Esquire's 80 Books Every Man Should Read (2022)
A revised version of their 2015 list. Back in 2015, Esquire published a list of “80 Books Every Man Should Read.” It wasn’t our finest moment. The list claimed to be “utterly biased,” and indeed it was. We received criticism from every corner of the Internet, and we deserved it. Only one title (A Good Man Is Hard to Find) was written by a woman, and fewer than ten were written by men of color. It was also a pretty boring set.
- 1
The Handmaid’s Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1985 · 23 lists
- 2
The Fire Next Time
James Baldwin · 1962 · 4 lists
- 3
A Manual for Cleaning Women
Lucia Berlin · 2015 · 3 lists
- 4
Ball Four
Jim Bouton · 1970 · 2 lists
- 5
It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium
John Ed Bradley · 2007 · 1 list
- 6
The Mamba Mentality
Kobe Bryant · 2005 · 1 list
- 7
Kindred
Octavia E. Butler · 1979 · 2 lists
- 8
The Power Broker
Robert Caro · 1974 · 5 lists
- 9
The Stories of John Cheever
John Cheever · 1978 · 9 lists
- 10
Be Here Now
Ram Dass · 1971 · 1 list
- 11
Poems of Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson · 1890 · 8 lists
- 12
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Joan Didion · 1968 · 4 lists
- 13
The Count of Monte Cristo
Alexandre Dumas · 1844 · 14 lists
- 14
Nickel and Dimed
Barbara Ehrenreich · 2001 · 4 lists
- 15
A Visit from the Goon Squad
Jennifer Egan · 2010 · 9 lists
- 16
Infinite Country
Patricia Engel · 2021 · 1 list
- 17
My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante · 2011 · 6 lists
- 18
This Side of Paradise
F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1920 · 3 lists
- 19
You Only Live Twice
Ian Fleming · 1964 · 1 list
- 20
Fat City
Leonard Gardner · 1969 · 1 list
- 21
The Collected Poems of Jack Gilbert
Jack Gilbert · 1800 · 1 list
- 22
The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant
Ulysses S. Grant · 2018 · 1 list
- 23
Dune
Frank Herbert · 1965 · 14 lists
- 25
A People's History of the Supreme Court
Peter Irons · 1999 · 1 list
- 26
The Remains of the Day
Kazuo Ishiguro · 1989 · 14 lists
- 27
The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers · 2021 · 3 lists
- 28
Jesus' Son
Denis Johnson · 1992 · 2 lists
- 29
Say Nothing
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2018 · 7 lists
- 30
Scar Tissue
Anthony Kiedis · 2004 · 1 list
- 31
It
Stephen King · 1905 · 6 lists
- 32
Out
Natsuo Kirino · 2003 · 2 lists
- 33
The Flamethrowers
Rachel Kushner · 2013 · 5 lists
- 34
Angels in America
Tony Kushner · 1993 · 1 list
- 35
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
John Le Carré · 1963 · 13 lists
- 36
Pachinko
Min Jin Lee · 2017 · 7 lists
- 37
The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin · 1969 · 9 lists
- 38
A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor · 1977 · 1 list
- 39
Killshot
Elmore Leonard · 1989 · 2 lists
- 40
A River Runs Through It
Norman Maclean · 1976 · 1 list
- 41
Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel · 2009 · 12 lists
- 42
Harpo Speaks!
Harpo Marx · 1961 · 1 list
- 43
The Dark Side
Jane Mayer · 2008 · 2 lists
- 44
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy · 1992 · 5 lists
- 45
Moby-Dick
Herman Melville · 1851 · 34 lists
- 46
Self-Help
Lorrie Moore · 1985 · 1 list
- 47
The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison · 1970 · 5 lists
- 48
The Condemnation of Blackness
Khalil Gibran Muhammad · 2010 · 1 list
- 49
The Things They Carried
Tim O'Brien · 1990 · 10 lists
- 50
There There
Tommy Orange · 2018 · 6 lists
- 51
True Grit
Charles Portis · 1968 · 2 lists
- 52
Patrimony
Philip Roth · 1991 · 1 list
- 53
My Dark Vanessa
Kate Elizabeth Russell · 2020 · 1 list
- 54
Light Years
James Salter · 1975 · 2 lists
- 55
Crazy Horse: The Strange Man of the Oglalas
Mari Sandoz · 1955 · 1 list
- 56
Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders · 2017 · 7 lists
- 57
Whipping Girl
Julia Serano · 2007 · 1 list
- 58
White Teeth
Zadie Smith · 2000 · 17 lists
- 59
Regarding the Pain of Others
Susan Sontag · 2003 · 1 list
- 60
East of Eden
John Steinbeck · 1952 · 7 lists
- 61
Shuggie Bain
Douglas Stuart · 2020 · 5 lists
- 62
The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien · 1954 · 23 lists
- 63
Anna Karenina
Leo Tolstoy · 1876 · 24 lists
- 64
Cane
Jean Toomer · 1923 · 5 lists
- 65
Sex Object
Jessica Valenti · 2016 · 1 list
- 66
Undisputed Truth
Mike Tyson · 2013 · 1 list
- 67
The Uninhabitable Earth
David Wallace-Wells · 2019 · 1 list
- 68
Beautiful Ruins
Jess Walter · 2012 · 1 list
- 69
All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren · 1946 · 10 lists
- 70
The Essential Calvin and Hobbes
Bill Watterson · 1988 · 1 list
- 71
Vile Bodies
Evelyn Waugh · 1930 · 3 lists
- 72
Charlotte’s Web
E. B. White · 1952 · 12 lists
- 73
Leaves of Grass
Walt Whitman · 1855 · 13 lists
- 74
Brothers and Keepers
John Edgar Wideman · 1984 · 1 list
- 75
Caste
Isabel Wilkerson · 2020 · 2 lists
- 76
The Quick and the Dead
Joy Williams · 2000 · 1 list
- 77
Black Boy
Richard Wright · 1945 · 4 lists
- 78
Red at the Bone
Jacqueline Woodson · 2019 · 1 list
- 79
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley · 1968 · 9 lists
- 80
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn · 1980 · 1 list