Best of the best

The holiday season is upon us, and from every corner we find ourselves asked to make sense of the avalanche of books that threatens to bury us in tale upon tale. It is, of course, the work of Sisyphus, but we’d have it no other way. More than 100,000 books are annually published in the United States. Here at the Los Angeles Times we have space enough to note and review about 1,500 titles during the year. More nonfiction is published than fiction, and so our reviews follow suit.

Choosing among the universe of the worthy is an inherently fraught process, forcing us to feel much as a World War I surgeon might have felt on the battlefield of Verdun: It’s triage every day. Nevertheless, without apology and immodestly, we offer those books that in the opinion of our diverse contributors are among the very best of 2003. We also take this opportunity to single out 20 titles that, in our judgment, are the best of the best.