December 17, 2023  |  View in Browser

The Best of Books 2023

Foreign Affairs’ Top Picks of the Year

Catch up on end-of-year reading with Foreign Affairs! We have selected the very best of the hundreds of books on international politics, economics, and history that were featured in the magazine this year. Find your next read in our full collection.

Against the World: Anti-Globalism and Mass Politics Between the World Wars

In a timely and thought-provoking book, Zahra delves into the tumultuous years between World War I and World War II to argue that it was resistance to globalism and globalization that ended up weakening Europe’s then-fragile democracies, eventually contributing to the continent’s slide into dictatorship.

Reviewed by Mark Mazower

Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

Bass’s magnificent book, an account of the post–World War II Tokyo war-crimes trial, encourages a deeper understanding of the Asian experience of war and occupation. His work also sheds light on an enduring debate about liberalism and international politics, showing how the trial played formative roles both in postwar Asian politics and in the making of the postwar global human rights regime.

Reviewed by Jennifer Lind

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King: A Life

Drawing on sources unavailable to previous biographers, Eig brilliantly portrays the many dimensions of the civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., who appears as an extraordinarily courageous, deeply troubled, terribly flawed, and incredibly talented figure. Eig’s balanced treatment of King turns an icon back into a man—and produces a biography that will be very difficult to surpass.

Reviewed by Jessica T. Mathews

Solito: A Memoir

Zamora’s deeply moving, highly personal memoir details his arduous and heroic trek, at age nine, from El Salvador through Guatemala and Mexico to Arizona in 1999, graphically describing the many daunting obstacles migrants must overcome to reach the United States.

Reviewed by Richard Feinberg

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