state.”
Forward
by Jonathan Glover
“deeply relevant […] With insight and understanding, Glover merges philosophy with psychology, arguing that atrocities are committed because of deeply embedded human tendencies.”
Gabrielle Rifkind, The Guardian
Israel-Palestine
by Shlomo Sand
“A sobering look at the complexities of even beginning to talk about peace in the Middle East.”
Kirkus Reviews
Left is Not Woke
by Susan Neiman
“Neiman’s short, punchy, and brilliantly articulated argument is essentially a call for those who regard themselves as being on the left to remember the distinction between skepticism and cynicism.”
New York Review of Books
Sexed
By Susanna Rustin
“an urgent reappraisal of feminism”
Fiona Sturges, The Guardian
Russia in Four Criminals
By Federico Varese
“A deeply informed and incisive analysis of what went wrong in Russia.”
Paul Monk, The Australian
How We Sold Our Future
By Jens Beckert
Shortlisted for the German Non-Fiction Prize, 2024
“[Beckert’s] book stands out starkly from the field of books on the climate and biodiversity crisis.”
Torsten Harmsen, Berliner Zeitung
The Magic of Silence
By Florian Illies
“One of the most beautiful books I’ve read this year.”
Elke Heidenreich, Der Spiegel
Hubris
By Johannes Krause, Thomas Trappe
“A captivating and accessible survey of human evolution.”
Patrick J. Geary, Princeton University
The Spirit of Hope
By Byung-Chul Han
Longlisted as a Best Books of 2024 in The New Yorker
“As a philosopher, Han has a spiritual bent … But his basic premise doesn’t have to be religious; it suggests only that the world contains untold potential, that what we see in front of us isn’t all that there will ever be.”
Joshua Rothman, The New Yorker
Mixed Signals
by Rebecca Charbonneau
Selected as a Best History Books of 2024 in Financial Times
“A well-researched and splendidly entertaining account of humanity’s search for alien life in the era of the US-Soviet ‘space race'”
Tony Barber, Financial Times
Small, Medium, Large
by Colleen A. Dunlavy
Selected as a a Best Summer Books of 2024: Economics in Financial Times
“This book, based on extensive archival research, shows that the standardisation on which today’s economies depend is the product of a close partnership between US public and private sectors, subsequently spread across the world.”
Martin Wolf, The Financial Times
Hounded
by Jenny Lindsay
Jenny Lindsay named person of the year and profiled in The Herald.
“One of the most important political books ever to have been written about Scottish culture and politics.”
The Herald
The War Against the Past
by Frank Furedi
“This is an important book, which chronicles more fully than any other work that I know the gradual development of this rage against the past.”
Jonathan Sumption, The Spectator
Ancestral Future
by Anton Krenak
Anton Krenak was profiled in The New York Times.
“His message is timely. Governments are busy working on technological solutions to the many crises assailing the world, but they have also agreed to draw more ambitious policies to protect and restore nature. Increasingly, Indigenous people are part of the conversation.”
New York Times
Hamas
by Beverley Milton-Edwards and Stephen Farrell
“Expert or novice, this is the best book for learning about Hamas.”
Sydney Morning Herald
Planet Aqua
by Jeremy Rifkin
Selected as a Best Book of 2024 by Nature
Selected as a Best Book of 2024 by Nature
“An energetic, urgent call for imaginative, radical responses to environmental crises.”
Kirkus Reviews
