 | Case Closed by Gerald Posner
Buy new: $12.21 / Used from: $5.37 The conspiracy cultists will never admit it, but this is a tour de force that blows pretty much every alternative theory of the Kennedy assassination out of the water.
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 | The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker
Buy new: $10.04 / Used from: $2.28 Haven't liked anything else by Baker, but this is brilliant; a whole novel about a trip to buy a pair of shoelaces? Baker exposes the sorts of things people really think about. . .
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 | Facing Up: Paying Our Nation's Debt and Saving Our Children's Future by Peter G. Peterson
Buy used from: $0.01 A landmark, visionary political tract. Some of its particulars are dated now, but the basic message remains true; unreformed elderly entitlements are the greatest threat to our future prosperity.
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 | The Pitch That Killed by Mike Sowell
Buy new: $14.49 / Used from: $4.18 The 1920 pennant races rank among the most tumultuous of all time; Ray Chapman killed by a pitch ball, the emergence of Babe Ruth, the breaking of the Black Sox scandal. Wonderful treatment by Sowell
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| Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990 by Stephen E. Ambrose
Buy used from: $3.08 Ambrose's three-volume of Nixon remains the best; personally I like his work on Nixon even more than his touted books on WWII. The final volume in the trilogy.
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 | Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History by Stephen Jay Gould
Buy used from: $0.01 Gould wrote many a popularly-accessible essay on how life as we know it came to be; this collection is my favorite of his many fine books.
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 | The Portable Edmund Burke (Portable Library) by Edmund Burke
Buy new: $12.24 / Used from: $9.00 Every student of politics, even today, should know his/her Burke. These writings sound remarkably prescient even centuries later.
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 | Fires of the Dragon by David E. Kaplan
Buy new: $35.95 / Used from: $14.45 The assassination of an American citizen blew the lid off of a whole secret world of spying by overseas Chinese/Taiwanese within the borders of the US. Book is a little sensational, but informative.
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 | Truman by David McCullough
Buy new: $15.84 / Used from: $1.96 There are few greater fans of Harry Truman than me; this book goes a little overboard on his behalf even for my taste. Still, it's a readable, essential bio.
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 | Ball Four by Jim Bouton
Buy new: $10.85 / Used from: $0.99 A cultural document. Not the landmark classic it's reputed to be, it captures the generation gap of the 1960s, seeping into baseball. The author lacks perspective but relates his honest feelings.
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