Last year we received such a great response, we had to ask again: What was your favorite book of the year? It’s a question that causes a range of emotion—especially for folks in publishing. Some people can name their favorite book instantly and have the words to describe why. Some can’t remember the last book they read that wasn’t published where they work. And for others, picking just one book out of the year is like choosing a favorite child. Nonetheless, it’s a chance to reflect on a year of reading and perhaps remember where you were and what was going on, while reading your favorite book.

Manning Marable’s Malcolm X. So much more than the life of one man.

 —Geoff Dyer, author of Otherwise Known as the Human Condition

Steven Pinker’s Better Angels of Our Nature. A dazzling and uplifting blend of history and biology.

 —Nicholas D. Kristof, New York Times columnist and author of Half the Sky

Bruce Duffy’s The World As I Found It. Wittgenstein, Russell, Moore: Big brains, big egos, messy lives—Unputdownable stuff.

 —Charles C. Mann, author of 1491 and 1493

The Snowman by Jo Nesbo. I love a good Scandinavian mystery and I love it even more when salty old Harry Hole is on the case.

 —Zachary Wagman, editor, Crown Publishers

Daniel Woodrell’s The Outlaw Album. Woodrell uses words like a Missourian wields an ax: unrelenting, unstoppable.

 —Joey McGarvey, reviews editor, the [tk] review

Helen Dewitt’s Lightning Rods: in which the language of the infomercial is turned like a serpent’s tongue to devour its own tail.

 —Jonathan Lethem, author of Chronic City and The Fortress of Solitude

Philip Connors’s Fire Season. Thoughtful, poetic, quietly angry nature writing without the sentimental bullshit.

 —Chad Harbach, author of The Art of Fielding  

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead. Makes evangelists, Tea Party, Michael Jackson, Axl Rose sympathetic.

—Ben Mathis-Lilley, editor of New York magazine’s Approval Matrix page

I loved Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding—a fresh, vivid, surprising quintet of beautifully realized characters.

 —Jonathan Galassi, President and Publisher, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Jane Gardam’s Old Filth. A sly sleeper hit from 2004, hitting notes that are hilarious, extraordinarily painful, and true.

—Meg Wolitzer, author of The Uncoupling

Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. Unforgettable trip to the Amazon; did I kill that anaconda myself?

—Millicent Bennett, Senior Editor, Free Press

John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead. If for no other reason than bettering my relationship with Axl.

—Amos Barshad, contributing writer, Grantland

Helen Schulman’s This Beautiful Life. A painful, plausible family incident brilliantly told and best read in one sitting.

—Carmen Johnson, managing editor, the [tk] review

Daisy Goodwin’s The American Heiress. Amusing, juicy Gilded Age romance. Think Downton Abbey on crack.  

—Emma Rosenblum, articles editor, Glamour

P.D. James’s Death Comes to Pemberley. Austen plus James equals sharply plotted, wickedly observed, Regency-era mystery potboiler.

—Seth Stevenson, Slate contributor and author of Grounded

Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes, which I found exhilarating, horrifying, and beautifully rendered. 

—Brenda Wineapple, author of White Heat

For fiction, Tom Perrotta’s The Leftovers, which haunted me for weeks afterwards. For nonfiction, Cristina Nehring’s A Vindication of Love. For once romantic is a term of power, not just endearment.

—Jessica Freeman-Slade, nonfiction editor, the [tk] review

Unbelievably, I finally made it to the fifth volume of Proust.

 —Meghan O’Rourke, author of The Long Goodbye

Jesse Browner’s Everything Happens Today. It’s the story of 24 hours in the life of a Dalton teenager, following a party at which he’s lost his virginity to a girl who is not the girl of his dreams. The tenderness and acuity in Browner’s portrayal of this young man, the indelible portrait of his complex family, and the brilliant sense the novel conveys of life as it is for a bright, idealistic teenager in contemporary New York is all totally winning. As teenagers discover this novel in the coming years, it may deservedly become a cult classic.

—Alice Quinn, Executive Director, Poetry Society of America

Ida Hattemer-Higgins’s The History of History. My favorite debut novel of the year . . . the layering of personal and German history, the extremely unreliable narrator, the fabulous payoff at the end, and sharp, original prose.

—Rebecca Makkai, author of The Borrower

Theo Padnos’s Undercover Muslim. Amazing, unsettling, beautiful—a clear-eyed, gentle unveiling of an all-male world.

—Louisa Gilder, author of The Age of Entanglement

Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams. Funny, sad, pretty. So much life in such a small package.

—Andrew Carlson, nonfiction editor, the [tk] review

Julian Barnes’s The Sense of an Ending. Compelling, baffling, elegantly minimal and so very British.

—Kate Buford, author of Native American Son

Edmund de Waal’s The Hare with Amber Eyes. A historical meditation on what survives, what perishes—how, and why. 

—Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club and coauthor of SEND

Francisco Goldman’s Say Her Name. A true love story to be read in Brooklyn, with tissues.

—Caroline Zancan, fiction and interviews editor, the [tk] review

Shouting out to deserving friends: Stuart Nadler’s The Book of Life, Anna North’s America Pacifica, Justin Torres’s We the Animals.

—Benjamin Hale, author of The Education of Bruno Littlemore

David Mitchell’s The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. A stunningly ritten and beautifully textured novel about a young man employed by the Dutch East India company in late 18^thcentury Japan.

 —Kathryn Court, President and Publisher, Penguin Books