The 25 best books of the 1980s
The 25 highest-ranked books first published in the 1980s in our ranking of 2,816, scored on how much readers love them, their prize, best-list and bestseller record, and current buzz. We rank 202 books of the 1980s in all. How we rank
- 1
Ender's Game94.2Must-Read ScoreEnder's Game
To survive the next attack by a hostile alien race, Earth's government breeds child geniuses and trains them as soldiers.
Why it made the listHugo Award winner (1986)Nebula Award winner (1985)Hugo Award winner (1987, for Speaker for the Dead)33 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2013 - 2
The Making of the Atomic Bomb91.1Must-Read ScoreThe Making of the Atomic Bomb
The full story of how the atomic bomb came to be, from the discovery around 1900 that atoms held unimaginable energy, through the physicists who raced to understand it, often fleeing Nazi Europe as they did, to the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, the first test at Trinity, and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1987)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 3
The Color Purple90.9Must-Read ScoreThe Color Purple
Rural Georgia, early 1900s.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1983)National Book Award (Fiction) winner (1983)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1982)PBS Great American Read - 4
A Brief History of Time89.6Must-Read ScoreA Brief History of Time
Stephen Hawking's attempt to explain the biggest questions in physics to ordinary readers: where the universe came from, how it might end, what black holes are, why time only moves forward, and whether physics can ever find a single theory of everything.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 25 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (19 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 NonfictionGuardian 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time - 5
Lonesome Dove89.6Must-Read ScoreLonesome Dove
In the dusty Texas border town of Lonesome Dove, two retired Texas Rangers, the talkative, easygoing Gus McCrae and the hard, silent Woodrow Call, run a small cattle business and have settled into old age.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1986)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1985)PBS Great American Read - 6
Maus89.6Must-Read ScoreMaus
Art Spiegelman tells the story of his father, Vladek, a Polish Jew who survived Hitler's Europe and Auschwitz, in comic form, with Jews drawn as mice and Nazis as cats.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (Special Citation) winner (1992)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 7
Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era88.6Must-Read ScoreBattle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era
The single best history of the American Civil War, covering the whole era from the Mexican War in 1846 through Lincoln's assassination in 1865.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (1989)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1988)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 8
The Handmaid’s Tale88.6Must-Read ScoreThe Handmaid’s Tale
In the Republic of Gilead, a theocracy that has overthrown the United States government, women have been stripped of their rights, and a falling birth rate has led the regime to assign fertile women to powerful men as handmaids, whose only purpose is to bear children.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (2019, for The Testaments)144 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2017Booker Prize finalist (1986)Nebula Award finalist (1986) - 9
Cosmos87.7Must-Read ScoreCosmos
Written alongside his landmark TV series, Carl Sagan's tour of the universe covers fifteen billion years of cosmic history: how stars are born and die, how life might have begun, what we've learned from planets and comets, and the long human story of how science pieced it all together, from ancient Greek astronomers to the Voyager spacecraft.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 40 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (16 weeks at #1)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1981) - 10
Hyperion87.0Must-Read ScoreHyperion
On the eve of an interstellar war, seven pilgrims set out for the planet Hyperion, home to the Time Tombs, mysterious structures that move backward through time, and the Shrike, a terrifying creature of blades worshipped by a strange church.
Why it made the listHugo Award winner (1990)Hugo Award finalist (1998, for The Rise of Endymion)Hugo Award finalist (1991, for The Fall of Hyperion) - 11
Parting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-6386.6Must-Read ScoreParting the Waters : America in the King Years 1954-63
The first volume of Taylor Branch's monumental history of the civil rights movement, covering 1954 to 1963: from the Montgomery bus boycott that made a young Martin Luther King Jr.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (History) winner (1989)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1988)National Book Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1989) - 12
A Bright Shining Lie86.5Must-Read ScoreA Bright Shining Lie
John Paul Vann was an Army officer who arrived in Vietnam in 1962 as an adviser, quickly saw that the war was being lost and lied about, and secretly fed the truth to young reporters, among them Neil Sheehan.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1989)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1988)Pulitzer Prize (History) finalist (1989)Pulitzer Prize (Biography) finalist (1989) - 13
The Pillars of the Earth86.1Must-Read ScoreThe Pillars of the Earth
In twelfth-century England, during a brutal civil war over the throne, Tom Builder, a mason, dreams of building a cathedral.
Why it made the listOne of the ten best-selling books of 1989 (Publishers Weekly)21 weeks on the New York Times bestseller lists since 2008PBS Great American ReadBBC's The Big Read - 14
The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill84.3Must-Read ScoreThe Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill
William Manchester's biography of Winston Churchill follows him from his Victorian childhood to the end of his life across three volumes.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (2 weeks at #1)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 15
Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water84.3Must-Read ScoreCadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
Marc Reisner tells how the American West was built on water it didn't have: a century of dams, aqueducts and reclamation projects, the politics and money behind them, and the rivers drained to make cities and farms bloom in the desert.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1986)Modern Library 100 Best Nonfiction - 16
And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic84.2Must-Read ScoreAnd the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
Randy Shilts, a San Francisco reporter, tells the story of the first five years of the AIDS epidemic, from the first strange cases in 1980 until the actor Rock Hudson's death in 1985 finally made the country pay attention.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) finalist (1987)TIME All-TIME 100 Nonfiction - 17
Schindler's List84.2Must-Read ScoreSchindler's List
Oskar Schindler was a German businessman, Nazi Party member, war profiteer, drinker and womanizer who came to Kraków to make money from cheap Jewish labor.
Why it made the listBooker Prize winner (1982) - 18
Watchmen84.1Must-Read ScoreWatchmen
In an alternate 1985 America where costumed heroes exist, Nixon is still president and nuclear war with the Soviets looms, a retired masked vigilante called the Comedian is murdered.
Why it made the listTIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 19
It83.7Must-Read ScoreIt
In the town of Derry, Maine, in 1958, seven misfit kids who call themselves the Losers' Club discover that something has been killing the town's children, an ancient evil that most often appears as a clown named Pennywise.
Why it made the list#1 New York Times bestseller (14 weeks at #1)One of the ten best-selling books of 1986 (Publishers Weekly) - 20
The Book of Disquiet82.4Must-Read ScoreThe Book of Disquiet
Bernardo Soares is an assistant bookkeeper in Lisbon who spends his days at a desk in an office on the Rua dos Douradores and his evenings alone in a rented room.
Why it made the listBokklubben World Library (100 greatest books) - 21
Arctic Dreams82.4Must-Read ScoreArctic Dreams
Barry Lopez spent years traveling in the Arctic, and here he writes about it: its strange light and landscapes, the animals that live there, from musk oxen and polar bears to narwhals and migrating birds, the explorers who came and often died, and the Inuit people who made it home.
Why it made the listNational Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1986)NBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1986) - 22
The Path to Power81.9Must-Read ScoreThe Path to Power
The first volume of Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson follows him from his impoverished childhood in the harsh Texas Hill Country through his relentless rise as a young congressman, ending with his first, failed Senate race in 1941.
Why it made the listNBCC Award (Nonfiction) winner (1982) - 23
The Name of the Rose81.1Must-Read ScoreThe Name of the Rose
In 1327, William of Baskerville, an English Franciscan friar with a gift for deduction, arrives at a wealthy Benedictine abbey in the mountains of northern Italy with his young novice, Adso.
Why it made the listOne of the best-selling books ever (about 50 million copies)#1 New York Times bestseller (5 weeks at #1)Edgar Award finalist (1984)BBC's The Big Read - 24
Beloved80.9Must-Read ScoreBeloved
In 1873, Sethe, who escaped slavery eighteen years earlier, lives with her teenage daughter Denver in a house outside Cincinnati that is haunted by the furious ghost of her baby girl.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize for Fiction winner (1988)National Book Award (Fiction) finalist (1987)NBCC Award (Fiction) finalist (1987)TIME All-TIME 100 Novels - 25
The Soul of a New Machine80.8Must-Read ScoreThe Soul of a New Machine
In the late 1970s, at a computer company called Data General, a team of young engineers led by the intense Tom West raced to build a new 32-bit minicomputer in about a year, working nights and weekends with little reward except the work itself.
Why it made the listPulitzer Prize (General Nonfiction) winner (1982)National Book Award (Nonfiction) winner (1982)
