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The 80 Books Every Man Should Read
An unranked, incomplete, utterly biased list of the
greatest works of literature ever published. How
many have you read?
What We Talk About When We Talk About
Love, by Raymond Carver
"That morning she pours Teacher's over my
belly and licks it off. That afternoon she tries to
jump out the window." And that's not even the
best line.
Collected Stories of John Cheever
He knew better than anyone the darkness that
hides behind the costume of a carefully
manicured lawn.
Deliverance, by James Dickey
A reminder of how close we are to animalism,
and because there's so much more to the book
than that scene.
The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
Because it's all about the titty.
Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy
Just try sleeping after the scene in which the
Apaches thunder over the hills wearing the
dresses of the brides they've killed.
The Brothers Karamazov, by Fyodor
Dostoevsky
Freud and Einstein both hailed it as a
masterpiece, and Kurt Vonnegut claimed that
everything you need to know in life is smashed
down into this book. It still is.
The Known World, by Edward P. Jones
Free black people who own slaves. Slaves who
know the world's brutality and, more shockingly,
its beauty.
The Good War, by Studs Terkel
All you'll ever need to know about men, women,
war, peace, work, home, and just who the
people called Americans really are.
American Pastoral, by Philip Roth
One of the few not about Roth. It's about that
guy you idolized in high school. And gloves. And
you.
A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other
Stories, by Flannery O'Connor
"She would of been a good woman... if it had
been somebody there to shoot her every minute
of her life." Wouldn't we all.
The Things They Carried, by Tim O'Brien.
No one else has written so beautifully about
human remains hanging from tree branches.
A Sport and a Pastime, by James Salter
Remember your college buddy's girlfriend, the
one you were in love with? Because of her.
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London
A book about dogs is equally a book about men.
Time's Arrow, by Martin Amis
You've never seen the Holocaust from this angle
and with this much ferocity. Backwards.
A Sense of Where You Are, by John McPhee
It's about how two men can be made better just
by sharing each other's company.
Hell's Angels, by Hunter S. Thompson
Because it's his first book, and because he got
his ass kicked for it, and because in the book
and the beating were the seeds of all that came
after, including the bullet in the head.
Invisible Man, by Ralph Ellison
Born in an epic fist-fight or forgotten in the
sewers, no character is as clearly heard as the
man who is never really seen by the world
around him.
Dubliners, by James Joyce
Plain and simple: "The Dead"
Rabbit, Run, by John Updike
Because it's one of the few not about Updike.
It's about that guy you idolized in high school.
And kitchen gadgets. And you.
The Postman Always Rings Twice, by James
M. Cain
Teaches men about women. Also, there's not a
single postman in the book.
Dog Soldiers, by Robert Stone
Begins in Saigon, ends in Death Valley.
Somewhere in between you realize that profit is
second only to survival.
Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell
The best book by a modern-day Twain, high on
meth, drousy with whiskey.
Legends of the Fall, by Jim Harrison
Because of revenge. Because Harrison is as
masculine and raw and unrelenting as they
come.
Under the Volcano, by Malcolm Lowry
A terrifying riderless horse, mescaline, and this
line: "Somebody threw a dead dog after him
down the ravine."
The Naked and the Dead, by Norman Mailer
His first book turned out to be his best book.
The skulls of young men at war.
The Professional, by W.C. Heinz
It's about fighting, but it's also about watching
and listening, and it's about patience, and
honing, and craft, and sparseness, and beauty,
and crushing, awful defeat.
For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest
Hemingway
A lesson in manhood: Even when you're
damned, you press on.
Dispatches, by Michael Herr
"Vietnam Vietnam Vietnam, we've all been
there." You'll never forget that line. You won't
forget what precedes it, either.
Tropic of Cancer, by Henry Miller.
Dirty, grotesque. Beautiful.
Revolutionary Road, by Richard Yates
The thousands of little compromises we make
every day that eventually add up to the loss of
ourselves.
As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
Because the man's cold brilliance enabled him
to make the line "My mother is a fish," into a
chapter in itself.
The Killer Angels, by Michael Shaara
Because the Battle of Gettysburg took place in
that blue-gray area between black and white.
Slaughterhouse-Five, by Kurt Vonnegut
A mad hatter of an antiwar novel that
understands how a smile, shaped like a sickle,
can cut deeply. So it goes.
All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren
Crooked judges, concealed paternity, deception,
betrayal, and lots of whiskey.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Ken
Kesey
Because sometimes you have to go crazy to
stay sane.
Sophie's Choice, by William Styron
It's not about Sophie or her choice. It's about
Stingo.
A Fan's Notes, by Frederick Exley.
A crazy, irrational drunk who seems all too
rational and familiar.
Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
One of the best comedies of embarrassments
ever written. And because you shouldn't
underestimate the father. Especially this one.
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki
Murakami
Because of the woman trapped in the well that
isn't really a well.
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian.
Seafaring, swashbuckling awesomeness.
Plainsong, by Kent Haruf
Because: "A girl is different. They want things.
They need things on a regular schedule. Why, a
girl's got purposes you and me can't even
imagine. They got ideas in their heads you and
me can't even suppose."
A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy
Toole
The fart joke as literature.
Affliction, by Russell Banks
Think Dostoevsky in bone-cold New Hampshire.
Think lots of boozing and brawling. Do not think
of ripping out your own tooth with a pair of
pliers.
This Boy's Life, by Tobias Wolff
A Million Little Pieces -- the version that's true.
Winter's Tale, by Mark Helprin
Because every sentence is impossibly beautiful.
The Adventures of Augie March, by Saul
Bellow
Because it starts like this: "I am an American,
Chicago born -- Chicago, that somber city -- and
go at things as I have taught myself, free-style,
and will make the record in my own way: first to
knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent
knock, sometimes a not so innocent." Or:
because you're Augie.
Women, by Charles Bukowski
It's about Bukowski. And women. And sex. And
you.
Going Native, by Stephen Wright
If Don DeLillo and Denis Johnson had a kid, his
name would be Stephen Wright, and he would
have written this book so they could read it to
him before bed, and the whole shebang would
make perfect, hallucinatory sense.
Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad
Man is a powder keg with a short burning fuse
to horror, horror.
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, by
John LeCarr
The best spy novel of all time.
The Crack-Up, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Because Fitzgerald knew Lindsay, Britney and
the Olsens better than we do. (And because it
was first published in Esquire.)
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline, by George
Saunders
Theme parks. Ghosts. Memory downloads.
Corporate gibberish. Saunders picks up where
Vonnegut left off.
War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy
Because what else is there?
The Shining, by Stephen King
Imagine waking up to a swarm of wasps.
Imagine a naked woman rotting in your hands.
Imagine voices in the woodwork.
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson
Because Anderson captures how each of us is
mangled by the things we do to cope.
Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
The first American masterpiece. And perhaps
the greatest.
Midnight's Children, by Salman Rushdie
Because beyond the hot ex-wife and the fatwa,
Rushdie is actually a great writer, and this is his
best book.
Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges
Packs more into three pages than most writers
pack into a career.
The Right Stuff, by Tom Wolfe
Fighter jocks join the space program. Space
program tries to reprogram them. Fighter jocks
fight back. What results is a new breed of hero:
earthly Sinatras in outer space, hot-blooded
rocket wranglers in a frigid mechanical future.
And, in Wolfe's hands, an immortal barnburner.
The Sportswriter, by Richard Ford
Because Frank Bascombe is the new
Zuckerman.
American Tabloid, by James Ellroy
Scandal, surveillance, and dirty journalism
written in bulls-eye Americanese that crackles
and ricochets like rifle fire.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X, by Alex
Haley
Malcolm says it best: "People don't realize how
a man's whole life can be changed by one
book."
What It Takes, by Richard Ben Cramer
This is as close as you'll ever get to running for
president.
The Continental Op, by Dashiell Hammett
The hard-boiled tough-guy detective -- the only
pure American genre -- invented.
The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene
A kind of flesh-bound Bible.
So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William
Maxwell
Remember your best friend from childhood, the
one who's gone? Because of him.
Native Son, by Richard Wright
Because the novel's main character asks this
question: "Why were there so many [prison]
cells?" Because the novel itself is the cruel
answer.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, by James
Agee and Walker Evans
The only truly accomplished partnership in
America letters.
Angle of Repose, by Wallace Stegner
A gorgeous and gorgeously told story of a
crippled man struggling to make sense of his
grandparents' lives and the coming desolation of
the environment. The narrator is unreliable,
prophetic, and inconveniently truthful.
The Great Bridge, by David McCullough
There is only one bridge.
The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac
Because in the end, you won't remember the
time you spent working in the office or mowing
your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.
Lonesome Dove, by Larry McMurtry
Two crabby old men, and one herd of cattle,
cross the gut of a great, unformed nation.
Episodic, elemental.
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
So gymnastically lyrical. So damningly heartfelt.
So horribly dirty. So, so good.
Underworld, by Don DeLillo
Because the first fifty pages rank, bar none,
among the best pages ever written.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by
Mark Twain
Because a boy can disappear, a boy can survive
on his own, a boy can become part of a nation's
hopes for itself.
Savages, by Don Winslow
Because sometimes a book should just be fast
and funny and full of drugs and sex and guns.
The Orphan Master's Son, by Adam Johnson
An astonishing feat of moral imagination, set in
North Korea.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, by Ben
Fountain
Both the funniest and saddest book about
America ever written.
Let the Great World Spin, by Colum McCann
The best book about September 11 is about
New York before September 11. It's also by an
Irishman. Go figure.
The Road, by Cormac McCarthy
Because he showed us just how long the road
could be.
http://www.esquire.com/the-side/feature/80-
books