 | The Complete Peanuts 1957-1958 by Charles M. Schulz
Buy new: $19.11 / Used from: $10.05 Rare is the modern comic strip that doesn't owe an extreme debt to "Peanuts." This volume marks the beginning of what I consider the strip's golden period.
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 | The Glory of Their Times : The Story of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It by Lawrence S. Ritter
Buy new: $10.76 / Used from: $1.06 A priceless oral history of early-20th-century baseball, unsurpassed in the the nearly 40 years since its publication.
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 | Dominic (Sunburst Book) by William Steig
Buy used from: $0.01 Dominic is a restless, inquisitive canine who, with his hats and his piccolo, one day sets off "rather in a hurry to see more of the world." An utterly charming celebration of the wonder of life.
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 | A Mathematician's Apology (Canto) by G. H. Hardy
Buy new: $12.91 / Used from: $4.93 Worth it for Snow's foreword alone, Graham Greene aptly called Hardy's end-of-career discursion on the beauty of mathematics "the best account of what it was like to be a creative artist."
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 | The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $4.92 Not just the story of Los Alamos, but a history of theoretical physics, an analysis of between-the-wars politics and social upheaval, and a recounting of the devastation at Hiroshima. A classic.
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 | The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
Buy new: $13.60 / Used from: $6.58 I first read the Hitchhiker's "trilogy" nearly 20 years ago and it's stayed with me ever since. A brilliant combination of incisive wit and verbal gymnastics.
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 | Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million by Martin Amis
Buy new: $10.20 / Used from: $3.95 A succint examination of the horrors of Stalinism. Why Martin Amis is one of my favorite living writers of nonfiction.
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 | Time's Arrow by Martin Amis
Buy new: $9.32 / Used from: $0.71 A succinct examination of the horrors of Nazism via an ingenious literary device. Why Martin Amis is one of my favorite living writers of fiction.
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 | The American Language by H.L. Mencken
Buy new: $37.80 / Used from: $15.99 The most comprehensive philological investigation of American English yet published. (At 816 pages, this is just one volume of three.)
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 | The London Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive Book on London Ever Published
Buy used from: $33.37 This *is* the most comprehensive book on London ever published, with 5,000 well-written entries across 1,000 fascinating pages. "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." --Samuel Johnson
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 | My Country Right or Left 1940-1943: The Collected Essays Journalism & Letters of George Orwell (Collected Essays Journalism and Letters of George Orwell) by Sonia Orwell
Buy new: $12.21 / Used from: $9.50 He may be better known these days for "1984" and "Animal Farm," but for me, Orwell's incisive genius shines through best in his shorter pieces, as relevant today as they were 60-plus years ago.
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 | The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 A poetic tale of life, love, death, and coming of age in California's San Joaquin Valley during World War II.
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 | The Way of Chuang Tzu (First Edition) (New Directions Paperbook) by Thomas Merton
Buy new: $9.32 / Used from: $0.98 An elegant interpretation of these Taoist writings by Trappist monk and author Thomas Merton.
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 | The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
Buy used from: $9.02 I love a good yarn, and at spinning them, Conan Doyle was a master.
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 | The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories (Dover Thrift Editions) by Mark Twain
Buy new: $2.50 / Used from: $0.01 Left unfinished at his death in 1910, "The Mysterious Stranger" is by far Twain's darkest work, an indictment of the moral hypocrisy he saw in organized religion.
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 | Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
Buy new: $11.02 / Used from: $4.06 The novel that gave "grok" to the world is an irreverent, libertarian take on morality, religion, sexuality, and society in general. Drastically edited for its 1961 release, this is the uncut version.
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 | I.Asimov: A Memoir by Isaac Asimov
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $1.71 Asimov's last work is an elegant look back at the fascinating life and career of one of the giants of science fiction. Also recommended are the earlier "In Memory Yet Green" and "In Joy Still Felt."
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 | Manifold: Time by Stephen Baxter
Buy new: $7.99 / Used from: $0.01 Baxter explores the future of humanity in this and its companion volumes, all of which follow Reid Malenfant to the edges of time and space. Thought-provoking, gripping storytelling.
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 | Fires of Spring by James A. Michener
Buy used from: $0.01 This autobiographical first novel follows poorhouse orphan David Harper from high school to adulthood as he grows up during the Depression. A glorious portrait of life and love.
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 | Busy, Busy Town (Giant Little Golden Book) by Richard Scarry
Buy new: $10.19 / Used from: $7.86 I would still have learned to read without Richard Scarry, but it wouldn't have been as fun.
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