 | Truman by David McCullough
Buy new: $14.96 / Used from: $3.54 How to grow up to be a hero without noticing along the way.
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 | The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Buy new: $9.00 / Used from: $0.95 Involving ethnic fiction from, for most of us, a completely exotic culture.
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 | The Yiddish Policemen's Union: A Novel by Michael Chabon
Buy new: $17.79 / Used from: $4.74 The voice of his generation, I suspect. Maybe mine too.
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 | Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
Buy new: $11.20 / Used from: $1.95 How to write an extremely complex, thoughtful story and make it read like some guy casually spouting off at you through the night.
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 | Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson
Buy new: $21.12 / Used from: $3.90 New information woven in with the subject's innovative thought processes; the first Einstein book I've read that isn't either an insult to my intelligence or completelty opaque.
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 | Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $8.42 Perhaps not foreign policy "experience," but indicative of a new way of looking at our place in the world.
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 | Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy—Until You're 80 and Beyond by Chris Crowley
Buy new: $10.36 / Used from: $7.48 Positively motivating.
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 | The Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman
Buy new: $17.13 / Used from: $9.20 Like a poet screaming wisdom at the wilderness.
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 | The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality by Brian Greene
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $5.40 "Life is a deep well," said the sage and I looked at him like he was from Pluto. "You mean life is not a deep well?" he asked.
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 | Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
Buy new: $10.87 / Used from: $4.89 Maybe practical, maybe not, but one of the rare sources of new ideas. Gladwell is a theoretical sociologist.
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 | Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $3.75 Why someone would want to grow up to be a hero.
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 | Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath
Buy new: $16.50 / Used from: $13.29 Getting an insouciant Universe to notice.
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Listmania!
