Must-Read
Best Books About 1980s and 1990s America
The 1980s and 1990s are now far enough in the rearview mirror to be a literary period. The AIDS crisis, the rise of corporate America, the second-wave heroin and crack epidemics, the late Cold War and the early internet years. These seven are the books our editors recommend most when readers want fiction and non-fiction set in those decades.
7 books on this list.
The Great Believersby Rebecca Makkai
5.0“The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai 2018 review. Two parallel narratives - Yale in the 1980s AIDS crisis in Chicago and Fiona in 2015 Paris. National Book Award finalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist 2019.”
Free Food for Millionairesby Min Jin Lee
5.0“Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee 2007 review. A Princeton graduate and Korean-American daughter of Queens immigrants in the early-2000s New York finance world. Min Jin Lee's debut and the Pachinko predecessor.”
Deacon King Kongby James McBride
5.0“Deacon King Kong by James McBride 2020 review. An elderly deacon at a Brooklyn housing project shoots a local drug dealer in the face in September 1969. Oprah Book Club 2020 and the canonical contemporary American comic-literary novel.”
Belovedby Toni Morrison
5.0“Beloved by Toni Morrison 1987 review. Sethe, a former slave living in Reconstruction-era Ohio, is haunted by the daughter she killed to save from slavery. Pulitzer Prize 1988 and one of the canonical American novels of the late twentieth century.”
Demon Copperheadby Barbara Kingsolver
5.0“Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver 2022 review. A Dickensian retelling of David Copperfield in the opioid-crisis Appalachia of the 1990s and 2000s. Pulitzer Prize and Women's Prize 2023 and Kingsolver's defining late-career novel.”
The Vanishing Halfby Brit Bennett
5.0“The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett 2020 review. Identical twin sisters from a small light-skinned Black Louisiana town diverge in the 1960s: one returns with her daughter, the other passes for white in California. Bennett's second novel and one of the canonical 2020s American literary novels.”
Cold Mountainby Charles Frazier
5.0“Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier 1997 review. A wounded Confederate deserter walks across the Civil-War-era Carolinas to return home. National Book Award 1997 and the basis for the 2003 Minghella film.”