Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2011

Bossypants

Tina Fey (Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur)

We know Fey's wit from her writing (and acting) in SNL, 30 Rock, and whatever movie she stars in, but she adds to her wit a disarmingly frank and uncensored account of her life, stitching together the serious and the comic.

From our Audiobook Blog ListenUp!

Robert K. Massie (Random House)

Pulitzer-winning biographer Massie—of Nicholas and Alexandra and of Peter the Great—now relates the life of a German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst, who became Empress Catherine II of Russia. Once again Massie delivers, with this masterful, intimate, and tantalizing portrait of a majestic monarch.

PW review
Empress of All the Russias: PW Talks with Robert K. Massie

Paul Hendrickson (Knopf)

There's never been a biography quite like this one. Hendrickson covers Papa's rise and fall by focusing on his most steadfast companion: his boat, Pilar. She was the stage on which Hemingway fished, brawled, wrote his novels, ranted about his poor reviews, raised his sons, and seduced other men's wives. The stories are rich with contradiction and humanity, and so raw and immediate you can smell the salt air.

PW review
Jim Crow Alive and Well?

Binyavanga Wainaina (Graywolf)

A Kenyan Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, this sublime word-drunk memoir from the Caine Prize–winning author describes a coming-of-age rent by political troubles and suffused by a love affair with language.

Talking About Writing About Africa

Christopher Hitchens (Hachette/Twelve)

As a political, cultural, and literary critic, Hitchens stands alone, as demonstrated by this major collection of mostly recent essays and reviews covering a range of topics, from America's founding fathers to the state of the English language. You don't always have to agree with this fearless polemicist to appreciate his erudite mind.

Audiobook Review

Deborah Baker (Graywolf)

Pulitzer finalist Baker (In Extremis) unravels the often contradictory life of an American woman who became one of the pre-eminent voices of Islamic revivalism, in this stellar biography (an NBA finalist) that doubles as a meditation on the fraught relationship between America and the Muslim world.

PW review
Crusader for Islam: PW Talks with Deborah Baker

Javier Cercas (Bloomsbury USA)

Novelist Cercas wields his considerable narrative skills in deconstructing a failed coup in Spain in 1981. From 35 minutes of TV tape of the attempted coup, Cercas profiles crucial figures, re-creates Spanish history back to the Civil War, and pulls apart the threads of Spain's burgeoning democracy.

PW review

Siddhartha Deb (Faber and Faber)

Deb offers a powerful rejoinder to the feel-good narratives about India's economic ascent in these gritty profiles of growing numbers of destitute farmers, factory workers, and migrants—the casualties of India's economic "miracle."

PW review

Joan Didion (Knopf)

In this subtly crushing memoir about the untimely death of her daughter, Quintana Roo, in 2005, Didion, as she did in The Year of Magical Thinking, turns face forward to the harsh truth: "When we talk about mortality we are talking about our children."

PW review
The Golden State Loses Its Luster
Joan Didion: Stepping into the River Styx, Again

Andre Dubus III (Norton)

Dubus shuffled and punched his way through a childhood and youth full of dysfunction, desperation, and determination, and in this gritty and gripping memoir, he bares his soul in powerful and page-turning prose.

PW review
Townie: A Memoir

Stephen Greenblatt (Norton)

In this delightful and erudite account, Greenblatt relates how an eccentric humanist's treasure hunt for a lost Latin text led to the birth of the Renaissance.

PW review

Roger Ebert (Grand Central)

From one of our most important cultural voices and the Pulitzer Prize–winning film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times comes this memoir of his life writing about movies.

PW review
PW Talks with Roger Ebert
Life Itself: A Memoir

Amanda Foreman (Random)

Foreman presents the most original and elegantly written take on the Civil War in its sesquicentennial year, from diplomatic maneuvers to British volunteers for both North and South.

PW review
A Narrative Symphony of the Civil War: PW Talks with Amanda Foreman

Margaux Fragoso (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

In this gut-wrenching, disturbing memoir of sexual abuse, Fragoso explores with unflinching honesty the ways in which pedophiles can manipulate their way into the lives of children

PW review

Mary Gabriel (Little, Brown)

Gabriel offers a magisterial account of the lives of Karl Marx and his wife, Jenny von Westphalen, remarkable for the ease with which it moves between the domestic and the political spheres.

PW review
For Love or Money: PW Talks with Mary Gabriel

James Gleick (Pantheon)

With his ability to synthesize mounds of details and to tell rich stories, Gleick ably leads us on a journey from one form of communicating information to another, beginning with African tribes' use of drums and moving through scientists like Samuel B. Morse, who invented the telegraph.

PW review
Too Much Information? PW Talks with James Gleick
The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

Gabrielle Hamilton (Random House)

Owner and chef of New York's Prune restaurant, Hamilton fashioned this frankly written, addictive memoir of her unorthodox trajectory to becoming a chef.

PW review

Michael Holroyd (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

Novelist Violet Trefusis and Rodin's muse Eve Fairfax are among the women, masterfully portrayed by Holroyd, who had the misfortune of being entangled in the life of Ernest Beckett, second Baron Grimthorpe.

PW review

Robert Hughes (Knopf)

A captivating history of Rome filtered through the lens of its art and architecture as seen by celebrated art critic Hughes.

PW review

Erik Larson (Crown)

Larson's narrative skills bring to life a fascinating panoply of characters and the terror closing in on Berlin with Hitler's rise to power.

PW review
Murder at the World's Fair
In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin

Michael Lewis (Norton)

Lewis's offbeat travelogue examines the recent global financial crisis, dissecting how the unique culture and history of each locale he visits (Iceland, Greece, Ireland, Germany, California) contributed to its response to the boom and bust.

Manning Marable (Viking)

Marable's posthumous epic draws on FBI and NYPD files and interviews with members of the Nation of Islam to enrich—and complicate—our notion of the iconic civil rights leader.

PW review
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention

Errol Morris (Penguin Press)

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Morris revisits historical but still passionately alive controversies in photography (like accusations of photographers working for the Depression-era Farm Security Administration staging scenes). His powerful account puts him in the plot of a detective novel: he's a Hercule Poirot of the photographic world searching for the convolutions between art and truth telling.

PW review
The Doors of Perception: PW Talks with Errol Morris

Susan Orlean (Simon & Schuster)

Orlean follows up her bestselling The Orchid Thief with another tale of dedication in the face of adversity, disbelief, even common sense—this one centering on Rin Tin Tin, the German shepherd responsible for a film and TV dynasty.

PW review
Good Dog: PW Talks with Susan Orlean

Meghan O'Rourke (Riverhead)

In this eloquent, somber memoir about the death of her mother and grieving aftermath, poet and journalist O'Rourke ponders the eternal human question: how do we live with the knowledge that we will one day die?

PW review
A Memoir of Loss: A Profile of Meghan O'Rourke

Jon Ronson (Riverhead)

In this engrossing exploration of psychiatry's attempts to understand and treat psychopathy, Ronson embarks on a tour of the "madness business," interviewing possible psychopaths in asylums and corporate boardrooms to reveal the difficulties in diagnosing and treating the disorder. Droll, disturbing, and unforgettable.

PW review
From our Audiobook Blog ListenUp!

Jeffrey D. Sachs (Random House)

Economist Sachs surveys an America where the rich get richer and the rest grow poorer—and makes a compelling case for an activist state that redistributes wealth and makes life fairer and more productive for everyone.

PW review

Claire Tomalin (Penguin Press)

Readers will come away with a new understanding of the quintessential Victorian novelist in all his multiplicity and self-contradictions in Tomalin's rich, penetrating portrait.

PW review

Toby Wilkinson (Random House)

This authoritative history darkens our view of the glittering land of the pharaohs with its account of the brutality that sustained their rule.

PW review