Books by Princeton professors make year-end ‘best-of’ lists
Eighteen books by Princeton professors have been selected for inclusion in 2025 year-end “best of” lists — in some cases, multiple lists. The accolades celebrate faculty novels and short stories, memoirs, poetry, and nonfiction.
Above and beyond the lists, Patricia Smith’s “The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems won the 2025 National Book Award for poetry. Yiyun Li’s memoir “Things in Nature Merely Grow” was a National Book Award finalist for nonfiction.
Books on the best-of lists are presented here in alphabetical order by author within genres.
These University resources offer additional faculty books to consider for last-minute gifts and your own winter reading: the Humanities Council’s Faculty Bookshelf, the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Featured Faculty Publications, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs’ Faculty Books and Awards compilation and the Department of History’s Faculty Bookshelf.
Fiction
“Fox” (Hogarth/Penguin Random House), by Joyce Carol Oates, is included in Harper’s Bazaar’s 10 Best Books of 2025 and Publishers Weekly Best Books 2025: Fiction. “Legendary writer Joyce Carol Oates crafts an astonishing tale of deception and morality,” says Harper’s Bazaar, in a novel that “opens a Pandora’s box of questions." In its review, Publishers Weekly praises the book as “a captivating whodunnit” and notes: “Oates is at the top of her game.” Oates is the Roger S. Berlind ’52 Professor in the Humanities, Emeritus, and professor of creative writing, emeritus.
“An Oral History of Atlantis: Stories” (Penguin Random House), by Ed Park, is included in TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2025 and NPR Books We Love 2025. Hamilton Cain of TIME writes that Park “serves up a delectable collection of linked stories, a cocktail of his obsessions: experimental language, pop-culture oddities, screwball characters, cutting-edge technologies, and political conflicts across the globe. Yet he’s a poet of the heart as well as an intellectual archivist, his commitment to art captured in inventive forms.” Park is a lecturer in creative writing and the Lewis Center for the Arts.
“The Float Test” (Mariner Books), a novel by Lynn Steger Strong about four siblings who return to their childhood home after their mother’s sudden death, is included in The New Yorker Best Books of 2025. The New Yorker writes that Strong “explores the dynamics of siblinghood — alliances and grudges — and interrogates what it means to claim family stories as your own.” Strong is a lecturer in creative writing and the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Poetry
“The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems” (Scribner/Simon & Schuster), by Patricia Smith, is included in Publishers Weekly Best Books 2025: Poetry and NPR Books We Love 2025. Publishers Weekly writes, “Smith’s astonishing volume of selected and previously uncollected work reveals memory to be an act of defiance and love in poems that resurrect past voices and rejoice in the spirit of Black joy. It’s an unforgettable offering from one of the most important voices in poetry.” Smith is a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts.
Memoir
“Things in Nature Merely Grow” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Yiyun Li, is included in The New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025, New Yorker Best Books of 2025, TIME 100 Must-Read Books of 2025, The Washington Post 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction from 2025, NPR Books We Love 2025, and The Guardian's Best Memoirs and Biographies of 2025, among others, and was named a “New Yorker Essential Read for 2025.” The Washington Post writes, “In beautiful prose, acclaimed fiction writer Li quietly guides us through the devastation of living after the unfathomable deaths, six years apart, of her two sons. This memoir is full of the boys’ presence as Li crafts an ethereal memorial to them.” Li is the Robert F. Goheen Professor in the Humanities and professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts.
“The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir” (Bloomsbury) by Edmund White, is included in The Sunday Times’ Best Books of 2025 and Vulture’s Best Books of 2025. Robbie Millen, literary editor of The Times [of London], writes, “This ‘sex memoir’ has all the no-holds-barred candour you’d expect of an octogenarian who is too old to care what anyone else thinks. … A hoot, and surprisingly touching.” White, a professor of creative writing in the Lewis Center for the Arts, emeritus, and the author of more than 30 books, nearly all of which center on themes of the gay experience, died in June and was memorialized by colleagues and students in a University obituary.
Nonfiction
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) exhibition catalog “Ruth Asawa: Retrospective” (Yale University Press), featuring contributions from Anne Cheng, is included in Hyperallergic’s 15 Art Books to Gift This Holiday Season. Lisa Yin Zhang of Hyperallergic writes, “Cheng’s essay on ornament in Asawa’s art (or at least perceptions of it) genuinely made me see her work differently, and it’s eminently readable, in classic Cheng fashion.” Cheng is the Louis W. Fairchild ’24 Professor of English. The Asawa retrospective is on view at MoMA in New York through Feb. 7.
“What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea” (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press), by Fara Dabhoiwala, is included in The Guardian’s Best History and Politics Books of 2025 and History Today’s Best Books of 2025. In his Guardian review, Joe Moran calls the book “a brilliant history” and writes that Dabhoiwala “wants us to think of free speech as being not just about the content of words but about which voices are heard most loudly and which are marginalised.” Dabhoiwala is a senior research scholar in history.
“Terms of Respect: How Colleges Get Free Speech Right” (Basic Books), by Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber, is included among other books of note in Forbes’ Best Higher Education Books of 2025. In his Forbes review, Michael Nietzel, president emeritus of Missouri State University, writes that Eisgruber “offers one influential leader’s perspective on the current criticism that colleges have betrayed free speech, arguing to the contrary.” Read a University homepage story about how Eisgruber, who is also the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and the University Center for Human Values, has been using the book as a platform to counter misperceptions about free speech and academic freedom.
“Fail Better: Reckonings with Artists and Critics” by Hal Foster (The MIT Press), which collects 40 of his critical essays over the last 40 years, is included in The Brooklyn Rail’s “The Best Art Books of 2025.” Phong Bui of The Brooklyn Rail calls it “Foster’s most revelatory meditation on his lifelong commitment to questioning the function of art criticism.” Read a Q&A about the book with Foster, the Townsend Martin, Class of 1917, Professor of Art and Archaeology, on the Humanities Council website.
“On Bullshit: Anniversary Edition” (Princeton University Press), by Harry G. Frankfurt, is included in The Telegraph’s Greatest Books of 2025. Reviewer Stuart Jeffries calls the 2005 bestseller’s republication “a stroke of publishing genius” and writes: “Today its message is even more resonant…we are living in a bulls— emergency.” Frankfurt, a professor of philosophy, emeritus, who was renowned for his scholarship on free will and moral responsibility, died in 2023.
“Sex Is a Spectrum: The Biological Limits of the Binary” (Princeton University Press), by Agustín Fuentes, is included in Nature’s Best Books of 2025. “A tropical Atlantic fish, the bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma bifasciatum), launches this fascinating book about sex,” writes Nature’s Andrew Robinson. “Females produce eggs and males make sperm. But if the group’s largest male gets killed, a female takes over by rapidly altering its reproductive organs to become the main sperm producer.” Fuentes, a professor of anthropology, then traces the complicated experiences of animals and humans across scientific history.
“In Covid’s Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us” (Princeton University Press), by Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee, is included in The Economist Best Books of 2025, The New Yorker Best Books of 2025 and The Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2025. “Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee trace how, during a global pandemic, government officials made some tragic choices — including, in many places, to keep schools closed,” The Wall Street Journal writes. “The two Princeton academics blame policymakers who sidelined dissenting views and too often refused to change plans.” Macedo is the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Politics and the University Center for Human Values. Lee is a professor of politics and public affairs and co-director of the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics.
“Miracles and Wonder: The Historical Mystery of Jesus” (Doubleday/Penguin Random House), by Elaine Pagels, is included in The New Yorker Best Books of 2025, the California Review of Books’ 10 Best Books of 2025 and History.com 2025’s Best New History Books. On a local note, it was included in Princeton Public Library’s 2025 Top Checked Out Adult Nonfiction. The New Yorker writes that Pagels “ably navigates through the essential but surprisingly unsettled sources that seem to relate the events of Jesus’ life and death.” Pagels is the Harrington Spear Paine Foundation Professor of Religion, Emeritus.
“Righting Wrongs: Three Decades on the Front Lines Battling Abusive Governments” (Knopf/Penguin Random House), by Kenneth Roth, is included in The Economist Best Books of 2025. The Economist writes, “A leading human-rights campaigner explains how to curb the cruelty of the world’s worst regimes. The key to shaming powerful wrongdoers is to avoid name-calling and ‘stigmatise with facts.’” Roth is the Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
“Mother Emanuel: Two Centuries of Race, Resistance, and Forgiveness in One Charleston Church” (Crown/Penguin Random House), by Kevin Sack, who covered the 2015 Charleston church massacre for The New York Times, is included in The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2025, NPR Books We Love 2025 and Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Books of the Year. In his New York Times review, Randall Kennedy calls it “a singular journalistic performance” and writes that Sack “delivers a dense, rich, captivating narrative, featuring vivid prose, prodigious research and a palpable emotional engagement that is disciplined by a meticulous attention to the facts.” Sack is a visiting lecturer in the Humanities Council and a Ferris Professor of Journalism.
“Black Religion in the Madhouse: Race and Psychiatry in Slavery's Wake” (New York University Press), by Judith Weisenfeld, is included in Science News’ Top Reads of 2025. Science News writes, “After slavery’s abolition and the U.S. Civil War, white psychiatrists pathologized Black religious practices as mental illness. A historian of religion unpacks how these racist views shaped the burgeoning field of psychiatry.” Read a Q&A about the book with Weisenfeld, the Agate Brown and George L. Collord Professor of Religion, on the Humanities Council website.
“In Defense of Partisanship” (Columbia Global Reports), by Julian E. Zelizer, is included in The New Yorker Best Books of 2025. In its review, The New Yorker writes: “Tracing the Democratic and the Republican Parties from their births through the congressional reforms of the nineteen-seventies, Zelizer dissects what has gone wrong and provides a clear and accessible blueprint for further changes.” Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs.
Mary Cate Connors, communications manager for the Humanities Council, contributed to this story.