8 Best Books I Read in 2020
Here are the best books I read in 2020 broken down by category.
Non-Fiction Books
Hunting Whitey: The Inside Story of the Capture & Killing of America’s Most Wanted Crime Boss by Casey Sherman and Dave Wedge. Even if you’ve had your fill of Whitey, the details of his life on the run were new and fascinating.
The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson. A detailed look at one of last century’s most consequential men during perhaps the century’s most important year.
We Should Have Seen It Coming: From Reagan to Trump–A Front-Row Seat to a Political Revolution by Gerald Seib. Political conversations were particularly painful this year, but this no agenda overview of the last 40 years of the Republican Party explains a lot about the party and the country today.
One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs. Thirteen Days is one of my favorite movies, and this book navigates the fact and fiction in that movie and broadens our understanding of the Cuban Missile Crisis. If you’ve seen the movie, the biggest mistake is the impression that Bobby Kennedy was the dove looking for a less confrontational solution. It was JFK, with the help of Adlai Stevenson’s ideas, who charted the right course.
Fiction Books
True Grit by Charles Portis. A classic American novel about a 14 year-old girl’s quest for vengeance in the west.
The Mirror & the Light (Wolf Hall Trilogy, 3) by Hilary Mantel. The conclusion to the Wolf Hall Trilogy about Thomas Cromwell did not disappoint.
The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett. A prequel to Follett’s amazing book, Pillars of the Earth.
Piranesi by Susanna Clark. She wrote Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and her latest book is set in an alternate reality.
Further Reading:
7 Best Books I Read in 2019 – A list of seven recommended books to read in three categories – business and investing, management, and fiction.