Eichmann in Jerusalem
1963 · 312 pages
Reporting from the Jerusalem trial of the Nazi official who organized the deportations, Arendt found not a monster but a careerist who never thought. Her phrase, the banality of evil, still starts fights.
★ 7.9
The Books canon
Sourced and shelved.
Every book chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
Browse all 1,178 books or filter by subject, era, place, and author.
A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
1955 · 276 pages
On a Georgia back road a grandmother who talked her family into a detour meets an escaped killer. O'Connor's stories stay funny until the violence arrives, which is how grace arrives too.
★ 7.8
East of Eden
1952 · 602 pages
Two generations of a Salinas Valley family repeat Cain and Abel, and Steinbeck stakes everything on one Hebrew word: timshel, thou mayest, which leaves a man free to choose against his blood.
★ 6.7
Pop. 1280
1964 · 256 pages
Nick Corey, sheriff of a dirt-poor Southern county, plays the harmless fool while killing people, and his cheerful drawl carries you far before you see what you are laughing at.
★ 5.1
The Tiger in the Smoke
1952 · 288 pages
A war widow receives photographs of the husband she buried. The trail runs into a London fog where the killer Jack Havoc is loose, and Allingham makes the thriller an argument about evil.
★ 4.6