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Books: Well, this is what I've been reading since August 2002. I leave out my own personal opinions, since what I like doesn't necessarily correspond to what other people like. Nevertheless, I'm always interested in seeing what other people are reading and in general what interesting books are out there, so maybe this page can provide the same kind of service for someone else. All descriptions have been shamelessly copied from published reviews or the books themselves. Dates correspond to when I *finished* reading a book (unless otherwise specified).

[ See detailed reading statistics (with charts) here ]
 
Jun. 26, 2008 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan. Food Journalism. 411 pages.
"'What should we have for dinner?' To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is an eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America. "
May 14, 2008 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values - Robert Pirsig. Philosophy. 540 pages.
"A powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a breathtaking meditation on how to live better. Here is the book that transformed a generation: an unforgettable narration of a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest, undertaken by a father and his young son. A story of love and fear that becomes a profound personal and philosophical odyssey into life's fundamental questions, this uniquely exhilarating modern classic is both touching and transcendent, resonant with the myriad confusions of existence and the small, essential triumphs that propel us forward."
Apr. 17, 2008 Kitchen Confidential - Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Expose. 319 pages.
"Chef at New York's Les Halles and author of Bone in the Throat, Bourdain pulls no punches in this memoir of his years in the restaurant business. His fast-lane personality and glee in recounting sophomoric kitchen pranks might be unbearable were it not for two things: Bourdain is as unsparingly acerbic with himself as he is with others, and he exhibits a sincere and profound love of good food."
Mar. 31, 2008 Man's Search For Meaning - Viktor Frankl. Psychiatry. 154 pages.
"Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl is among the most influential works of psychiatric literature since Freud. The book begins with a lengthy, austere, and deeply moving personal essay about Frankl's imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps for five years, and his struggle during this time to find reasons to live. The second part of the book, called "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," describes the psychotherapeutic method that Frankl pioneered as a result of his experiences in the concentration camps."
Mar. 20, 2008 The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera. Fiction. 314 pages.
"A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we feel "the unbearable lightness of being" not only as the consequence of our pristine actions but also in the public sphere, and the two inevitably intertwine."
Mar. 6, 2008 Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer. Non-fiction. 203 pages.
"After graduating from Emory University in 1992, Christopher McCandless abandoned his possessions, gave his entire $24,000 savings to charity and hitchhiked to Alaska, where he went to live in the wilderness. Four months later, he turned up dead. His diary and letters and two notes found at a remote campsite tell of his desperate effort to survive. They also reflect the posturing of a confused young man, raised in affluent Annandale, Va., who self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and return to nature."
Feb. 29, 2008 In a Sunburned Country - Bill Bryson. Travel Memoir. 331 pages.
"This travel narrative from veteran wanderer Bryson provides an appreciative, informative, and hilarious portrait of the land Down Under: a place harsh and hostile to life, staggeringly empty yet packed with stuff. Bryson is a real traveler, the kind of guy who can be entertained by (and be entertaining about) a featureless landscape scattered with rocks the color of bad teeth. Fortunately for him and for us, there's a lot more to Australia than that."
Feb. 19, 2008 Arabian Sands - Wilfred Thesiger. Travel Memoir. 330 pages.
"Wilfred Thesiger spent five years exploring in and around the vast, waterless desert, the 'Empty Quarter' of Arabia. Travelling amongst the Bedu people, he experienced the everyday challenges of hunger and thirst, the trials of long marches beneath the relentless sun, the bitterly cold nights and the constant danger of death if it was discovered he was a Christian 'infidel'. He was the first European to visit most of the region, and just before he left the area the process that would change it forever had begun-the discovery of oil. Thesiger saw Arabian Sands as 'a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people'."
Jan. 27, 2008 The Places In Between - Rory Stewart. Travel Memoir. 297 pages.
"In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan-surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. Through these encounters-by turns touching, con-founding, surprising, and funny-Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between."
Jan. 3, 2008 The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power - Daniel Yergin. History. 788 pages.
"Founded in the 19th century, the oil industry began producing kerosene for lamps and progressed to gasoline. Huge personal fortunes arose from it, and whole nations sprung out of the power politics of the oil wells. Yergin's fascinating account sweeps from early robber barons like John D. Rockefeller, to the oil crisis of the 1970s, through to the Gulf War."
Oct. 18, 2007 Crime and Punishment (Barnes & Noble Classics Edition) - Fyodor Dostoevsky. Fiction. 449 pages.
"A psychological analysis of the poor student Raskolnikov, whose theory that humanitarian ends justify evil means leads him to murder a St. Petersburg pawnbroker. The act produces nightmarish guilt in Raskolnikov. The narrative's feverish, compelling tone follows the twists and turns of Raskolnikov's emotions and elaborates his struggle with his conscience and his mounting sense of horror as he wanders the city's hot, crowded streets."
Sep. 24, 2007 South Bronx Rising: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of an American City - Jill Jonnes. History. 440 pages.
"The definitive account of one of the great urban tragedies of the 1970s and 1980s: the near destruction of a large part of New York City through an epidemic of abandonment, vandalism, and arson. But even while the conflagration raged, determined citizens were trying to stop it."
Sep. 4, 2007 The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941 - Robert S. McElvaine. History. 349 pages.
"More than half a century has now passed since Franklin D. Roosevelt launched his "New Deal." Most Americans today are too young to remember the Great Depression. But no period in American history has more of importance to say to us now than does the Depression decade. Events in those years have determined the direction of our social and economic policies, our relationship to our government, and our political alignments ever since."
Aug. 2, 2007 The Birth and Death of Meaning: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on the Problem of Man - Ernest Becker. Psychology / Anthropology. 199 pages.
"One curious thing that separates the social from the natural sciences is that the natural sciences, with much fanfare, immediately communicate to the general public their most exciting new ideas: the social sciences tend to nurse their significant insights in scholarly oblivion. As a result people feel that the social sciences are not doing anything important or exciting. But the opposite is true: probably the most thrilling and potentially liberating discoveries have been made in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and pyschiatry. The result is that we are today in possession of an excellent general theory of human nature, and this is what I want to reveal to the reader."
Feb. 16, 2007 When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management - Roger Lowenstein. Finance. 236 pages.
"When it was founded in 1993, Long-Term was hailed as the most impressive hedge fund in history. But after four years in which the firm dazzled Wall Street as a $100 billion moneymaking juggernaut, it suddenly suffered catastrophic losses that jeopardized not only the biggest banks on Wall Street but the stability of the financial system itself."
Jan. 31, 2007 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies - Jared Diamond. History. 425 pages.
"In this 'artful, informative, and delightful' book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world."
Jul. 11, 2006 The Wal-Mart Effect - Charles Fishman. Business Profile. 259 pages.
"Fishman takes us inside the carefully guarded workings of the "Wal-Mart ecosystem," where management surrender their lives and families, working 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a near-holy quest toward the never-ending goal of lower prices."
Mar. 8, 2006 The Undercover Economist - Tim Harford. Economics. 252 pages.
"The Undercover Economist is for anyone who's wondered why the gap between rich and poor nations is so great, or why he can't seem to find a decent second-hand car, or how to outwit Starbucks... Showing us the world through the eyes of an economist, Tim Harford reveals that everyday events are intricate games of negotiations, contests of strength, and battles of wits. "
Feb. 14, 2006 The Perfect Store: Inside eBay - Adam Cohen. Business Profile. 319 pages.
"The brief but startling history of eBay."
Nov. 11, 2005 The Intelligent Investor - Benjamin Graham. Finance. 578 pages.
"The greatest investment advisor of the twentieth century, Benjamin Graham taught and inspired people worldwide. Graham's philosophy of "value investing" -- which shields investors from substantial error and teaches them to develop long-term strategies -- has made The Intelligent Investor the stock market bible ever since its original publication in 1949."
Oct. 6, 2005 The Birth of Plenty: How the Prosperity of the Modern World Was Created - William Bernstein. Economic History. 386 pages.
"Not long after 1820, prosperity began flowing in an ever-increasing torrent; with each successive generation, the life of the son became observably more comfortable, informed, and predictable than that of the father. This book examines the nature, causes, and consequences of this transformation."
Sep. 5, 2005 The Denial of Death - Ernest Becker. Psychology/Philosophy. 285 pages.
"The culmination of a life's work, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the 'why' of human existence. In bold contrast to the predominant Freudian school of thought, Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie--man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality."
Aug. 19, 2005 Irrational Exuberance (2nd ed.) - Robert Shiller. Economics. 230 pages.
"Robert J. Shiller, a respected expert on market volatility, offers an unconventional interpretation of recent U.S. stock market highs and shows that Alan Greenspan's term "irrational exuberance" is a good description of the mood behind the market."
Jun. 9, 2005 Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse - Steve Bogira. Journalism/Social Affairs. 416 pages.
"A wonderfully vivid portrait of a criminal courtroom in the nation's busiest courthouse, and of the cops and robbers, lawyers, judges, and assorted creatures of the law who arrive there."
Nov. 18, 2004 Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954 - Piero Gleijeses. Political History. 394 pages.
"This study analyzes the history and downfall of what seems in retrospect to have been Guatemala's best government, the short-lived regime of Jacobo Arbenz, overthrown in 1954, by a CIA-orchestrated coup."
Jul. 24, 2004 An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963 - Robert Dallek. Biography. 711 pages.
"An Unfinished Life is the first major, single-volume life of John F. Kennedy to be written by a historian in nearly four decades, drawing upon previously unavailable material and never-before-opened archives to tell Kennedy's story."
Apr. 13, 2004 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Fiction. 422 pages.
"The story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendia family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind."
Mar. 18, 2004 The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City - Jennifer Toth. Journalism. 256 pages.
"Toth's firsthand account of the sad, bizarre subculture of people who live in New York's abandoned subway tunnels and sewage lines."
Mar. 14, 2004 1984 - George Orwell. Fiction. 267 pages.
"The great modern classic of 'Negative Utopia' - the gray world dominated by Big Brother and his vast network of agents suffocating freedom in a totalitarian world."
Mar. 23, 2004 Machiavelli: Selected Political Writings - David Wootton (Editor, Translator). Political Analysis. 217 pages.
"Described as a practical rule-book for the diplomat and a handbook of evil, this work provides an uncompromising picture of the true nature of power."
Abandoned The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet - David Kahn. History. 984 pages.
"The magnificent, unrivaled history of codes and ciphers -- how they're made, how they're broken, and the many and fascinating roles they've played since the dawn of civilization in war, business, diplomacy, and espionage."
Feb. 12, 2004 Ideas and Opinions - Albert Enstein. Personal Writings. 377 pages.
"Ideas and Opinions is the most definitive collection of Albert Einstein's popular writings, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. The selections cover works from his earliest days up to his death in 1955."
Jan. 27, 2004 Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72 - Hunter S. Thompson. Subjective Journalism. 505 pages.
"When a jackrabbit gets addicted to road-running, it is only a matter of time before he gets smashed--and when a journalist turns into a politics junkie he will sooner or later start raving and babbling in print about things that only a person who has Been There can possibly understand."
Jan. 18, 2004 The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance - Ron Chernow. History. 720 pages.
"Chernow vividly portrays the influence that the Morgan banks have had on the history of the Western economy since the late 18th century."
Dec. 12, 2003 Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World - Margaret MacMillan. History. 494 pages.
For six months in 1919, after the end of "the war to end all wars", the Big Three met in Paris to shape a lasting peace. Margaret MacMillan gives a dramatic and intimate view of those fateful days, which saw new political entities born out of the ruins of bankrupt empires, and the borders of the modern world redrawn.
Nov. 24, 2003 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent - Robert Caro. Biography. 439 pages.
Second volume in a four volume biography. "No brief review does justice to the drama of the story Caro is telling, which is nothing less than how present-day politics was born."
Oct. 29, 2003 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle - Haruki Murakami. Fiction. 607 pages.
"Toru Okada, the protagonist of this Japanese bildungsroman, is an utterly normal man to whom utterly abnormal things happen."
Oct. 20, 2003 The Cold War: A History - Martin Walker. History. 357 pages.
"A compact, provocative, and elegantly wrought history of the formative political event of our era."
Oct. 2, 2003 The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War (1890-1914) - Barbara W. Tuchman. History. 463 pages.
"The fateful quarter-century leading up to the World War I was a time when the world of Privilege still existed in Olympian luxury and the world of Protest was 'heaving in its pain, its power, and its hate.' With an artist's selectivity, Tuchman bings to vivid life the people, places, and events that shaped the years leading up to the Great War."
Sep. 3, 2003 The Battle for God: a History of Fundamentalism - Karen Armstrong. History. 371 pages.
"Blending history, sociology, and spirituality, and writing with a deep understanding of human spirituality, Karen Armstrong provides a compelling and compassionate study of a radical form of religious expression that is critically shaping the course of world history."
Aug. 11, 2003 The First World War - John Keegan. History. 427 pages.
"The definitive story of the Great War, the war that created the modern world, unleashing the terrors of mechanized warfare and mass death, and establishing the political fault lines that imperil European stability to this day."
June 14, 2003 Les Misérables - Victor Hugo. Fiction. 1,463 pages.
"Sensational, dramatic and passionate, Les Misérables is not only superb adventure but a powerful social document. The story of Jean-Valjean, a convict struggling to escape his past, became a gospel of the poor and oppressed. "
May 7, 2003 One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy 1958-1964 - Aleksandr Fursenko, Timothy Naftali. Political History. 355 pages.
"One of the best pieces of research to have emerged as a result of the opening of the Russian archives, a subtle, nuanced, and vivid history of the Cuban missile crisis."
May 2, 2003 Life of Pi - Yann Martel. Fiction. 354 pages.
"Pi Patel, a young man from India, tells how he was shipwrecked and stranded in a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger for 227 days. This outlandish story is only the core of a deceptively complex three-part novel about, ultimately, memory as a narrative and about how we choose truths."
Apr. 17, 2003 The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka. Fiction (Novella). 60 pages.
"The story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home."
Feb. 18, 2003 The Satanic Verses - Salman Rushdie. Fiction. 576 pages.
"[A story] about migration, metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death, London and Bombay."
Jan. 24, 2003 From Beiruit to Jerusalem - Thomas L. Friedman. Journalism/Middle East Affairs. 541 pages.
"Friedman, who twice garnered the Pulitzer as a New York Times correspondent in Lebanon and Israel, further delineates the two countries in this provocative, absorbing memoir cum political and social analysis"
Jan. 08, 2003 The First Salute - Barbara W. Tuchman. History. 458 pages.
"Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize and bestselling author Barbara W. Tuchman analyzes the American Revolution in a brilliantly original way, placing the war in the historical context of the centuries-long conflicts between England and both France and Holland."
Dec. 28, 2002 The Shape-Changer's Wife - Sharon Shinn. Fantasy. 224 pages.
"Caught up in his ambitions of becoming a master wizard, young Aubrey travels to a faraway land in search of the great shape-changer Glyrenden, from whom Aubrey hopes to discover the secret of lost spells and arcane magic."
Dec. 27, 2002 The Wizards of Armageddon - Fred Kaplan, Martin J. Sherwin. History/Political Science (nuclear policy). 460 pages.
"This is the untold story of the small group of men who have devised the plans and shaped the policies on how to use the Bomb. The book explores the secret world of these strategists and the nuclear age and brings to light a chapter in American political and military history never before revealed."
Nov. 21, 2002 Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga - Hunter S. Thompson. Subjective Journalism. 273 pages.
"Gonzo journalist and literary roustabout Hunter S. Thompson flies with the angels--Hell's Angels, that is. He's lived with them, he knows them and their machines, he speaks their langauge,and he reports it back to the world with all the fearsome force of a souped-up cyclone burning rubber."
Nov. 14, 2002 Perpetual War for Perpetural Peace - Robert A. Divine. Political Science. 124 pages.
"Americans consider themselves a peaceful people. Yet every generation since colonial times has taken part in war. Why? ... Distinguished diplomatic historian Robert A. Divine considers these questions in a thoughtful retrospective of the wars of the twentieth century."
Nov. 10, 2002 The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood. Fiction. 521 pages.
"Margaret Atwood's latest Booker Prize-winning novel is a mystery nested within a love story, nested within a century-spanning exploration of a woman's life."
Oct. 19, 2002 The Gulag Archipelago (Parts I and II) - Aleksandr Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (translator: Thomas P. Whitney). Subjective History. 672 pages.
"Drawing on his own incarceration and exile, as well as on evidence from more than 200 fellow prisoners and Soviet archives, Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn reveals the entire apparatus of Soviet repression -- the state within the state that ruled all-powerfully."
Aug. 30, 2002 The Telling - Ursula K. Le Guin. Science Fiction. 246 pages.
"Le Guin's latest addition to her "Hainish" cycle (e.g., Rocannon's World) continues her exploration of human culture and society through the filter of the far future."
Aug. 28, 2002 A Peoples' Tragedy: The Russian Revolution: 1891-1924 - Orlando Figes. History. 960 pages.
"Vast in scope, exhaustive in original research, written with passion, narrative skill, and human sympathy, A People's Tragedy is a profound account of the Russian Revolution for a new generation."