Five of the most important books of 2014

Esquire writers and editors selected "the five books published this year that, if you were to read them all, would give you a much fuller picture of what humans were dealing with in 2014." One title on the list:

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas

Many writers have taken aim at the uneasy intersection of self and stuff in America, at the way a nation's promise can feel like a judgment when you don't live up to it, the way it can distract you from the life you're actually living. Few, if any, have done it as well as We Are Not Ourselves, Matthew Thomas's exceptional first novel. It doesn't pile on, doesn't hector; rather, with profound compassion and understanding and at times majesty it painstakingly lays out the three seemingly unexceptional lives as they're lived, in the end summoning the only truly universal verity governing life in America: You can be anything you want, but in the end you'll always be yourself. —Joe Keohane

Read about another book on the list.

Writers Read: Matthew Thomas (October 2014).

--Marshal Zeringue