The Country of the Blind
Andrew Leland
The New Yorker
Best books of 2023
The New Yorker’s books of 2023: 24 main picks and 333 more recommendations, across fiction, poetry and nonfiction.
Main picks
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A Day in the Life of Abed Salama
Nathan Thrall
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Fear Is Just a Word
Azam Ahmed
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Fire Weather
John Vaillant
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Judgment at Tokyo
Gary J. Bass
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King
Jonathan Eig
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Liliana’s Invincible Summer
Cristina Rivera Garza
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Master Slave Husband Wife
Ilyon Woo
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Ordinary Notes
Christina Sharpe
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The Rediscovery of America
Ned Blackhawk
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Some People Need Killing
Patricia Evangelista
Also recommended
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The Dictionary People
Sarah Ogilvie
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Time’s Echo
Jeremy Eichler
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State of Silence
Sam Lebovic
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The Money Kings
Daniel Schulman
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About Ed
Robert Gluck
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The Fund
Rob Copeland
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Collision of Power
Martin Baron
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The Manuscripts Club
Christopher de Hamel
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Correction
Ben Austen
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Yesterday
Tobias Becker
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In the Shadow of Quetzalcoatl
Merilee Grindle
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The Book at War
Andrew Pettegree
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Foreign Bodies
Simon Schama
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Earlier
Sasha Frere-Jones
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Klan War
Fergus M. Bordewich
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A History of Fake Things on the Internet
Walter Scheirer
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Charlie Chaplin vs. America
Scott Eyman
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Beyond the Wall
Katja Hoyer
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Naked in the Rideshare
Rebecca Shaw and Ben Kronengold
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Flee North
Scott Shane
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Mapping the Darkness
Kenneth Miller
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The Necessity of Exile
Shaul Magid
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Romney
McKay Coppins
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How to Be Multiple
Helena de Bres
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Going Infinite
Michael Lewis
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The Chapter
Nicholas Dames
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The Lumumba Plot
Stuart A. Reid
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On Marriage
Devorah Baum
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The Revolutionary Temper
Robert Darnton
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What the Taliban Told Me
Ian Fritz
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The Two-Parent Privilege
Melissa S. Kearney
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Artificial
Amy Kurzweil
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Omega Farm
Martha McPhee
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Pandora’s Box
Peter Biskind
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A City on Mars
Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith
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The Pensive Citadel
Victor Brombert
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Crossings
Ben Goldfarb
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The Lies of the Land
Steven Conn
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American Poly
Christopher M. Gleason
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The Boy from Kyiv
Marina Harss
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This Country
Navied Mahdavian
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The Genius of Their Age
S. Frederick Starr
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Black Friend
Ziwe
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Blood in the Machine
Brian Merchant
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The Burning of the World
Scott W. Berg
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Emperor of Rome
Mary Beard
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A Man of Two Faces
Viet Thanh Nguyen
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American Visions
Edward L. Ayers
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Revolutionary Spring
Christopher Clark
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The Upstairs Delicatessen
Dwight Garner
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The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts
Gregg Hecimovich
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American Gun
Cameron McWhirter and Zusha Elinson
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How to Be
Adam Nicolson
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The End of Eden
Adam Welz
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How to Say Babylon
Safiya Sinclair
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The Civic Bargain
Brook Manville and Josiah Ober
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A Flat Place
Noreen Masud
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Live to See the Day
Nikhil Goyal
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Paris Notebooks
Mavis Gallant
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Sparks
Ian Johnson
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Glossy
Marisa Meltzer
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Pockets
Hannah Carlson
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India’s Techade
Nalin Mehta
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The Rigor of Angels
William Egginton
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Digital Empires
Anu Bradford
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The Women of NOW
Katherine Turk
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Up Home
Ruth J. Simmons
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Betty Friedan
Rachel Shteir
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Cosmic Scholar
John Szwed
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Young Queens
Leah Redmond Chang
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Anansi’s Gold
Yepoka Yeebo
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Unreliable Narrator
Aparna Nancherla
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Some Unfinished Chaos
Arthur Krystal
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24/7 Politics
Kathryn Cramer Brownell
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A Word or Two Before I Go
Arthur Krystal
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Father and Son
Jonathan Raban
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The Marriage Question
Clare Carlisle
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The Philosopher of Palo Alto
John Tinnell
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The Great White Bard
Farah Karim-Cooper
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Why the Bible Began
Jacob L. Wright
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This Is Wildfire
Nick Mott and Justin Angle
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The Deadline
Jill Lepore
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Brave the Wild River
Melissa L. Sevigny
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The Plague
Jacqueline Rose
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Schoenberg
Harvey Sachs
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August Wilson
Patti Hartigan
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War and Punishment
Mikhail Zygar
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Last of the Lions
Clarence B. Jones and Stuart Connelly
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The Migrant Chef
Laura Tillman
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A Most Tolerant Little Town
Rachel Louise Martin
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The Parrot and the Igloo
David Lipsky
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Ultra-Processed People
Chris van Tulleken
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Last Call at Coogan’s
Jon Michaud
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Rhythm Man
Stephanie Stein Crease
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Grand Delusion
Steven Simon
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Eight Bears
Gloria Dickie
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Thunderclap
Laura Cumming
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A Madman’s Will
Gregory May
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Tabula Rasa
John McPhee
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Fires in the Dark
Kay Redfield Jamison
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Wasteland
Oliver Franklin-Wallis
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Natural Light
Julian Bell
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The Lost Sons of Omaha
Joe Sexton
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The 272
Rachel L. Swarns
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The Art Thief
Michael Finkel
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Winnie & Nelson
Jonny Steinberg
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Tomorrow Perhaps the Future
Sarah Watling
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The Sullivanians
Alexander Stille
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A Stranger in Your Own City
Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
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Easily Slip into Another World
Henry Threadgill and Brent Hayes Edwards
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V Is for Victory
Craig Nelson
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A Life of One’s Own
Joanna Biggs
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The Wounded World
Chad L. Williams
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Samuel Barber
Howard Pollack
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Monsters
Claire Dederer
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The World
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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The Plot to Save South Africa
Justice Malala
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Mozart in Motion
Patrick Mackie
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My Father’s Brain
Sandeep Jauhar
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The Earth Transformed
Peter Frankopan
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Paved Paradise
Henry Grabar
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Biting the Hand
Julia Lee
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When the World Didn’t End
Guinevere Turner
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Carmageddon
Daniel Knowles
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Actual Malice
Samantha Barbas
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Holding the Note
David Remnick
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Parfit
David Edmonds
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Go Back and Get It
Dionne Ford
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We the Scientists
Amy Dockser Marcus
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Traffic
Ben Smith
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Camera Girl
Carl Sferrazza Anthony
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Waco
Jeff Guinn
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Waco Rising
Kevin Cook
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Writers and Missionaries
Adam Shatz
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Nothing Stays Put
Willard Spiegelman
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Still Life with Bones
Alexa Hagerty
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To Anyone Who Ever Asks
Howard Fishman
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We Should Not Be Friends
Will Schwalbe
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Fatherland
Burkhard Bilger
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The Best Minds
Jonathan Rosen
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The Blazing World
Jonathan Healey
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Spoiled
Anne Mendelson
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The Cult of Creativity
Samuel W. Franklin
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Psychonauts
Mike Jay
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Benjamin Banneker and Us
Rachel Jamison Webster
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Spring Rain
Marc Hamer
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Tenacious Beasts
Christopher J. Preston
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The Wager
David Grann
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Raving
McKenzie Wark
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The Diary Keepers
Nina Siegal
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Courting India
Nandini Das
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There Will Be Fire
Rory Carroll
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How Data Happened
Chris Wiggins and Matthew L. Jones
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Spoken Word
Joshua Bennett
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Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs
Kerry Howley
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Ringmaster
Abraham Riesman
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The Kingdom of Prep
Maggie Bullock
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Ghosts of the Orphanage
Christine Kenneally
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Milton Glaser
Steven Heller, Mirko Ilić and Beth Kleber
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We Were Once a Family
Roxanna Asgarian
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I Am Still with You
Emmanuel Iduma
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Poverty, by America
Matthew Desmond
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A Stone Is Most Precious Where It Belongs
Gulchehra Hoja
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The Great Displacement
Jake Bittle
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The Real Work
Adam Gopnik
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The Half Known Life
Pico Iyer
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Life on Delay
John Hendrickson
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The Devil’s Element
Dan Egan
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Three Roads Back
Robert D. Richardson
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Cobalt Red
Siddharth Kara
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Oscar Wars
Michael Schulman
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The Wife of Bath
Marion Turner
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When the News Broke
Heather Hendershot
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Why You’ll Never Find the One
Sarah Akinterinwa
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The Wandering Mind
Jamie Kreiner
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The Scythian Empire
Christopher I. Beckwith
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Pirate Enlightenment
David Graeber
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Spare
Prince Harry
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Professing Criticism
John Guillory
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Still Pictures
Janet Malcolm
