Best Books of the Year

From the University of Chicago Press


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The Art of Medicine:
2,000 Years of Images and Imagination

Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton

  • One of Discover’s Best Science Art Books of the Year
Cloth $50

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Vegetables:
A Biography

Evelyne Bloch-Dano

Cloth $20

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The Sounding of the Whale:
Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century

D. Graham Burnett

  • One of Nature magazine’s Top Twelve of 2012
  • On Open Letters Monthly’s list of the ten best nature books of 2012
Cloth $45

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A Naked Singularity:
A Novel

Sergio De La Pava

  • Included in Bookriot’s list of the five most overlooked books of 2012
  • On the best of the year list from Philadelphia’s City Paper
  • One of the best books of the year from the Houston Chronicle
  • Named by Sasha Frere-Jones as one of his best books of 2012 on the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog
  • Named one of the best books of 2012 by the Toronto Star
  • One of the ten best fiction books of 2012 by the Wall Street Journal book editors
  • A pick by Wall Street Journal fiction editor Sam Sacks as one his favorite fiction books of 2012
Paper $18

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Dangerous Work:
Diary of an Arctic Adventure

Arthur Conan Doyle

Cloth $35

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The Timeline of Presidential Elections:
How Campaigns Do (And Do Not) Matter

Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezian

  • Named by Ryan Lizza as one of the ten best political books of the year on the New Yorker’s News Desk blog
Paper $25

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Bewilderment:
New Poems and Translations

David Ferry

  • Named by both Dan Chiasson and Jeremy Denk as one of their best books of 2012 on the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog
Paper $18

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Cloth $30.00

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You’ll Know When You Get There:
Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band

Bob Gluck

  • One of SPIN’s 10 Best Music Books of 2012
Cloth $37.50

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Dreaming in French:
The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis

Alice Kaplan

Cloth $26

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Arts of Wonder:
Enchanting Secularity—Walter De Maria, Diller + Scofidio, James Turrell, Andy Goldsworthy

Jeffrey L. Kosky

  • Named one of the best books of 2012 by the New Museum Store’s curator and book buyer Herbert Pfostl
Cloth $40

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions:
Fiftieth Anniversary Edition

Thomas S. Kuhn

  • One of Nature magazine’s Top Twelve of 2012
Paper $15

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Fear of Food:
A History of Why We Worry About What We Eat

Harvey Levenstein

  • One of the Best Food and Agriculture Books of 2012 from Civil Eats
Cloth $25

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Cloth $45

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And Bid Him Sing:
A Biography of Countée Cullen

Charles Molesworth

Cloth $30

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Alive in the Writing:
Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov

Kirin Narayan

  • Named by James Wood as one of his best books of 2012 on the New Yorker’s Page-Turner blog
Paper $17

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The Last Walk:
Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives

Jessica Pierce

  • #1 on Open Letters Monthly’s list of the ten best nature books of 2012: “The best nature book this year (and also the best dog book) is immeasurably also the saddest.”
Cloth $26

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Book Was There:
Reading in Electronic Times

Andrew Piper

Cloth $22.50

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The Romantic Machine:
Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon

John Tresch

  • Named one of the best books of 2012 by the New Museum Store’s curator and book buyer Herbert Pfostl
Cloth $40