Previous Discussions at Books and Cooks West
Here you'll find a list of the books that we've read at Books and Cooks West. An explanation of the teacup rating system is also given below.
Books we've read/will read
Clicking on the titles below will take you to a page with meeting times, information and reviews about the book, and various other tidbits that we've found.
- October 2006 -- 1491:
New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
by Charles C. Mann
- September 2006 --
The Human Factor: Revolutionizing the Way People Live with Technology
by Kim Vincente.
- August 2006 -- Journey
of the Jahidist: Inside Muslim Militancy
by Fawaz A. Gerges.
- July 2006 -- Moral Politics by George Lakoff. Rating: 3.5 cups of tea.
- June 2006 -- Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing by Jane Margolis and Allan Fisher. Rating: 3.6 cups of tea.
- May 2006 -- The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- April 2006 -- What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America by Thomas Frank. Rating: 3.5 cups of tea.
- February 2006 -- The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki. Rating: 4.1 cups of tea.
- January 2006 -- Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground by Robert D. Kaplan. Rating: 2.75 cups of tea.
- November 2005 -- Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- October 2005 -- Marriage, a History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- September 2005 -- Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Rating: 2.8 cups of tea.
- July 2005 -- Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond. Rating: 4.2 cups of tea.
- June 2005 -- Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell. Rating: 3.5 cups of tea.
- May 2005 -- American Dream: Three Women, Ten Kids, and a Nation's Drive to End Welfare by Jason DeParle. Rating: 3.75 cups of tea.
- April 2005 -- The Wages of Guilt: Memories of War in Germany and Japan by Ian Buruma. Rating: 2.9 cups of tea.
- February 2005 -- The Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn by Diane Ravitch. Rating: 3.3 cups of tea.
- January 2005 -- The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith by Alan Wolfe. Rating: 3.5 cups of tea.
- December 2004 -- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon. Rating: 4.6 cups of tea.
- November 2004 -- The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature by Stephen Pinker. Rating: 3.9 cups of tea.
- October 2004 -- The Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime by William Langewiesche. Rating: 3.4 cups of tea.
- August 2004 -- The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined Women by Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels. Rating: 2.2 cups of tea.
- June 2004 -- Blood of the Liberals by George Packer. Rating: 3.4 cups of tea.
- May 2004 -- Meaning, Medicine and the 'Placebo Effect' by Daniel E. Moerman. Rating: 4.2 cups of tea.
- April 2004 -- Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Rating: 2.5 cups of tea.
- March 2004 -- Nature Via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- January 2004 -- A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis by David Rieff. Rating: 2.7 cups of tea.
- November 2003 -- Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World by Bruce Schneier. Rating: 4.5 cups of tea.
- October 2003 -- Murder and the Reasonable Man: Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom by Cynthia Lee. Rating: 2.75 cups of tea.
- September 2003 -- Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi. Rating: 3.9 cups of tea.
- August 2003 -- The Geography of Thought: How Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard Nisbett. Rating: 3.7 cups of tea.
- July 2003 -- The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat by Roger Scruton. Rating: 2.6 cups of tea.
- May 2003 -- Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by by Peter L. Bernstein. Rating: 2.6 cups of tea.
- March 2003 -- Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande. Rating: 4.4 cups of tea.
- February 2003 -- Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam. Rating: 4.5 cups of tea.
- January 2003 -- The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead. Rating: 3.75 cups of tea.
- December 2002 -- The World We're In by Will Hutton. Rating: 3 cups of tea.
- November 2002 -- Afraid of the Dark: What Whites and Blacks Need to Know About Each Other by Jim Myers. Rating: 3.2 cups of tea.
- October 2002 -- Class Dismissed: A Year in the Life of an American High School: A Glimpse into the Heart of a Nation by Meredith Maran. Rating: 3.7 cups of tea.
- September 2002 -- Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. Rating: 4.1 cups of tea.
- August 2002 -- Genome by Matt Ridley and He, She, and It by Marge Piercy. Rating (for both): 4.1 cups of tea.
- June 2002 -- Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by Edward O. Wilson. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- May 2002 -- Granta 77: What We Think of America. Rating: 3 cups of tea.
- April 2002 -- Crossings: A White Man's Journey into Black America by Walt Harrison. Rating: 3.3 cups of tea.
- March 2002 -- Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations by Michael Walzer. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
- January 2002 -- Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner. Rating: 2.9 cups of tea.
- December 2001 -- Stiffed by Susan Faludi. Rating: 4.25 cups of tea.
- November 2001 -- Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Rating: 4.4 cups of tea.
- October 2001 -- That's Not What We Meant to Do by Stephen M. Gillon. Rating: 3.25 cups of tea.
- September 2001 -- Words and Rules by Stephen Pinker. Rating: 3.4 cups of tea.
- August 2001 -- The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. Rating: 3.25 cups of tea.
- June 2001 -- A History of the Wife by Marilyn Yalom. Rating: 3.3 cups of tea.
- Cancelled -- A Discussion of Guns and Gun Control
- March 2001 -- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Rating: 2.17 cups of tea.
- January 2001 -- It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States by Gary Wolfe Marks and Seymour Martin Lipset. Rating: 3.5 cups of tea.
- December 2000 -- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Rating: 3.9 cups of tea.
- October 2000 -- The Gender Knot by Allan G. Johnson. Rating: 3.75 cups of tea.
- September 2000 -- The Spirit in the Gene by Reg Morrison, Lynn Margulis. Rating: 2.12 cups of tea.
- August 2000 -- The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong. Rating: 3.00 cups of tea.
- June 2000 -- The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay. Rating: 4.33 cups of tea.
- May 2000 -- The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy. Rating: 4.17 cups of tea.
- February 2000 -- The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels. Rating: 3.67 cups of tea.
- January 2000 -- The Walking People by Paula Underwood. Rating: 4 cups of tea.
The Books and Cooks teacup rating system:
5 cups of tea -- Great! everyone should read this book!
4 cups of tea -- I really liked it, definitely worth reading.
3 cups of tea -- An ok read, but it didn't really stick with me.
2 cups of tea -- I didn't like this, not recommended.
1 cup of tea -- Awful, a complete waste of time.