new york times book review best books 2023

The 100 Notable Books of 2023, According to the New York Times

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The list is split into Fiction and Nonfiction, with each book within getting a more specific label, like Family Saga for The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Experimental Fiction for Biography of X by Catherine Lacey, Literary Dystopia for Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, and Climate Fiction for Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang.

There are a lot of literary fiction picks on the list, but also genre titles like Holly by Stephen King (“Horror-Tinged Thriller”), Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett (Fantasy), and We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian (Romance).

Other categories include Poetry ( From From by Monica Youn), Satire ( Yellowface by R. F. Kuang), Science ( Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara), Politics ( Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, Memoir ( Pageboy by Elliot Page), and many more.

You can see the full list at The New York Times .

Find more news and stories of interest from the book world in  Breaking in Books .

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• Seen & Heard

‘NYT’ Names Its 10 Best Books of 2023

BY Michael Schaub • Nov. 28, 2023

The New York Times unveiled its list of its 10 best books of 2023, with five fiction and five nonfiction titles making the cut.

Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting , which was a finalist for this year’s Kirkus Prize and Booker Prize, made the list, with the newspaper hailing the Irish author’s “triumphant return.” Also honored was Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain-Gang All-Stars , which was shortlisted for the National Book Award.

Zadie Smith’s The Fraud made the Times list, alongside North Woods  by Daniel Mason and Eastbound , written by French author Maylis de Kerangal and translated by Jessica Moore.

John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: A True Story From a Hotter World , the winner of this year’s Baillie Gifford Prize and a National Book Award finalist, was one of the nonfiction books to appear on the Times list, along with Ilyon Woo’s Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom , another Kirkus Prize finalist.

Other nonfiction books making the cut were Jonathan Rosen’s The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions , Kerry Howley’s Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State , and Patricia Evangelista’s Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country .

Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.

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Books & Books

Find your next book:, the new york times: the 10 best books of 2023.

The staff of The New York Times Book Review choose the year’s standout fiction and nonfiction.

The Bee Sting: A Novel (Hardcover)

One of The New York Times T op 10 Books of the Year Winner of the An Post Irish Book of the Year, the Nero Gold Prize, and the Nero Book Award for Fiction Shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Writers' Prize for Fiction Finalist for the Kirkus Prize for Fiction

Chain Gang All Stars: A Novel (Hardcover)

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN FICTION • A READ WITH JENNA BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America’s own in this explosive, hotly-anticipated debut novel from the New Y

Eastbound (Paperback)

** SELECTED BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AS 1 OF THE 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR ** ** INCLUDED ON THE NEW YORKER'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 **

The Fraud: A Novel (Hardcover)

The New York Times bestseller • One of the New York Times 10 Best Books of the Year • One of NPR's Best Books of the Year • Named a Best Book of the Year by Publishers Weekly and BookPage • One of Oprah Daily's Best Novels of 2023

North Woods: A Novel (Hardcover)

A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR A WASHINGTON POST TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions (Hardcover)

Named a Top 10 Best Book of the Year by The New York Times , The Wall Street Journal , The Atlantic , Slate , and People One of Barack Obama's Favorite Books of 2023 “Brave and nuanced . . . an act of tremendous compassion and a literary triumph.” — The New York Times

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State (Hardcover)

A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • A VANITY FAIR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR “Riveting and darkly funny and in all senses of the word, unclassifiable.” – The New York Times

Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World (Hardcover)

A NEW YORK TIMES TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD IN NONFICTION • A stunning account of a colossal wildfire and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between fire and humankind from the award-winning, best-selling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce • Winner of the Baillie Gi

Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom (Hardcover)

One of The New York Times ’s 10 Best Books of 2023 New York Times Bestseller Named a best book of 2023 by The New Yorker , Time , NPR, Smithsonian Magazine , Boston , Chicago Public Library, Oprah Daily , and People The remarkable true story of Ellen and William Craft, who escap

Some People Need Killing: A Memoir of Murder in My Country (Hardcover)

TIME ’S #1 NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR • A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW TOP 10 BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • A “riveting” ( The Atlantic ) account of the Philippines’ state-sanctioned killings of its citizens under President Rodrigo Duterte, hailed as “a journalistic masterpiece” ( The New Yorker )  

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Morning joe, the new york times reveals 'the 10 best books of 2023'.

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Editor of The New York Times Book Review, Gilbert Cruz, joins Morning Joe to discuss the 10 best books of 2023 and the meticulous process behind their selection. Nov. 29, 2023

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The New York Public Library: Best Books of 2023

The New York Public Library is proud to present our Best Books of 2023. Our annual recommendations for kids, teens, and adults, curated by our expert librarians, encompass fiction, nonfiction, graphic novels, poetry, kids’ books in Spanish, and much more.

All of these books are in the Library’s catalog and many are available in multiple formats, including e-books, audiobooks, and accessible editions. Happy reading!

For Adults: Explore the List

For teens: explore the list, for kids: explore the list, para pequeños: explore la lista, download our 2023 lists.

Print and check off the titles as you read them!

• Best New Books for Adults
• Best New Books for Kids
• Best New Books for Teens
• Los mejores libros nuevos para pequeños

Discover Our Top 10 Picks for Kids, Teens, and Adults

Not sure where to start? Check out our top 10 picks for kids, teens, and adults.

Available in Accessible Formats

Find out which of our Best Books of 2023 are currently available in digital talking book, braille, and Bookshare editions.

About Best Books at NYPL

Every year the librarians and staff on our Best Books committees read thousands of titles to select noteworthy new books for readers of all ages. Find out more—and check out the highlights of previous years!

Get a Library Card Today!

If you don’t already have a library card, you can sign up for one for free online today and start reading the Best Books of 2023! Access everything the Library has to offer, from free one-on-one online tutoring to e-books, with your library card.

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Prefer to read on your mobile device? Download the Library’s free e-reader app, SimplyE, and gain instant access to hundreds of thousands of books and e-books now, including many of this year’s Best Books.

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Major support for children's and young adult programming is provided by the Andreas C. Dracopoulos Family Endowment for Young Audiences.

The 45 Best New Books of 2023 You Won’t Put Down

Add them to your reading list ASAP

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From fizzy summer beach reads to highbrow literary fiction, 2023’s most noteworthy releases so far are highly personal and deeply memorable. At the start of the year, readers were treated to heartfelt debut novels by Jessica George and Delia Cai. Throughout the spring and summer, modern literary forces like Brandon Taylor, Ann Patchett, and Zadie Smith returned with highly anticipated novels that were worth the wait. The momentum isn’t ending with the calendar year, either. Books arriving in fall and winter include Elizabeth Hand’s bone-chilling A Haunting on the Hill and Class , Stephanie Land’s follow-up to her best-selling memoir Maid . From a study of Brooklyn’s gilded upper class in Pineapple Street to a scammer’s anxiety-inducing lurch through the Hamptons in Emma Cline’s The Guest , this year’s best new books hook you from the first scene. Their characters are so memorable, you’ll want to revisit them again in the not-too-distant future. (Even the antiheroes.)

Read on for the best books of 2023 to add to your reading list now—and read a second time later—organized by release date. From the moment you pick them up, you won’t want to put them down. And if there’s a book lover in your life, any one of these titles would fit their definition of a luxury gift for the holiday season.

The Survivalists: A Novel

The Survivalists is one of the year’s most noteworthy new books on premise alone . Aretha, a partner-track lawyer who thrives on corporate success, descends into the world of Armageddon bunkers and doomsday arms dealing after she begins dating a coffee entrepreneur whose roommates are preparing for all sorts of unknown catastrophes while managing the roastery in their shared brownstone. On execution, The Survivalists delivers with a portrait of an underground corner of Brooklyn that’s so vividly captured, you may question what’s going on behind your favorite coffee shop.

Maame: A Novel

Maddie, the narrator of Jessica George’s stirring debut novel, has spent most of her 20s caring for her father, who has Parkinson’s disease. Her mother is in Ghana; her brother is on the road with a musician; neither offer much in terms of money or help. But a moment for Maddie to finally figure out what she wants from life, independent of her family, is on the horizon—just not in the way she initially expects. This is a coming-of-age novel that finds beauty in the messiness and complexity of growing up, with a narrator whose singular voice instantly captivated readers and reviewers.

There’s more where Maame came from: The novel has already been picked up for a TV adaptation.

Central Places: A Novel

Heroines who travel from a bustling city to their flyover-state hometown for the holidays often find trouble and maybe a new love interest in their old zip code. But Audrey Zhou, the narrator of Central Plac es, isn’t on the Hallmark trajectory when she books a Christmas trip back to Hickory Grove, Illinois, for her first visit since high school. Audrey intends to spend the week introducing her Chinese immigrant parents to her white fiancé and helping them feel like one family—a tough order, considering Audrey and her mother aren’t on the best terms. Instead, after run-ins with a past crush and old acquaintances, Audrey embarks on a self-reckoning that’s hilarious at some times, heartfelt at others, and impossible to put down the whole way through.

Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear

Wolfish ’s explorations of predators and prey in both the natural and man-made worlds defies easy categorization. The way Berry weaves an ecological adventure story about OR-7 , a wolf who makes a record-breaking journey away from an Oregon pack, with tales from her own coming-of-age, asks readers to reconsider their relationships with fear and the creatures who induce it.

I Have Some Questions for You: A Novel

Is I Have Some Questions for You a campus novel, a noir murder mystery, or a literary dissection of #MeToo social dynamics? With literary sensation Rebecca Makkai steering journalist Bodie Kane back to her high school alma mater to teach a workshop and, eventually, sift through the files on a former classmate’s death to potentially exonerate a wrongly accused killer, the answer is all of the above.

Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock

In 2019, Jenny Odell drew our collective attention to the attention economy’s downsides with her book How to Do Nothing . Saving Time offers another chance to shift our perspective on the systems we accept as the standard—specifically time, and how we structure and spend it. You might just put this book down with a whole new outlook on how you measure your days.

Pineapple Street: A Novel

Comedies skewering the 1 percent have borderline overstayed their welcome in film, but this novel’s take on the subgenre in fiction is laugh-out-loud good. It follows three women connected to the wealthier-than-wealthy Stockton family and their Brooklyn Heights brownstone: two Stockton siblings, Darley and Georgiana, and their sister-in-law with a middle-class background, Sasha. Love and money have always mixed like oil and water (not well), but Jackson finds new humor and warmth in her particularly witty debut.

Brother & Sister Enter the Forest: A Novel

Richard Mirabella braids two timelines into one propulsive narrative about survival. In the first: Justin, a queer teen, sets off on a catastrophic road trip with his first boyfriend after his love interest gets into violent trouble. In the second: It’s several years later, and Justin has arrived on his sister Willa’s doorstep, desperate for refuge but at risk of damaging them both with the aftereffects of his trauma.

Hello Beautiful: A Novel

Little Women fans will be endeared by Hello Beautiful ’s homage to the March siblings, in the form of the four Padavano sisters. Any lover of a sweeping family saga will be moved by the Padavanos’ unraveling after eldest daughter Julia meets Will, a man whose tragic past comes back to disrupt the entire family.

Romantic Comedy: A Novel

The title doesn’t lie: Curtis Sittenfeld sets up her latest novel with a plot that demands a fizzy on-creen adaptation, ASAP. Sally Milz, a writer on a fictional SNL twin, The Night Owls , has more or less given up on romance when pop star Noah Brewster signs on to host the show. Over a week of writing jokes and rehearsing the week’s lineup, Sally feels something that’s a lot like love—but you’ll have to read to see if their connection is real or just another sketch.

A Living Remedy: A Memoir

On one level, Nicole Chung’s second memoir is an elegy for her adoptive parents. On another, it’s an indictment of the broken health care systems that prevent a disappearing middle class from receiving the affordable care it desperately needs. Chung writes about and through her grief with clarity and wisdom. Her reflection on her early life and her parents’ last days is a salve for any reader who has experienced the specific devastation that is losing a parent.

Happy Place: A Novel

Happy Place is a different kind of Emily Henry romance. Harriet and Wyn, its leading duo, aren't a couple in the making. They're partners since college who quietly broke up months ago—and didn’t tell any of their friends before an annual group trip to Maine. Back at their usual summer escape, Harriet and Wyn have to fake that they’re still together for the friends they haven’t clued in to the truth, and maybe come to a new understanding with one another in the process. Don’t be surprised if you’re weeping through the last few chapters (in a cathartic way, we promise).

Homebodies: A Novel

Tembe Denton-Hurst’s debut novel astutely captures what it’s like to fight for yourself in a world that’s stacked against you. Unfairly ousted from her job, Mickey Hayward puts her experiences as a Black woman in media to paper in the hopes it’ll wake up the industry to the racism and sexism she endured. Instead, it hardly makes a ripple—until Mickey has left New York for her Maryland hometown and her letter reappears amid a larger scandal involving her old workplace.

Wildflower: A Memoir

How did Aurora James found her CFDA award–winning label Brother Vellies and galvanize retailers to take a stand for Black-owned brands through the Fifteen Percent Pledge? James’s forthcoming memoir recounts the peaks and valleys from childhood to adulthood that led her to the fashion industry—where she changed things for the better.

The Guest: A Novel

Emma Cline’s best-selling novel became the book of the summer for a reason. The Guest invites you to follow a down-on-her-luck scammer through one chaotic week in the Hamptons—where each day bring her to more desperate means of survival and manipulation than the one before.

Yellowface: A Novel

The unexpected death of acclaimed author Athena Liu presents (what looks like) an opportunity for struggling writer June Hayward to finally break through—by stealing Liu’s last manuscript and inventing an Asian-American identity to pass off Liu’s masterwork as her own. Posing as “Juniper Song,” June gets a taste of the literary success she stole and definitely doesn’t deserve. As she soon learns, she can’t keep up the lie forever—can she?

R.F. Kuang’s satirical thriller covers everything from white privilege to internet culture with increasingly eviscerating precision, the further June/Juniper spirals away from the truth.

The Late Americans: A Novel

Brandon Taylor’s third book is the most dazzling example of his sharp pen and keen observations of human nature yet. The Late Americans assembles a troupe of Iowa City student-artists and their lovers, friends, and neighbors in a novel that tracks their shifting relationships over the course of a single year. Taylor develops his characters so precisely, they feel like close friends: recognizable, sometimes infuriating, and always worth following to the book’s last page.

(Bonus recommendation: Check out Taylor’s literary newsletter while you wait for The Late Americans to arrive.)

Girls and Their Horses: A Novel

Tensions have always run high in the elite (and usually, rich) equestrian world. Girls and Their Horses dials up the intrigue by several degrees, embedding a new-money family into an insular and highly competitive horseback riding community—where deceit, romance, and even murder aren’t out of the question in pursuit of a blue ribbon.

The Mythmakers: A Novel

Keziah Weir’s debut novel takes an age-old literary question—“Is this fiction actually based on reality?”—and twists it into a compelling story about art, perspective, and the line between inspiration and transgression. The Mythmakers isn’t from the perspective of a novelist, though: It begins with a down-on-her-luck journalist who recognizes herself in a short story by an acclaimed—and recently deceased—author.

Adult Drama and Other Essays

Three years after an essay about her (unhealthy) friendship with influencer Caroline Calloway went viral, Natalie Beach is delving into other can’t-look-away dramas—in her relationships, in her work, and in the world at large—with the same captivating voice that landed her on so many readers’ radar. This is a debut essay collection not to miss.

Halie LeSavage is the fashion commerce editor at Harper's BAZAAR . Her style reporting covers everything from reviewing the best designer products to profiling emerging brands and designers. Previously, she was the founding retail writer at Morning Brew and a fashion associate at Glamour .

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Here Are the 9 New Books You Should Read in November

These are independent reviews of the products mentioned, but TIME receives a commission when purchases are made through affiliate links at no additional cost to the purchaser.

I f you're in need of some Thanksgiving reading or looking to pick up an early holiday gift for the lit lovers in your life, this month’s slate of new books offers everything from a dystopian thriller to two standout works of COVID-19 fiction to a memoir from the best-selling female recording artist in history. In investigative deep-dive Endgame , journalist Omid Scobie delves into the British royal family’s fight for survival in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II's death . In essay anthology Critical Hits , an array of writer-gamers explore the cultural significance of the past 50 years of video games. Here are the best new books to read in November.

The Future , Naomi Alderman (Nov. 7)

After a trio of tech billionaires are forewarned of an apocalyptic superbug and flee to a secret doomsday bunker to save only themselves, an unlikely group of friends embark on an intrepid mission to take down the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world. Beginning with the end of civilization and jumping back and forth through time, Naomi Alderman, the award-winning author of 2016's The Power , weaves a cautionary tale of what society stands to lose in a near-future where AI has transformed all walks of life.

Buy Now : The Future on Bookshop | Amazon

The Vulnerables , Sigrid Nunez (Nov. 7)

Set against the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, National Book Award winner Sigrid Nunez's tender and humorous new novel explores the abiding power of connection during an era of unprecedented isolation. The Vulnerables centers on an aging, solitary female writer (the story's narrator) who moves into a friend of a friend's Manhattan apartment. There, she cares for a pet macaw named Eureka while its owner is stuck in California. When the bird's previous sitter, a collegiate Gen Z-er, unexpectedly shows up at the apartment after getting kicked out of his parents' house, the trio form an unexpected bond that carries them through a time of widespread fear and uncertainty.

Buy Now : The Vulnerables on Bookshop | Amazon

Same Bed Different Dreams , Ed Park (Nov. 7)

From the acclaimed author of the 2008 novel Personal Days comes a sprawling work of meta speculative fiction. In Same Bed Different Dreams , Ed Park imagines an alternate history in which the Korean Provisional Government established during Japanese occupation secretly persisted beyond the end of Japanese rule in 1945 and into today. Through riveting prose, Park describes how its members work behind the scenes to unite a fractured Korea. In doing so, the author weaves together three intersecting narratives to create a poignant, postmodern epic that turns 20th century history on its head.

Buy Now : Same Bed Different Dreams on Bookshop | Amazon

To Free the Captives : A Plea for the American Soul , Tracy K. Smith (Nov. 7)

Former U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith delivers a searing manifesto on the power of collective ritual in confronting the persistence of violence and racism against Black people in America. A Pulitzer Prize winner, Smith combines lyrical reflections on her personal experiences as a Black woman, mother, and educator with a historical examination of how her ancestors endured in the face of overwhelming oppression and subjugation. In writing a book about "Black strength, Black continuance, and the powerful forms of belief and community that have long bolstered the soul of my people," Smith says she came to believe that "all of us, in the here and now, can choose to work alongside the generations that precede us in tending to America’s oldest wounds and meeting the urgencies of our present.”

Buy Now : To Free the Captives on Bookshop | Amazon

My Name is Barbra , Barbra Streisand (Nov. 7)

Over the course of nearly 1,000 pages, living legend Barbra Streisand tells the story of her life and decades-spanning career as one of the most iconic figures of the stage and screen. Titled after her Emmy Award-winning first TV special, Streisand's much-anticipated memoir offers what is being touted as a “frank, funny, opinionated and charming" account of her unparalleled showbiz success. From breaking into superstardom as Fanny Brice in the 1964 original Broadway production of Funny Girl to earning the most coveted honor in all of Hollywood, an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony), Streisand candidly reflects on her storied past.

Buy Now : My Name is Barbra on Bookshop | Amazon

The New Naturals , Gabriel Bump (Nov. 14)

Following the death of their infant daughter, grieving parents and Black academics Rio and Gibraltar decide they need to make a change. Weary of campus racism at the Boston liberal arts college where they both teach, the duo leaves the city in pursuit of a new dream. With the help of a wealthy benefactor, the couple begin constructing an underground world with the aim of creating a utopia where people can feel accepted and protected. Dubbed the New Naturals, the sanctuary is located under an abandoned restaurant on a hill off a highway in Western Massachusetts. But as their subterranean haven grows—and begins to attract a motley crew of guests, from a dejected former college soccer star to two unhoused men who travel from Chicago by bus to reach the facility—questions of what really makes for a true safe space for all threaten to derail the burgeoning experiment.

Buy Now : The New Naturals on Bookshop | Amazon

Day , Michael Cunningham (Nov. 14)

Michael Cunningham, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours , delivers a quietly profound portrait of a Brooklyn family navigating love and loss before, during, and after COVID-19 upends their existence. Day , Cunningham's first book in nearly a decade, is divided into three sections, each set during a snapshot of time on a single day over three successive years—“April 5, 2019: Morning,” “April 5, 2020: Afternoon,” and “April 5, 2021: Evening”—and handles recent history with care and nuance. Although the words COVID and pandemic never appear in the novel, Cunningham told the New York Times that he felt compelled to center the story around the outbreak of the virus. “How does anybody,” he said, “write a contemporary novel that’s about human beings that’s not about the pandemic?”

Buy Now : Day on Bookshop | Amazon

Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games , edited by J. Robert Lennon and Carmen Maria Machado (Nov. 21)

In this incisive anthology, short story masters J. Robert Lennon ( Pieces for the Left Hand ) and Carmen Maria Machado ( Her Body and Other Parties ) compile a collection of essays that reflect on the pivotal role video games play in our culture and celebrate the medium as an art form. Entries include musings from a diverse lineup of writer-gamers, from a piece by memoirist Elissa Washuta on how the central plot of 2013's The Last of Us mirrors her early COVID-19 pandemic search for a medical diagnosis to a story from novelist Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah on how playing 2019's Disco Elysium helped him come to terms with his father's passing.

Buy Now : Critical Hits on Bookshop | Amazon

Endgame: Inside the Royal Family and the Monarchy's Fight for Survival , Omid Scobie (Nov. 28)

After being delayed three months so it could include details on the coronation of King Charles III , journalist Omid Scobie's investigative look into the inner turmoil and global reputation of the British royal family in the aftermath of Queen Elizabeth II's death will be released later this month. Endgame arrives on the heels of Scobie's best-selling 2020 blockbuster Finding Freedom : Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family , a highly positive accounting of the relationship between the Duke and Duchess of Sussex . The new book is expected to delve into the early days of King Charles' reign, feud between Prince William and Harry , and allegations of sexual abuse against Prince Andrew , among other topics.

Buy Now : Endgame on Bookshop | Amazon

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Write to Megan McCluskey at [email protected]

Locus Online

The Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field

The New York Times Best Books of 2023

For more information, including the complete list, see The New York Times  website .

©Locus Magazine. Copyrighted material may not be republished without permission of LSFF.

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Inside MAGA’s Plan to Take Over America

“Finish What We Started,” by the journalist Isaac Arnsdorf, reports from the front lines of the right-wing movement’s strategy to gain power, from the local level on up.

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By Jennifer Szalai

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FINISH WHAT WE STARTED: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, by Isaac Arnsdorf

Despite Steve Bannon’s Wall Street pedigree, his taste for five-star hotels and billionaire-owned yachts , he is truly a man of the people — that, at least, is the impression he strains to convey each time he appears in “Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy,” a new book by Isaac Arnsdorf, a journalist at The Washington Post.

As far as Bannon is concerned, anyone who complains that Donald Trump’s far-right supporters are on the fringes of the fringe, an extremist minority bent on undermining what most Americans actually want, is just a whiner who can go cry some more. As he put it at the Conservative Political Action Conference in the summer of 2022: “All they talk about on MSNBC is ‘democracy, democracy, democracy.’ We’re gonna give them a democracy suppository on Nov. 8!”

The line was classic Bannon: gleeful, bombastic, mildly disgusting. It would also turn out to be wrong. The “red wave” that he and other MAGA enthusiasts envisioned for that year’s midterm elections never materialized; a number of Trump’s handpicked candidates had sailed through their primaries but struggled to prevail in the general election .

Still, Bannon would not be deterred. In the book, he keeps insisting to Arnsdorf that most of the country is MAGA, even if some of those MAGA supporters don’t know it yet. “Bannon believed the MAGA movement, if it could break out of being suppressed and marginalized by the establishment, represented a dominant coalition that could rule for a hundred years,” Arnsdorf writes.

There have been several books about the Trumpification of the Republican Party focused on the politicians and operatives who allowed such a transformation to happen. “Finish What We Started” focuses instead on the ordinary foot soldiers in the MAGA grass roots — the “faces in the crowd” who, in the aftermath of Jan. 6, continued to insist that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen and are determined to never let such an outrage happen again.

The rampage at the Capitol had been spectacular — maybe too spectacular for its own good; what the MAGA movement needed was something stealthier and more tedious, less likely to draw the attention of anyone who would try to thwart it. Arnsdorf recounts how, a month after the attack, Bannon invited a Breitbart blogger named Dan Schultz to his “War Room” podcast to explain what Schultz called “the precinct strategy.” The plan was to take over the Republican Party from the ground up: Get some true MAGA believers into the humble yet foundational building blocks of the party structure — “precinct positions that were often vacant because no one was paying attention.”

Instead of state legislatures staffed by RINOs (Republicans in name only) who had shown themselves too willing to betray the MAGA cause by abiding by the Constitution and certifying the 2020 election, an influx of new precinct committee members would ensure that the 2024 election would reflect the will of the real people — the MAGA faithful.

One person who heeded the message was Salleigh Grubbs, who ran for Republican county chair in Cobb County, Ga., in 2021 and received a phone call from Trump when she won. Arnsdorf juxtaposes Grubbs’s trajectory with that of Kathy Petsas, a Republican Party chair for a legislative district in Maricopa County, Ariz., who went from fielding maybe three applications a month for precinct committee membership to an astonishing 40 a week.

In the months leading up to the 2022 midterms, Petsas was formally reprimanded by her new MAGA colleagues and saw her preferred Republican candidate for Arizona governor get trounced in the primaries by the election-denying, Trump-endorsed Kari Lake; Grubbs, meanwhile, seemed to be flying high on MAGA fumes until she began to grasp “how much more complicated things are, how much you couldn’t see from outside, how there are always unintended consequences.” She still “loved” Trump, but unlike the hard-liners, “she did not worship him.” Arnsdorf describes her growing discomfort with efforts to purge the party’s ranks of anyone who doesn’t toe the new line. Her attempt to speak up for an embattled state chairman gets her booted off a “patriots” group chat.

Arnsdorf mostly hangs back, presenting his subjects’ thoughts in free indirect style. His stated aim is to convey “what makes them believe, what motivates them, what stirs them to action.” Petsas seems baffled by the takeover of her party and clings to the old mode of doing things. Incredulous that the MAGA wing doesn’t think of her as a “real Republican,” she emphasizes her decades of experience as an insider — when that lengthy tenure is obviously considered a mark against her.

Grubbs, for her part, is initially fueled by a sense that official explanations for political results she doesn’t like seem very, very fishy. After Jan. 6, she blasted out a message to her Facebook group: “All. DO NOT BELIEVE THE NEWS. Trump people are not violent. The Capitol protest was fine until Antifa co-opted and committed violence.” She suggests she’s mellowed a bit since becoming a county chair, but mellower MAGA still runs hot. At Georgia’s state Republican convention in 2023, she poses for a photo with Trump and gets a hug from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Grubbs deems it “one of the happiest days of her life.”

Arnsdorf’s book arrives at a moment when Democrats are warning that Trump and the MAGA movement are seeking to end democracy as we know it — and Trump, in his usual I’m-rubber-you’re-glue way , has started to fling the accusation right back . Another new book, “ Minority Rule ,” by Ari Berman, traces in methodical detail the long history of white conservatives deploying all kinds of technical maneuvers to counter the democratic effects of a diversifying country. Jacob Heilbrunn’s excellent “America Last” recounts the American right’s “proclivity for authoritarianism” as reflected in a long record of admiration for foreign dictators. Reading these three books together will give you a sense of how the Republican Party has landed on a plan to entrench power in a pincer movement: minority rule on the one hand and mass radicalization on the other.

It’s a shrewdly cynical way to hedge one’s bets. Bannon’s extravagant bluffing — “ We’re two-thirds of the nation! ” he bragged at CPAC — can’t hide the fact that MAGA extremism is still terribly unpopular. An NBC News poll last year put the share of Americans with a favorable view of the MAGA movement at a meager 24 percent . But consolidating power whenever possible can allow the faithful to “feel some wins,” Arnsdorf writes. Bannon, by constantly telling his listeners that they’re the culmination of democracy instead of its death knell, is feeding them a useful and invigorating delusion. The precinct strategy has become another way of energizing the base.

And the base turns out to have infinite patience for the nitty-gritty of local politics, as long as the ultimate goal is not governance but domination. “Now they understand how important the rules are,” a merry Bannon tells Arnsdorf. “We’re having a civics lesson here. We’re exploding, and the reason we’re exploding? We’re really getting into the granular, and people can’t get enough of it.”

FINISH WHAT WE STARTED : The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy | By Isaac Arnsdorf | Little, Brown | 247 pp. | $30

Jennifer Szalai is the nonfiction book critic for The Times. More about Jennifer Szalai

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The Non-science Behind The New York Times Best Sellers List

H ave you read " Dragons Love Tacos "? If you haven't, where have you been? This delightful children's book has been on The New York Times Best Sellers list for more than seven years. Granted, it's in the Children's Picture Books category , but as of July 2, 2023, "Dragons Love Tacos" has spent more than 400 weeks on the list (or more than seven years); that's more time than almost any adult book except "The Road Less Traveled" and " The Glass Castle ."

Plus, just a couple decades ago, children and adult books were on the same list, until a teenage wizard necessitated the separation.

Whether the material is written for the young, old or anyone with an imagination, getting a book on any of The New York Times' Best Sellers lists is a boon for authors and publishers alike. It increases sales and prestige, and could make a film deal more of a possibility, Constance Grady wrote for Vox . Book covers, online listings and author websites make the most of being included, so what does it take to get there? It's complicated.

What Is The New York Times Best Sellers List?

The New York Times Best Sellers list is a series of weekly and monthly lists that do just what they sound like — recognize current top sellers. They are "compiled and archived by The Best Seller Lists Desk of The New York Times News Department, and are separate from the Editorial, Culture, Advertising and Business sides of The New York Times Company," according to the About the Best Sellers page of the Times' website. That means they are distinct from the Book Review or lists of recommendations like Best Books .

"The New York Times Best Seller lists consist of multiple categories, each measuring different sale types," a spokesperson for The New York Times said in an email interview.

Currently there are 11 weekly lists and seven monthly lists. New lists go live online Wednesdays at 7 p.m. EST. A portion of those lists appears in print 11 days later, due to the newspaper's printing schedule.

The weekly lists separate books into three categories: fiction, nonfiction and children's books. Fiction and nonfiction are further broken down into subcategories for hardcover, paperback, and combined print and digital sales. Nonfiction has an additional subcategory for how-to books. Children's books are divided into middle grade hardcover, picture books, series and young adult hardcover.

The monthly lists have more specialized categories like audio books, graphic books and manga, and mass market.

How Do Books Land on the NYT Best Sellers Lists?

Books are included on the list when they are best sellers; sounds simple, right?

"The lists are based on a detailed analysis of book sales from a wide range of retailers who provide us with specific and confidential context of their sales each week," according to the New York Times spokesperson. "These standards are applied consistently to provide Times readers our best assessment of what books are the most broadly popular in that time frame. Our methodology is published with the lists online and our goal is that the lists reflect authentic best sellers."

The gist of the methodology is that rankings reflect weekly sales reports from vendors or booksellers. For print books, that means chains, independent bookstores, online retailers, supermarkets, other types of bookstores and newsstands.

Digital sales come from online vendors of e-books for various e-reader formats. Most importantly, the sales data is reported to The Times by the vendors, and sales are defined as completed transactions by vendors and individual end-users.

Despite this explanation, some members of the publishing industry have raised questions about the methodology. "No one outside The New York Times knows exactly how its best sellers are calculated — and the list of theories is longer than the actual list of best sellers," Sophie Vershbow wrote in Esquire .

What Books Make the List?

As books are judged by the sales, not their literary value or other criteria, being on a NYT Best Sellers list is not an indication of a future Pulitzer Prize or another prestigious book award like the Booker Prize or the National Book Award . The Best Seller List is simply a numbers game that can give recognized authors and celebrities a leg up.

In the nonfiction category, some books are bound for the list, like "Spare" by Prince Harry or Michelle Obama's "The Light We Carry."

But debut novels from noncelebrity authors have a tougher time landing on the list. In 2021, for example, only five of the 15 debut novels on the hardcover fiction list were written by noncelebrity authors. And none of those five were endorsed by other celebrities or their book clubs, like Oprah's Book Club or the Good Morning America Book Club .

Likewise, well-known commercial fiction authors regularly appear on the list, so on any given week, you might notice the latest work by Nora Roberts, James Patterson or David Baldacci.

But there is plenty of room for others as books move in, out, up and down the lists. Even first-time authors show up with some regularity. Debuts by Jenny Jackson, Nita Prose, Sarah Penner, Chloe Gong and Robert Jones Jr. appeared in recent years.

The Longest-running Books on the Lists

You might think J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," the first book in the series, would be the longest-running best seller, and that would be a good guess; it has clocked in at 743 weeks as of the lists dated July 2, 2023 . But it is a close second to Jeff Kinney's "Diary of a Wimpy Kid," which has spent the most time on any New York Times Best-Seller list, appearing 744 times on the children's series list as of the same week.

As indicated by the wild success of "Harry Potter" and "Diary," the highest sales figures appear where kids' books are concerned. Consider the 401-week run of R. J. Palacio's "Wonder" on the middle grade list alongside "Dragons Love Tacos," 403 weeks on the picture book list.

Plenty of books rank as soon as they are published — the instant best sellers. Other books might take longer.

The fourth book in the Bridgerton romance novel series, "Romancing Mister Bridgerton," which was first published in 2002, had a strong showing on the best-seller lists after the popular series on Netflix was released in 2020.

The late Toni Morrison's searing debut novel, "The Bluest Eye," about a poor Black family in post-Depression 1940s Ohio, made the list when it was originally published in 1970. Though it resurfaced on the Paperback Trade Fiction list in 2020 and again in 2021.

How Some Authors Have Gamed the List

If the list is based solely on sales, can't publishers, authors and others (with the funds) simply buy up lots of their own books to get on the list and launch their works and maybe their careers?

The short answer is yes. It has happened numerous times , despite the ethical issues doing so raises. Vanity Fair reported in 2013 that Jacqueline Susann's "Valley of the Dolls"— which has sold more than 30 million copies since it was published in 1966 — got a major boost when Susann's husband Irving Mansfield got his hands on the names of 125 bookstores that The New York Times polled when compiling its best-seller list. He then spearheaded a book-buying campaign at those stores and sales skyrocketed.

Author Wayne Dyer bought 4,500 copies of his book "Your Erroneous Zones," "virtually the entire first printing," according to The Washington Post . In fact, there are agencies whose sole job is getting clients on the list.

The New York Times does not take such manipulations lightly. In a 2018 series, the Best Sellers List staff wrote a piece explaining its journalistic practices .

"We feel strongly that the best-seller lists should reflect the sale of books to individual end users. In other words, they should be sales to actual readers."

Since 1995, when a book with evident bulk purchases is included on a best sellers list, it appears with a dagger (†) to denote the skewed numbers.

Now That's Interesting The NYT lists rank books based on weekly sales rather than other factors, such as speed. Looked at from the standpoint of fast sales, Prince Harry's "Spare" ousted President Barack Obama's 2020 "A Promised Land" as the fastest-selling nonfiction book , and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" holds the title of fastest-selling book overall, according to Guinness World Records .

Original article: The Non-science Behind The New York Times Best Sellers List