In wrapping of the year’s best-of-2012 lists, we couldn’t help but single out the University of Chicago Press titles that made the cut as reads worth remembering. With that in mind, here’s a list of our books that earned praise as cream of the crop here and abroad, from scholarly journals, literary blogs, metropolitan newspapers, and the like. If you’re looking, might we (and others) recommend—

A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava

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A World in One Cubic Foot: Portraits of Biodiversity by David Liittschwager

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Alive in the Writing: Crafting Ethnography in the Company of Chekhov by Kirin Narayan

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And Bid Him Sing: A Biography of Countée Cullen by Charles Molesworth

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The Art of Medicine: 2,000 Years of Images and Imagination by Julie Anderson, Emm Barnes, and Emma Shackleton

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Bewilderment by David Ferry

chosen by both Dan Chiasson and Jeremy Denk as one of their favorite books of 2012 for the New Yorker

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Book Was There: Reading in Electronic Times by Andrew Piper

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Dangerous Work: Diary of an Arctic Adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle

named one of the best books of the year by Philip Hoare at the Sunday Telegraph

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Dreaming in French: The Paris Years of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Susan Sontag, and Angela Davis

named by Michael Gorra as one of his favorite books of the year in the Daily Beast

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The Last Walk: Reflections on Our Pets at the End of Their Lives by Jessica Pierce

made Open Letters Monthly’s list of the ten best nature books of the year—and landed the top spot: “The best nature book this year (and also the best dog book) is immeasurably also the saddest.”

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Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art by Leo Steinberg

announced as a book of the year by the Art Newspaper (originally published in 2007: TIME WARP)

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The Romantic Machine: Utopian Science and Technology after Napoleon by John Tresch

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The Sounding of the Whale: Science and Cetaceans in the Twentieth Century by D. Graham Burnett

made Open Letters Monthly’s list of the ten best nature books of the year

made Nature magazine’s Top Twelve of 2012 list

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The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn

made Nature magazine’s Top Twelve of 2012 list

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The Timeline of Presidential Elections: How Campaigns Do (And Do Not) Matter by Robert S. Erikson and Christopher Wlezian

named by Ryan Lizza as one of the ten best political books of the year for the New Yorker

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Vegetables: A Biography by Evelyne Bloch-Dano

included as one of the best books of 2012 by Audubon magazine

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You’ll Know When You Get There: Herbie Hancock and the Mwandishi Band by Bob Gluck