Books of 2020

This is my annual post listing books I read in the most recent year. I have done this annually since 2005 -- here's a link to the 2019 list if you want to work backwards. I accidentally published this 2020 list on December 30, but I'm editing the post on the 31st to add some narrative detail. 

The list is not comprehensive. I read an unlisted book for an academic review, but that is not yet published so I'm not (yet) listing it here. I also read a couple of other academic books for a promotion case, which I'll never list. 

 I posted short reviews of most of these books at Goodreads. 

Non-Fiction

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die

Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work

Randall Schweller, Maxwell's Demon and the Golden Apple: Global Discord in the New Millennium

John Lithgow, Trumpty Dumpty Wanted a Crown

Karen Greenberg (ed.), Re

Masha Gessen, Surviving Autocracy

John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, The Israel Lobby

Joyce Kaufman, A Concise History of US Foreign Policy

Ronnie Lipschutz, The Constitution of Imperium

Adam Kucharski, The Perfect Bet

Nick Hornby, More Baths, Less Talking

Leonard Koppett, The New Thinking Fan's Guide to Baseball

The Levistky and Ziblatt book was probably the most important book I read all year. Indeed, I assigned some excerpts in a couple of classes, encouraged my spouse to read it, and recommended it to others. Anyone worried about the drift of America away from democracy would find valuable insight. 

The Lindbergh and Miller book was the best baseball book I've read in some years as the analytical authors got to apply their ideas about baseball to a low-level independent league team in California. 

Lithgow's book of poetry is a quick and entertaining read.

Schweller's book had a very interesting last chapter that made it valuable. About ten days ago I wrote a thread about it on twitter. 

My review of the Greenberg volume was published online in January 2021 at H-DIPLO. 

Kaufman I assigned as a recommended text in my spring US foreign policy class. It is reasonably short and served its purpose. 

Most of the rest of the books were OK, but all had some key flaws. I had high hopes for Kucharski, but it really didn't stick with me. Koppett's book is often listed on "best of" baseball booklists, but I found it much less interesting than I might have twenty years ago -- given what we've learned about the game even in the last decade. 

Literature and Genre Fiction

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

Shawna Seed, Identity

Philip Kerr, The Pale Criminal

Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn

Michael Dibdin, Vendetta

Ross MacDonald, The Instant Enemy

Lawrence Block, The Girl with the Long Green Heart

Charles Portis, True Grit

John Macdonald, Cinnamon Skin

Agatha Christie, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Len Deighton, Spy Story

Richard Stark, The Green Eagle Score

Robert Parker Valediction

Nick Hornby, State of the Union

Chester Himes, The Real Cool Killers

Denis Johnson, The Laughing Monsters

Sue Grafton, J is for Judgment

Ruth Rendell, Sins of the Father

Charles Willeford, The Way We Die Now

Walter Mosley, Gone Fishin' 

Joe Kremer, Brainstorm

Lawrence Block, Eight Million Ways to Die

R.D. Rosen Fadeaway

John Lange, Grave Descend

I read Station Eleven very early during the quarantine -- it's about life in a post-pandemic world that has suffered "the big one." Frightening and interesting.

Shawna Seed's book is well worth your time. I knew her when we were both undergrads at Kansas -- she had been friends in high schoo with one of my roommates and ended up dating my other roomie. We've occasionally stayed in touch over the years.

You'll notice a lot of genre fiction on this list, mostly crime novels. The best of the group are nearer to the top, meaning I really liked Kerr's work set in 1930s Germany as well as Atkinson's book set during Fringe in Edinburgh and Dibdin's book set in Italy. Maybe I was missing the fact that I was unable to travel to Europe in 2020 after having done so in both 2018 (Ireland and Belgium) and 2019 (Scotland and Germany). 

With Levitsky and Ziblatt, Lithgow, Gessen, Schweller, and Kerr, as well as Mandel, I spent a fair amount of my leisure reading time thinking about real-world politics in the US and beyond. 

On that note, I'd add that Block's first book listed above is about a group of con artists that are able to fool some level-headed people, including some who should know better. 

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