The best books of 2024

This list is part of the best books of 2024.

Join 1,587 readers and share your 3 favorite reads of the year.

My favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness

Fred Bowen ❤️ loved this book because...

As someone who writes for kids I am always interested in books and articles about today’s young people.

The Anxious Generation is a detailed description about how the introduction of smart phones around 2012 has changed childhood and ushered in a host of mental health problems for kids and adolescents. Haidt’s thesis is provocative and controversial but Haidt has the statistics and studies to back it up.

Haidt says we have been running an uncontrolled experiment with our children by giving them unfettered access to the Internet. But he does suggest solutions.

Haidt’s 4 basic rules are:

1- No smartphones until high school;

2- No social media until age 16;

3- No phones in schools; and

4- More free, unregulated play

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Thoughts 🥈 Outlook
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Jonathan Haidt,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked The Anxious Generation as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An urgent and insightful investigation into the collapse in youth mental health, from the influential social psychologist and international bestselling author

Jonathan Haidt has spent his career speaking truth and wisdom in some of the most difficult spaces - communities polarized by politics and religion, campuses battling culture wars, and now the mental health emergency hitting teenagers today in many countries around the world.

In The Anxious Generation, Haidt shows how, between 2010 and 2015, childhood and adolescence got rewired. As teens traded in their flip phones for smartphones packed with social media apps, time online soared, including time spent…


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My 2nd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of Road to Surrender

Fred Bowen ❤️ loved this book because...

I am a history buff but I have not read that many books about the Pacific theater in WWII.

Thomas examines the final months of the war through the eyes of three of its most important participants: American Secretary of War, Henry Stimson; Head of U.S. Strategic Bombing in the Pacific, General Carl Spaatz; and Japan's War Minister and member of the Japanese War Council, Shigenori Togo.

Road to Surrender is well-written, deeply researched and just plain exciting. It also addresses one of the most interesting questions of the 20th century: Should America have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan?

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Teach 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    ❤️ Loved it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Evan Thomas,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Road to Surrender as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A true page-turner.' All About History,


'Urgent, compulsively readable and powerfully resonant' Sinclair McKay

You know Oppenheimer, the man who created the atomic bomb...

Now meet the men who detonated it, and the extraordinary weight of their decisions...

Road to Surrender by New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas is a riveting, immersive account of the agonizing decision to use nuclear weapons against Japan - a crucial turning point in World War II and geopolitical history.

At 9:20 a.m. on the morning of May 30, General Groves receives a message to report to the office of the secretary of war…


My 3rd favorite read in 2024

Book cover of The Lyrics

Fred Bowen ❤️ loved this book because...

For years, Paul McCartney has been asked to write an autobiography. He always said no, probably because he was too busy being the greatest pop songwriter ever.

But when poet Paul Muldoon suggested they sit down from time to time and talk about the stories behind McCartney’s songs the music legend finally agreed. The result is The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present a delightful look at more than 100 of the master’s songs.

As someone who saw The Beatles first appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show and followed McCartney’s career for decades, I knew I would enjoy Lyrics. But I was surprised how winning and charming a storyteller McCartney is. I shouldn’t have been. After all, McCartney told the story of Eleanor Rigby in two minutes.

  • Loved Most

    🥇 Emotions 🥈 Thoughts
  • Writing style

    👍 Liked it
  • Pace

    🐕 Good, steady pace

By Paul McCartney,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Lyrics as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

From his early Liverpool days, through the historic decade of The Beatles, to Wings and his long solo career, The Lyrics pairs the definitive texts of 154 songs by Paul McCartney with first-person commentaries on his life and music. Spanning two alphabetically arranged volumes, these commentaries reveal how the songs came to be and the people who inspired them: his devoted parents, Mary and Jim; his songwriting partner, John Lennon; his "Golden Earth Girl", Linda Eastman; his wife, Nancy McCartney; and even Queen Elizabeth II, amongst many others. Here are the origins of "Let It Be", "Lovely Rita", "Yesterday", and…


Don‘t forget about my book 😀

Extra Innings

By Fred Bowen,

Book cover of Extra Innings

What is my book about?

Extra Innings is the 26th volume in the Fred Bowen Sports Story Series. The books combine sports fiction, sports history and always have a chapter of sports history in the back. They are perfect for kids ages 8-12 who like sports.

In Extra Innings, Mike McGinn is working hard to be the ace pitcher of his summer league baseball team. His father, however, doesn’t care much about baseball. He wants Mike to work and thinks he is taking it easy by just pitching.

Still, Mike is learning a lot. When to throw certain pitches. How to act on the mound. And the hardest lesson of all: that sometimes a pitcher can throw a great game and still come out on the losing end. Like when Harvey Haddix, a left-handed pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, pitched the greatest game in the history of Major League Baseball. Haddix threw a perfect twelve innings – thirty-six batters up, thirty-six batters out – only to lose the game in the thirteenth inning.

Book cover of The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Book cover of Road to Surrender
Book cover of The Lyrics

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