BVBook Verdict

If you liked

Books like Bel-Ami

Loved Bel-Ami by Guy de Maupassant? Here are 10 books with a similar appeal — drawn mostly from politics & society, ranked by how confidently we'd recommend them next.

10 books · ranked

  1. 1

    The New Jim Crow

    Michelle Alexander · 2010 · Politics & Society

    How mass incarceration recreates racial caste in America; a powerful, much-cited argument.

  2. 2

    Between the World and Me

    Ta-Nehisi Coates · 2015 · Politics & Society

    A letter to a son about being Black in America; urgent, lyrical and unflinching.

  3. 3

    Memoirs of a Revolutionist

    Peter Kropotkin · 1899 · Politics & Society

    Published in Atlantic monthly Sep. 1898-Sep. 1899 under title The autobiography of a revolutionist. Graphic details of Russian conditions and of an eventful life. — A.L.A. Catalog 1904 “Kropotkin’s st

  4. 4

    Imaginary portraits

    Walter Pater · 1887 · Politics & Society

    Walter Pater is best known for his Studies in the History of the Renaissance (1873) and for his first novel Marius the Epicurean (1885). His short fiction deserves a much wider audience. This edition

  5. 5

    The works of Hubert Howe Bancroft

    Hubert Howe Bancroft · 1882 · Politics & Society

    Hubert Howe Bancroft (May 5, 1832 – March 2, 1918) was an American historian and ethnologist who wrote, published and collected works concerning the western United States, Texas, California, Alaska, M

  6. 6

    A Century Of Dishonor

    Helen Hunt Jackson · 1881 · Politics & Society

    Originally published over 100 years ago, A Century of Dishonor is Helen Jackson’s eye- opening sketch of the U.S. government’s often shameful mishandling of what was called the “Indian problem”. Using

  7. 7

    Coniston

    Winston Churchill · 1906 · Politics & Society

    This book is about a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six

  8. 8

    Buried Alive

    Arnold Bennett · 1910 · Politics & Society

    No one in England would recognize famous painter Priam Farll, as he has lived abroad for many years. He is also quite shy and decides to change identities with his valet so not to be bothered by visit

  9. 9

    The way we live now

    Anthony Trollope · 1875 · Politics & Society

    From a review of the Anthony Trollope canon in The Economist (2020/04/08 edition): *“The Way We Live Now” (1875) is as much a portrait of the last few decades as it is of the high Victorian age, and e

  10. 10

    The Gilded Age

    Mark Twain · 1873 · Politics & Society

    A biting satire and a revealing portrait of post-Civil War America in which Twain and his neighbor attack the greed, lust, and naivete of their time.

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