The Best of Guardian Books

Our minds evolved to minimise unpredictability. But if we learn to live with doubt, a world of opportunities opens up

From the secret gay life of a British-Caribbean man to that controversial shared Booker win, the author has blazed a trail across the literary landscape. Here are seven of her top titles

A deep dive into the horror novelist’s archives reveals pedantry, penny-pinching, and a total redraft of Carrie

As medieval sages understood, putting things off – done well – can open the doors to creativity and purpose

New technologies of reproduction are plundering the art world – and getting away with it

As the Artemis II astronauts return from the moon, we celebrate the science, suits and spirit of endeavour that took them there, all brought together in a colourful new book called Space Journal

As Emerald Fennell’s film sparks debate, we celebrate the pioneering brilliance of the siblings’ work

Trust your gut, boost your memory, de-bias your decision making… can we train our brains to perform better?

«A decade ago, the fashion was to be pessimistic about the prospects of improving our thinking, and even about the value of thinking at all.»

A new Sally Rooney, the return of le Carré’s George Smiley, plus real-life revelations from Al Pacino and Salman Rushdie ... Guardian critics pick the year’s best fiction, memoir, children’s books and…

Created in New York by Jewish immigrants, the first comic book superheroes were mythic saviours who could combat the Nazi threat. They speak to the dark politics of out times

The mind behind Jimmy Corrigan on casting himself as a ‘jerk’ in his new book Rusty Brown, childhood nostalgia and discovering his distinctive style

Today’s thumbs-up, thumbs-down approach to feminism is boring and reductive. It is time to embrace complexity

Around the world, luridly retro ideas of what it means to be a man have caused a rush of testosterone – from Bollywood bodybuilding to nuclear brinkmanship

Dazzling debut novels, searing polemics, the history of humanity and trailblazing memoirs ... Read our pick of the best books since 2000

A fifth part of The Tale of Genji, which was completed around 1010 by a woman later named Murasaki Shikibu, has been found in a house in Tokyo

Why did we succeed when other hominins didn’t, and can lessons from our evolutionary past help rein in our destructive impulses?

From ‘proactive aggression’ to our ‘predilection’ for polygamy, an engaging study of the traits that have influenced civilisation

Hawkish politicians and reckless bankers never face the consequences of their actions – but they should, according to this arresting but flawed book

From Aristotle to Iris Murdoch: what the greatest minds of the past 2,500 years have to tell us about the good life

«we should employ the principle of charity. This requires us to consider the best, strongest version of an opponent’s argument, not only the worst»

A timely guide to the Greek philosopher – and rival to the Stoics – who saw freedom from anxiety as the ultimate goal

«Unnatural and unnecessary desires, such as for wealth, power, fame or eternal life, are considered “corrosive”, to be avoided like the plague.»

A hi-tech medical exam draws its subject back to a more archaic, essential experience

Hailed as one of the most significant archival discoveries of modern times, text seems to show the Paradise Lost poet making careful annotations on his edition of Shakespeare’s plays

The Oxford psychology professor traces the evolutionary advantages, or otherwise, of faith

«Those who sign up to religions, he points out, “can incur serious costs in terms of self-imposed pain, celibacy and even self-sacrifice”.»

Our lives are finite – but do we keep that in mind and spend our time well? The latest attack on religion by Richard Dawkins and Martin Hägglund’s argument for ‘secular faith’

Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for ‘a sentence as clean as a bone’. What can we learn from celebrated authors about the art of writing well?

Slyly investigating language and bias in media culture, this follow-up to Assembly confirms Brown as one of the most intelligent voices writing today

Last year, research cast doubt on the dominant ‘chemical imbalance’ theory of depression. Now two persuasive books by scientists Philip Gold and Camilla Nord offer very different causes of the illness…

«psilocybin docks into the same receptors as brain-derived neurotrophic factor, a protein that promotes the growth and rewiring of neurons»

When a group of schoolboys were marooned on an island in 1965, it turned out very differently to William Golding’s bestseller, writes Rutger Bregman

Could the universe be an elaborate game constructed by bored aliens?

We might think the sky is blue and trees are green, but the truth is rather stranger

«Many people today think of blue as masculine and pink as feminine, but only a hundred years ago baby boys were dressed in pink and girls in blue.»

Without us noticing, we are entering the postcapitalist era. At the heart of further change to come is information technology, new ways of working and the sharing economy. The old ways will take a long while to disappear, but it’s time to be utopian