The best thing I read this year was "The Last Lion", a three-volume biography of Winston Churchill. I don't know that I would recommend it to most people, it's

The best thing I read this year was "The Last Lion", a three-volume biography of Winston Churchill. I don't know that I would recommend it to most people, it's a hell of a lot of words to read about one guy: volume 1 alone is 850 pages in hardcover, covering 1874-1932. The writer (William Manchester) is also very fond of his subject, so those who consider Churchill a villain (or even a deeply flawed hero) will likely not care for it. But man, could Manchester write. This is history as literature. He's especially good at long, dramatic, paragraphs that build to a crescendo over hundreds of words and close with a flourish. The last volume was finished by another author after Manchester died, so it isn't as good.