Tom Bissell, author of "God Lives in St. Petersburg"
For those citizens who have dutifully made their way through every Iraq war book while waiting for some final lightning bolt of explication, 2006 brought forth the best book on the conflict yet. Rory Stewart's "The Prince of the Marshes" is not the most widely researched Iraq war book, nor the most newsworthy, nor even the most "inside" account, but it singularly (and fairly) demonstrates, better than any book I have read to this date, why the invasion and occupation of Iraq was doomed from the start. This was not my belief when I began the book, and now it would be hard to imagine an account that could win me back to my former one. Stewart, who had a small, brave and quixotic role in Iraq's occupation, has written what is possibly the closest we can come to T. E. Lawrence's "Seven Pillars of Wisdom" in a post-colonial, seen-it-all world.
William Boyd, author of "Restless"
Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" was a bracing blast of secular common sense, even to this devout atheist. In a world where the mumbo jumbo surrounding competing supernatural beings is growing deafening, this cool, trenchant advocation of strictly rational argument was wonderfully beguiling.
I relished Gore Vidal's "Point to Point" navigation not least because there can be few authors whose tone of voice is so established and instantly recognizable. Tremendous, sagacious arguments, at once world-weary and fiercely provocative and partisan. The Gore Vidal story moves on to 2006: a fascinating sequel to the fascinating "Palimpsest."
Peter Carey's "Theft" shows what a fine novelist he is even when his ambition is somewhat scaled down. Vibrant, vital prose, super characterization and a brilliant ear for the idiosyncratic voice. Not bad satire, either the flimflam world of modern art takes a deserved battering.
Rich Cohen, author of "Sweet and Low"
If by favorite book you mean a book you read and read again, and underline, and read to friends, and keep going back to, and find yourself thinking about, or maybe you find yourself thinking about non-book-related things in a new way and realize it is because of this book, I would have to say my favorite of 2006 is "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace. It's a book of essays about, among other things, the Porn Industry Oscars, Tracy Austin, Dostoevski, a lobster festival in Maine, a John Updike book, which Wallace trashes (here is half a typical sentence: "Beside distracting us with worries about whether Updike might be injured or ill..."), every one of which snaps like a flag on a sharp autumn day. Because the guy is funny, never boring, super-smart, and has that all-important quality for a reporter/writer -- he is never scared to make an absolute ass of himself.
Geoff Dyer, author of "The Ongoing Moment" and "Out of Sheer Rage"
Cormac McCarthy's last, "No Country for Old Men," was no book for grown-ups. The relentless violence was quite infantile. His writing had always displayed this tendency but since the silliness was now given free rein one feared the decline might prove terminal. "The Road," though, was an amazing return to form and an extension of his already considerable imaginative powers. As bleak and ashen as anything in Beckett but with immense narrative drive as well. I have never appreciated the comfort and abundance of my sofa and home as intensely as I did while immersed in this vision of utter devastation.
Jennifer Egan, author of "The Keep" and "Look at Me"
I'm not generally a big fan of futuristic deathscapes, and my first reaction to Cormac McCarthy's monochromatic "The Road" was a fairly acute wish to read just about anything else. But after a chapter or two, McCarthy's sheer inventiveness had pulled me in; the devastated earth is richly imagined and gorgeously rendered, and the plight of the novel's protagonist father and son is urgently involving. Readers of "The Road" reap the benefits of McCarthy's many years of experience -- very few writers could have pulled off the post-apocalyptic world he describes with such authority -- coupled with his willingness, even at this late point in his career, to make a leap; there's a pathos to this novel so intense it risks melodrama. The result, for me, was the first book in a long time that I actually dreamed about.
Stephen Elliott, author of "My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up"
My absolute favorite book of the year hands down is Peter Orner's "The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo." It's this incredibly poetic yet minimalist story set in Namibia after revolution. I should point out that I know Peter but that's not why I loved the book. In fact, I was dreading reading it the way I always do when someone I know publishes something. But this was surprising. It's not just the best book I read this year, it's one of my five favorite novels of all time.
One other book worth mentioning is "Indecent" by Sarah Katherine Lewis from Seal Press. This book is not getting any attention and it's not on anyone's radar. It's a paperback original from a small press. It's a nonfiction book about Sarah's 10 years in the adult industry. It's very graphic, honest and funny. It's also full of anger and unsparing and totally unique. It'll be a shame if it just gets brushed aside as another tell-all memoir.
Nell Freudenberger, author of "The Dissident"
What I love about David Mitchell's "Black Swan Green" is the mixture of fantasy and the everyday, a blend that feels especially appropriate to the novel's 13-year-old narrator. Mitchell gets that moment between childhood and adolescence -- when your father's office can suddenly transform itself into Bluebeard's chamber -- probably because he, like the best fiction writers, hasn't lost that amphibious imaginative power himself.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of "Blink"
My favorite book of the year was Michael Lewis' "The Blind Side," his story about a young football player from the slums of Memphis, Tenn., who is adopted by a wealthy, white, evangelical family. Lewis has a made a habit of writing about sports recently -- first baseball in "Moneyball" and now American football in "The Blind Side." But as was the case with "Moneyball," sports is really only a subtext for a much more meaningful examination of discrimination and class and race. I wept at the end of "The Blind Side," which I have not done at the end of a work of nonfiction for a very long time.
Erica Jong, author of "Fear of Flying" and "Seducing the Demon: Writing for My Life"
For me the best book of the year was "The Mission Song" by John le Carré -- a novelist I admire immensely.
Reviewers tend to think of le Carré as a Cold War novelist -- because of the immense success of his novels of that era. But in truth, le Carré has grown and matured and now takes chances no other novelist takes.
In "The Mission Song," he invents an Anglo-African of mixed race (and many languages) who is an interpreter. Through his metier, le Carré's hero gets mixed up in the Machiavellian African politics of the Congo, leaves his wife, finds the woman of his life, pays dearly for his attempt to save the country of his youth from double-dealing warlords, and comes to represent the African-European of the 21st century.
Most white novelists would not dare to get inside the head of a black man. Le Carré not only dares, but succeeds with humor, empathy and a political canniness that goes far beyond stereotypes. He addresses the Christianization of tribal Africa, the colonialist hangover, the idealism of young Africans, the hypocrisy of the British press and the British upper classes, what it means today to "pass"-- both in Britain and in Africa -- and why the survivors are almost always the biggest dissemblers and hypocrites.
Every issue of today is here: class warfare, race, torture, immigration, language. But "The Mission Song" is also a tender love story, a fast-paced thriller, and a story with as many brilliant minor characters as major. Like another favorite of mine, "The Constant Gardner," it "gets" the centrality of Africa to our world today.
Just as le Carré defined the Cold War, he defines Africa -- with heart and love, and with a ragingly readable adventure tale.
Next page: Greil Marcus, Ken Kalfus and Curtis Sittenfeld reveal their picks