Year-End Lists

Esquire: The 50 Best Books of 2021

[see also The 25 Best Books of 2024 • The 20 Best Books of 2023 • The Best Books of 2022 • The Best Nonfiction Books of 2022 • The Best Books of the 2010s • The Best Nonfiction Books of 2019]

• Virtue
  Hermione Hoby
• The 1619 Project

  A New Origin Story
  Nikole Hannah-Jones (creator)
• I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
  Claire Vaye Watkins
• Harrow
  Joy Williams
• Reprieve
  James Han Mattson
• My Body
  Emily Ratajkowski
• Everything and Less

  The Novel in the Age of Amazon
  Mark McGurl
• Beautiful World, Where Are You
  Sally Rooney
• Palmares
  Gayl Jones
• A Calling for Charlie Barnes
  Joshua Ferris
• Billy Summers
  Stephen King
• Harlem Shuffle
  Colson Whitehead
• Matrix
  Lauren Groff
• Nightbitch
  Rachel Yoder
• Falling
  T.J. Newman
• Somebody's Daughter
  Ashley C. Ford
• The Other Black Girl
  Zakiya Dalila Harris
• How the Word Is Passed

  A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America
  Clint Smith
• Appleseed
  Matt Bell
• An Ordinary Age

  Finding Your Way in a World That Expects Exceptional
  Rainesford Stauffer
• The Atmospherians
  Alex McElroy
• Third Eye Rising
  Murzban F. Shroff
• The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
  Dawnie Walton
• The Man Who Lived Underground
  Richard Wright
• Last Call

  A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York
  Elon Green
• Early Morning Riser
  Katherine Heiny
• Great Circle
  Maggie Shipstead
• Aftershocks
  Nadia Owusu
• Dog Flowers
  Danielle Geller
• Detransition, Baby
  Torrey Peters
• Concrete Rose
  Angie Thomas
• A Swim in a Pond in the Rain

  In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life
  George Saunders
• Under a White Sky

  The Nature of the Future
  Elizabeth Kolbert
• Craft in the Real World

  Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping
  Matthew Salesses
• Let Me Tell You What I Mean
  Joan Didion
• Love Is an Ex-Country
  Randa Jarrar
• Surviving the White Gaze
  Rebecca Carroll
• Land of Big Numbers
  Te-Ping Chen
• Milk Fed
  Melissa Broder
• Fake Accounts
  Lauren Oyler
• We Had a Little Real Estate Problem

  The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy
  Kliph Nesteroff
• No One Is Talking About This
  Patricia Lockwood
• Infinite Country
  Patricia Engel
• What's Mine and Yours
  Naima Coster
• Klara and the Sun
  Kazuo Ishiguro
• The Committed
  Viet Thanh Nguyen
• Mona
  Pola Oloixarac
• How Beautiful We Were
  Imbolo Mbue
• Libertie
  Kaitlyn Greenidge
• A Little Devil in America

  Notes in Praise of Black Performance
  Hanif Abdurraqib