As the new year begins, we’re making our reading lists for 2024. Here are 30 major nonfiction titles coming out this year on Foreign Policy’s radar, from economic manifestos to histories of forgotten eras to new assessments of great-power competition in the 21st century.
As the new year begins, we’re making our reading lists for 2024. Here are 30 major nonfiction titles coming out this year on Foreign Policy’s radar, from economic manifestos to histories of forgotten eras to new assessments of great-power competition in the 21st century.
Our Enemies Will Vanish: The Russian Invasion and Ukraine’s War of Independence
Yaroslav Trofimov (Penguin Press, 400 pp., $32, Jan. 9)
In this firsthand account of Russia’s war on Ukraine, Yaroslav Trofimov, the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign-affairs correspondent, chronicles Ukrainian resistance since Moscow invaded in February 2022. Trofimov, who grew up in Kyiv, weaves stories of everyday Ukrainians and reportage from the front lines with analysis of military strategy and geopolitics.
Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto
Kohei Saito, trans. Brian Bergstrom (Astra House, 288 pp., $27, Jan. 9)
Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito has become a kind of Marxist celebrity in recent years, and his surprise international bestseller has now been translated into English. In Slow Down, Saiti advocates for degrowth—an increasingly popular movement to shrink global economies—as the only way to solve global inequality and the climate crisis.
Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture
Kyle Chayka (Doubleday, 304 pp., $28, Jan. 16)
As algorithms dictate more of our lives, Kyle Chayka, who covers technology for the New Yorker, investigates what it means to live in a world curated by digital platforms, both online and offline—and considers how we might be able to transcend this so-called filterworld.
The Rebel’s Clinic: The Revolutionary Lives of Frantz Fanon
Adam Shatz (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 464 pp., $32, Jan. 23)
In this biography, Adam Shatz, the U.S. editor of the London Review of Books, reconstructs the life of Frantz Fanon, the French-Martinican postcolonial political theorist whose work continues to influence social justice and Black liberation movements around the world today.
Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis
Jonathan Blitzer (Penguin Press, 544 pp., $32, Jan 30.)
New Yorker staff writer Jonathan Blitzer’s debut is a sweeping account of the humanitarian crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border. Drawing on years of reporting, Blitzer examines decades of U.S. policies and their impact on asylum-seekers from Central America today.
A Nasty Little War: The Western Intervention Into the Russian Civil War
Anna Reid (Basic Books, 400 pp., $32, Feb. 6)
Anna Reid, an English journalist and historian of Russia, has written a comprehensive account of the failed Allied attempt to overthrow the Bolsheviks in 1918—and how this largely forgotten intervention in the Russian Civil War reshaped geopolitics and Russia’s relations with the West.
Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth
Ingrid Robeyns (Astra House, 336 pp., $28, Feb. 6)
In this manifesto, Ingrid Robeyns, the Dutch and Belgian philosopher who coined the term “limitarianism,” makes a political, economic, and moral argument for the need to reimagine global economic systems and cap extreme wealth.
A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging
Lauren Markham (Riverhead Books, 272 pp., $28, Feb. 13)
After fires destroyed most of Europe’s largest refugee camp in 2020, Greek American journalist Lauren Markham traveled to Greece to cover the conviction of six Afghans charged with arson at the camp. Markham weaves the story of their trial into a broader work of narrative journalism, touching on everything from Europe’s refugee crisis to the centrality of Ancient Greece in ideas about Western culture today.
Smoke and Ashes: Opium’s Hidden Histories
Amitav Ghosh (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 416 pp., $32, Feb. 13)
Amitav Ghosh, one of India’s best-known writers, draws on decades of archival research to tell the history of how the British Empire-run opium trade transformed China, India, and the United Kingdom—and is connected to the origins of global institutions, prominent U.S. families, and his own family history.
The Age of Revolutions: And the Generations Who Made It
Nathan Perl-Rosenthal (Basic Books, 560 pp., $35, Feb. 20)
In the first narrative history of the revolutions in Europe and the Americas from 1760 to 1825, U.S. historian Nathan Perl-Rosenthal traces how generations of revolutionaries—ranging from those in Haiti to Poland to the United States—created a world of republics and enshrined inequalities in modern democracies.
Asia After Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century
Sugata Bose (Belknap Press, 288 pp., $39.95, Feb. 20)
As nationalist sentiment fractures Asia today, Indian historian Sugata Bose reexamines the rise of the continent in the 20th century. Bose considers how Asian ideas of solidarity and universalism offered alternatives to the U.S.-led international system, even as European-style nation-states formed on the continent.
The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
Michiko Kakutani (Crown, 256 pp., $30, Feb. 20)
Michiko Kakutani, the former chief book critic of the New York Times, surveys the forces that have led to our current moment of global upheaval and uncertainty. Kakutani contextualizes today’s crises—from rampant populism to rising instability to environmental destruction—in the broad sweep of world history and points to ways to move past this era.
The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the C.I.A., and the Origins of America’s Invasion of Iraq
Steve Coll (Penguin Press, 576 pp., $35, Feb. 27)
Steve Coll, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer, offers a new account of the decadeslong relationship between Washington and former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The Achilles Trap—based in part on unpublished sources—reassesses the corruption, lies, and missteps that led to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and transformed the Middle East.
Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,Kara Swisher (Simon & Schuster, 320 pp., $27, Feb. 27)
As tech giants become more powerful, Kara Swisher, a journalist who has covered technology and the internet since the early 1990s, provides an inside account of Silicon Valley, the figures who shaped it, and the danger—and promise—of big tech.
The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War
Jim Sciutto (Dutton, 368 pp., $30, March 12)
According to Jim Sciutto, CNN’s chief national security correspondent, the world has returned to a “1939 moment.” His new book draws on interviews with global leaders and years of international reporting to paint a portrait of our “post-post-Cold War era” defined by great-power conflict.
Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea
Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor (Pantheon, 432 pp., $30, March 12)
The world needs to revive solidarity as a political movement, Leah Hunt-Hendrix and Astra Taylor argue in their new book. Hunt-Hendrix and Taylor, both prominent American activists, trace the history of the concept of solidarity, from ancient Rome to 21st century social movements, and argue that it will be essential to fighting the many crises facing the world today.
The Black Box: Writing the Race
Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Penguin Press, 304 pp., $30, March 19)
In this meditation on Black identity, Henry Louis Gates Jr., one of the world’s most distinguished academics, reflects on the writers and thinkers who have shaped what it means to be Black in America—with implications beyond the United States, as U.S. debates around race and Blackness shape these conversations elsewhere in the world.
Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash From 1600 to the Present
Fareed Zakaria (W. W. Norton & Company, 400 pp., $29.99, March 26)
CNN host and Washington Post columnist Fareed Zakaria examines three eras of profound change—the Dutch Golden Age, the French Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution—and the lessons they hold for our current revolutionary age.
Native Nations: A Millennium in North America
Kathleen DuVal (Random House, 752 pp., $38, April 9)
Indigenous people are at the heart of historian Kathleen DuVal’s sweeping account of North American history. DuVal’s book chronicles Native peoples’ power, survival, and resistance over more than a thousand years and examines their role in shaping America’s past and present.
New Cold Wars: China’s Rise, Russia’s Invasion, and America’s Struggle to Defend the West
David E. Sanger (Crown, 544 pp., $32, April 16)
David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for the New York Times, traces the contours of the “new Cold Wars” as competition among China, Russia, and the United States intensifies, and considers what this era of superpower conflict may mean for Washington and the world.
Knife: Meditations After an Attempted Murder
Salman Rushdie (Random House, 224 pp., $28, April 16)
In his first new book since he was stabbed in 2022, Indian British author Salman Rushdie—who has been the target of an Iranian fatwa ordering his execution since 1989 for writing the novel The Satanic Verses—recounts the attack and reflects on the power of art in the face of violence.
The Everything War: Amazon’s Ruthless Quest to Own the World and Remake Corporate Power
Dana Mattioli (Little, Brown and Company, 416 pp., $32.50, April 23)
In this work of investigative journalism, Dana Mattioli, a reporter who covers Amazon for the Wall Street Journal, reveals how Jeff Bezos’s company bulldozed competitors and became one of the world’s most powerful institutions, reshaping the global economy in the process.
The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society
Joseph E. Stiglitz (W. W. Norton & Company, 384 pp., $29.99, April 23)
U.S. society doesn’t offer true freedom, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz. In his new book, Stiglitz argues that so-called free markets make Americans less free. He also considers alternative economic and political systems that might ensure greater freedom for more individuals.
World on the Brink: How America Can Beat China in the Race for the Twenty-First Century
Dmitri Alperovitch, with Garrett M. Graff (PublicAffairs, 400 pp., $32.50, April 30)
As U.S.-China competition ramps up, national-security expert Dmitri Alperovitch lays out the risks of a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan and offers a blueprint for Washington to both deter war and ensure its continued global leadership.
At the Edge of Empire: A Family’s Reckoning with China
Edward Wong (Viking, 464 pp., $30, May 28)
Edward Wong, a diplomatic correspondent for the New York Times and the newspaper’s former Beijing bureau chief, combines personal and national history in At the Edge of Empire. Part intergenerational memoir, part work of reportage, Wong’s book paints a unique portrait of modern China.
To Run the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for Global Power
Sergey Radchenko (Cambridge University Press, 768 pp., $34.95, May 30)
Sergey Radchenko, a Soviet-born British historian, uses new archival material from Moscow and Beijing to present a comprehensive account of the Soviet Union’s ambitions and decision-making in the Cold War, with insights that shed light on some of Russia’s actions today.
How the World Ran Out of Everything: Inside the Global Supply Chain
Peter S. Goodman (Mariner Books, 480 pp., $30, June 11)
Recent years have exposed the precarity of global supply chains. In his new book, Peter S. Goodman, the New York Times’s global economics correspondent, takes readers inside this system, analyzes the factors that made it so fragile, and argues that it is overdue for reform.
Supremacy: AI, ChatGPT, and the Race That Will Change the World
Parmy Olson (St. Martin’s Press, 288 pp., $30, July 16)
Parmy Olson, a technology columnist for Bloomberg, dives into the rivalry between the world’s two major artificial intelligence labs and their CEOs—Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind—as well as the threats posed by their creations.
Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich
Richard J. Evans (Penguin Press, 624 pp., $35, Aug. 13)
Richard J. Evans, a leading historian of Nazi Germany, draws on new archival material to reconstruct the lives of key figures of the Third Reich and offer new insight into the question of how societies end up carrying out great evil, as well as who bears responsibility for these acts.
Foreign Agents: How American Lobbyists and Lawmakers Threaten Democracy Around the World
Casey Michel (St. Martin’s Press, 368 pp., $30, Aug. 27)
Journalist Casey Michel investigates the powerful but under-scrutinized Americans who work as foreign lobbyists. In his telling, these figures have aided dictatorships, promoted kleptocracy, and propped up illiberal regimes—and now, he argues, they are trying to undermine U.S. democracy.
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