We are delighted to look back on a year filled with important, engaging and transformative reads. This year nine books have been selected as Books of the Year.
On the back of being selected as Waterstones’ Thriller of the Month in September, Moscow X by David McCloskey, the new co-host of The Rest is Classified podcast, has been chosen as a Book of the Year in The Times, The Spectator and the Financial Times. Adam LeBor praises the novel as ‘an informed, gripping tale’ while James Owen in The Times enjoyed the ‘tense, all too plausible depiction of the struggle for power within a corrupt regime’. Justina Marozzi in The Spectator claims things have never been the same after reading McCloskey’s Damascus Station, and Moscow X is ‘equally enjoyable’ and ‘a timely reminder of how ghastly rich Russians are’.
The ‘stirring’ Vassal State: How America Runs Britain by Angus Hanton features in The Telegraph‘s Best Books of 2024, where they re-share their original review of the book as a ‘provocative and detailed study of how Britain’s economy fell victim to US power – and how to respond’.
Tribal: How the Cultural Instincts That Divide Us Can Help Bring Us Together by Michael Morris is both a Financial Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Financial Times Business Book of the Year. Andrew Hill says that Tribal is ‘a deep, timely and optimistic look at how to harness our innate tribal instincts to positive effect, rather than allowing them to divide’ and a ‘fount of valuable lessons on human behaviour’. The Week have also included Tribal as a ‘fount of lessons for leaders’ in their Best Books roundup.
Featuring in The Tablet‘s Very Best Books of 2024, The End of Drum-Time by Hanna Pylväinen is ‘a wise, timely reminder of what greed can do’ and Ben Shattuck‘s ‘outstanding collection of 12 interconnected stories’, The History of Sound, features in the Daily Mail‘s Best Novels to Gift this Christmas. Eithne Farry has praised the novel as ‘elegantly written, beautifully structured and emotionally involving’.
Morning After the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of History by Nellie Bowles is a TLS Book of the Year and this ‘closely observed chronicle of a peculiar moment’ is seen as a ‘resource for future historians’. David Bromwich praises Nellie as having ‘a delicate ear for the jargon of movements and the cant of cliques’.
Our second book in The Prime Ministers Series, Harold Wilson: Twentieth Century Man by Alan Johnson, features in Prospect Magazine’s Books of the Year roundup. Peter Hoskin encourages readers to enjoy this ‘terrific short biography of a prime minister who, more than most, looked beyond England’s borders’.
Our Forum Press imprint has found its Books of the Year in David Goodhart‘s The Care Dilemma: Caring Enough in the Age of Sex Equality and Rob Henderson’s Troubled: A memoir of foster care, family and social class. The Critic, The Spectator and the Financial Times have included The Care Dilemma and Martin Wolf says ‘I admire my former colleague Goodhart for his willingness to address controversial issues, such as immigration. In this important book, he raises another: the future of care’. The Economist features Troubled, highlighting the book as ‘at once a memoir and an analysis of the widespread muddled thinking on America’s university campuses’.