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There are some quite impressive lists here.
My 2018 list may not look as good because of so many being influenced by what I'm reading in the news and thus having a political slant. Plus, one of our children took on Israeli citizenship this year, leading to additonal titles that maybe some would have mixed feelings about.
With excuses made, here are 15 making the cut from the 75 I read:
America:
James Forman Jr., Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America
C. J. Chivers, The Fighters: Americans in Combat in Afghanistan and Iraq
Israel:
Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography
Matti Friedman, Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier's Story of a Forgotten War
Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor
David Landau, Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon
Sarah Tuttle-Singer, Jerusalem, Drawn and Quartered: One Woman’s Year in the Heart of the Christian, Muslim, Armenian, and Jewish Quarters of Old Jerusalem
Perhaps the topic at hand, or perhaps a sign of my paranoia:
Steven Levitsky & Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die
Oliver Hilmes, Berlin 1936: Sixteen Days in August
The best of the non, or less, political:
Susan Orlean, The Library Book
Stephen Westaby, Open Heart: A Cardiac Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table
Jennifer Latson, The Boy Who Loved Too Much: A True Story of Pathological Friendliness
Sujatha Gidla, Ants Among Elephants: An Untouchable Family and the Making of Modern India
One outstanding novel:
Oyinkan Braithwaite, My Sister, the Serial Killer
And for a metaphorical summing up:
George Bibel, Train Wreck: The Forensics of Rail Disasters
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