These books will change you and challenge you, but above all entertain you.

By The Esquire Editors, July 11, 2022

Back in 2015, Esquire published a list of “80 Books Every Man Should Read.” It wasn’t our finest moment. The list claimed to be “utterly biased,” and indeed it was.

We received criticism from every corner of the Internet, and we deserved it. Only one title (A Good Man Is Hard to Find) was written by a woman, and fewer than ten were written by men of color. It was also a pretty boring set.

In 2016, we published a new and improved list: “80 Books Every Person Should Read,” selected by eight female literary luminaries including Michiko Kakutani, Roxane Gay, and Lauren Groff. It was a good list: surprising, dynamic, and inclusive.

But this spring, when we started planning Esquire.com’s first ever Summer Fiction Week (a digital spin on the Summer Reading Issues we published back in the eighties), we asked ourselves: should we not just make our own amends?

Source: 80 Books Every Man Should Read