Ten books that men love

Katie Hafner was on staff at The New York Times for ten years, where she remains a frequent contributor, writing on healthcare and technology. She has also worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, The New Republic, The Washington Post, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is the author of five previous works of nonfiction covering a range of topics, including the origins of the Internet, computer hackers, German reunification, and the pianist Glenn Gould.

Her first novel, The Boys, was published in July 2022.

At Publishers Weekly Hafner tagged ten books "that feed and fray men’s souls," including:

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner

For years I adored everything about this 1971 novel: the love story; the raw depiction of the American West; the elemental struggles. This, no doubt, is why so many men love it, too. In solidarity with Mary Foote, the woman from whom Stegner apparently stole entire swaths of prose, I recently banished this tome from my shelf. Still, I understand its enduring appeal: Stegner’s leaps of the imagination into the troubled marriage of Susan and Oliver Ward; their confrontations with the frontier and its perilous terrain; the American dream turned rancid, then tragic.

Read about the other entries on the list.

Angle of Repose is among Jamie Lee Curtis's six favorite books, Monique Alice's seven top works of Western fiction, Paula Fredriksen's five best books on sin, and Andrea Wulf's six favorite books.

--Marshal Zeringue