Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Culture

New York Times 10 Best Books Of 2017 Include Works By Naomi Alderman, Ron Chernow

Naomi Alderman’s novel “The Power” and Ron Chernow’s biography of Ulysses S. Grant, “Grant,” are among The New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2017.

Alderman’s “The Power” won this year’s Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. The Times books editors wrote that the novel was “a riveting story, told in fittingly electric language, that explores how power corrupts everyone: those new to it and those resisting its loss.”

Chernow’s “Grant,” his first book since his 2010 biography “Washington: A Life,” won accolades from the editors for its careful detail and perhaps unanticipated contemporary relevance; “at a time of economic inequality reflecting the 19th century’s Gilded Age and a renewed threat from white-supremacy groups, Chernow reminds us that Grant’s courageous example is more valuable than ever,” they wrote.

Patricia Lockwood’s memoir “Priestdaddy,” James Forman Jr.’s “Locking Up Our Own: Crime and Punishment in Black America,” Jesmyn Ward’s “Sing, Unburied, Sing,” Min Jin Lee’s “Pachinko,” Mohsin Hamid’s “Exit West,” Ali Smith’s “Autumn,” Richard O. Prum’s “The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us” and Caroline Fraser’s “Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder” also made the list.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.