Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Best Books of the Year 2008
Kirkus Reviews' Kirkus Best Books of the Year 2008 names 27 books. 12 of them also won or were shortlisted for an award.
- 2666source (opens in a new tab)
- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sexsource (opens in a new tab)
- Disquietsource (opens in a new tab)
- Douglass and Lincoln: How a Revolutionary Black Leader and a Reluctant Liberator Struggled to End Slavery and Save the Unionsource (opens in a new tab)
- Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Agesource (opens in a new tab)
- Homesource (opens in a new tab)
- Lincoln and Douglas: The Debates That Defined Americasource (opens in a new tab)
- Missysource (opens in a new tab)
- Ms. Hempel Chroniclessource (opens in a new tab)
- Netherlandsource (opens in a new tab)
- One Fifth Avenuesource (opens in a new tab)
- Palace Councilsource (opens in a new tab)
- Pictures at a Revolution: Five Movies and the Birth of the New Hollywoodsource (opens in a new tab)
- Say You’re One of Themsource (opens in a new tab)
- Telex from Cubasource (opens in a new tab)
- The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Rebornsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitlersource (opens in a new tab)
- The Angel of Grozny: Orphans of a Forgotten Warsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Good Thiefsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Lazarus Projectsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Likenesssource (opens in a new tab)
- The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own.source (opens in a new tab)
- The Post-American Worldsource (opens in a new tab)
- The Power Makers: Steam, Electricity, and the Men Who Invented Modern Americasource (opens in a new tab)
- Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jacksonsource (opens in a new tab)
- Yesterday’s Weathersource (opens in a new tab)
- Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Bodysource (opens in a new tab)
About the Kirkus Best Books of the Year
Full lists per year: Fiction, Nonfiction, Teen, Middle Grade, and Picture Books for 2013-2025 (Kirkus's own alphabetical list pages). 2010-2012 come from Kirkus's complete-list pages; children's books are one Children's list in those years. 2010 Fiction and Nonfiction merge the Top 25 with that year's 'Best ... of 2010' genre lists, because Kirkus posted no single complete adult list. 2006, 2008, and 2009 come from the Best Books special-issue PDFs on the Wayback Machine: those issues are not split into fiction and nonfiction (category Adult), hold 25-47 picks, and the 'Under the Radar' and 'Second Look' recap sections are left out. 2007: the Young Adult list (40 picks) comes from Kirkus's Best Young-Adult Books of 2007 PDF on the Wayback Machine. Kirkus's 2007 Best Children's and Best of 2007 (adult) PDFs survive only as truncated or missing captures, so the Children's list (32 picks) is transcribed from a November 2007 Becky's Book Reviews post that copied the Kirkus children's special, and 2007 Fiction and Nonfiction are partial: only the 15 titles in Barnes & Noble's 'Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2007' collection (archived 2020), so they carry no expected count. No children's list was found for 2008 or 2009. Kirkus prints titles in capitals; titles here are converted to title case.
Organization: Kirkus Reviews. Official site (opens in a new tab)