 | The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq by George Packer
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $0.08 Great storytelling. Moving, visceral and necessary reporting. A must-read on Iraq.
|
 | From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman
Buy new: $11.56 / Used from: $0.01 Superb narrative of the author's time in the Middle East. Remarkable stories and great insight. A must-read.
|
 | The Corrections: A Novel by Jonathan Franzen
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $0.04 Really, really good fiction. Like the best American literature, about a family. Extremely well-written and keenly observed. Can't believe I waited to read it until this year.
|
 | Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H.g. Bissinger
Buy new: $11.48 / Used from: $0.01 Awesome. Just became addicted to the TV show. This book is the real thing. Unbelievable.
|
 | Group Portrait With Lady (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by Heinrich Boll
Buy used from: $4.25 Boll is one of the most under-rated 20th Century writers. A masterful, funny storyteller with bizarre characters and a witty, moving style.
|
 | Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets by David Simon
Buy new: $12.92 / Used from: $7.20 Liked the TV show? Love the book. Incredible stories from the streets of Baltimore. Chilling, funny, and all true.
|
 | The Trial by Franz Kafka
Buy new: $10.08 / Used from: $3.97 Better late than never. Cool, creepy book.
|
 | The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $0.01 Adore the film. The book is very different, but elegant and entrancing in its own way. Glad I finally read it.
|
 | Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change by Elizabeth Kolbert
Buy new: $19.62 / Used from: $0.01 Strong collection of New Yorker articles on global warming. Little science, lots of anecdote, good strong case in a short, speedy read.
|
 | The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House by John F. Harris
Buy new: $12.71 / Used from: $4.61 Great, fast-paced history of Clinton's years in office. Well-researched and well-balanced.
|
 | Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide by Jeffrey Goldberg
Buy used from: $0.23 Great narrative of the author's relationship to Israel and Palestinians he meets there. Typical New Yorker staff fare: well-written, lots of good anecdotes.
|
 | Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $1.31 Funny and bizarre. Very British, but great, stylish writing.
|
 | The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
Buy new: $19.80 / Used from: $5.99 Glad I read it, but nothing really illuminating, as far as I could make out. Just a straightforward history of al-Qaeda.
|
 | Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-2001 by Benny Morris
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $6.97 Good, detailed, mostly military history of modern Israel. Worthwhile introduction, very well-balanced. Not enough internal political history to explain much, but very good for what it is.
|
 | The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
Buy new: $17.82 / Used from: $6.69 Angry, angry Richard Dawkins. But also sometimes funny and on point.
|
 | Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $3.23 Meh. Disappointing. Not bad, just nothing special here. I'd read the rest, but I'm in no hurry.
|
 | The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 by Mark Halperin
Buy used from: $0.01 Almost no organization and lots of pro-Hillary propaganda, but a good accounting of the modern political field.
|
 | The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis
Buy used from: $2.98 A good brief introduction for no-nothings like myself. I'm sure his big book We Now Know is well worth it.
|
 | Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
Buy new: $14.28 / Used from: $3.69 Not much here, really. Lincoln's awesome, of course.
|
 | State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III by Bob Woodward
Buy used from: $0.01 Good lord this man cannot write worth a lick. But he does seem to get the real story from everyone. Always worth reading and immediately giving away to someone else.
|
Listmania!
