Reading is one of my favorite hobbies. Here are reviews of some books
that I've read over the last few years, divided into some rough
categories.
Current events
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the
Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
by James Bamford
The Clinton
Wars by Sidney
Blumenthal
My Life by Bill Clinton
Winning
Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire
by Wesley Clark
All
Enemies: Inside America’s War
of Terror
by Richard Clarke
What's
the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of
America by Thomas Frank
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them
by Al Franken
War in a Time
of Peace: Bush, Clinton,
and the Generals by David Halberstam
Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush’s
America
by Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose
The Emerging
Democratic Majority by
John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira
The Great
Unraveling: Losing Our
Way in the New Century
by Paul Krugman
Don't
Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate - The
Essential Guide for Progressives
by George Lakoff
Moral
Politics: How Liberals and Conservative Think
by George Lakoff
The
Outlaw Sea: A World of Freedom, Chaos, and Crime
by William Langewiesche
Reefer Madness:
Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor
in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser
Beyond
Fear: Thinking Sensibly
about Security in an Uncertain World by Bruce Schneier
Weapons of Mass
Deception: The Uses of
Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber
The
Language Police: How Pressure Groups Restrict What Students Learn
by Diane Ravitch
Nothing
Sacred: Women Respond to
Religious Fundamentalism and Terror
edited by Betsy Reed
History
Only
Yesterday: An Informal
History of the 1920's by Frederick Lewis Allen
The
Civilization of the Middle Ages
by Norman Cantor
Early
Medieval Europe 300-1000
by Roger Collins
The
Beginnings of Rome: Italy and
Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000-264 BC)
by T. J. Cornell
Supreme Command:
Soldiers, Statesmen, and
Leadership in Wartime by Eliot Cohen
A Peace to End All
Peace: The Fall of the
Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East
by David Fromkin
A History of the
Twentieth Century,
Volume 3: 1952-1999 by Martin Gilbert
History of Rome
by Michael Grant
The Twelve Caesars
by Michael Grant
Rubicon: The Last Years
of the Roman Republic by Tom Holland
A History of the Arab
Peoples by Albert
Hourani
The
Penguin Atlas of World History Volume 1: From the Beginning to the
Eve of the French Revolution
by Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann
The Cambridge
Illustrated History of
Germany by Martin Kitchen
The Wealth and
Poverty of Nations: Why Some
Are So Rich and Some So Poor by David Landes
The Fifty-Year
Wound: The True Price of
American's Cold War Victory
by Derek Leebaert
A
Concise History of the Crusades
by Thomas Madden
The
Roman Empire Divided: 400 - 700
by John Moorhead
A
Short History of Byzantium
by John Julius Norwich
Occupation: The
Ordeal of France,
1940-1944 by Ian Ousby
Blood of
the Liberals by George
Packer
Not Like
Us: How Europeans Have
Loved, Hated and Transformed American
Culture Since World War II by Richard Pells
"A Problem
from Hell": America and the
Age of Genocide
by Samantha Power
Citizens: A
Chronicle of the French
Revolution by Simon Schama
Napoleon Bonaparte
by Alan Schom
The
Hundred Years War by Desmond Seward
And
the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
by Randy Shilts
A Different
Mirror: A History of
Multicultural America by Ronald Takaki
A
Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
by Barbara Tuchman
Fiction
Emma by
Jane Austen
Pride and
Prejudice by Jane Austen
The
Warrior's Apprentice by
Lois McMaster Bujold
About the
Author by John Colapinto
Jackdaws by
Ken Follett
The Brethren
by John Grisham
Snow
Falling on Cedars
by David Guterson
The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
by Mark Haddon
Daisy Miller
by Henry James
The Prince
by R. M. Koster
Life
of Pi by Yann Martel
He, She, and It
by Marge Piercy
Secret
Love
by Bart Schneider
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
King
Lear
by William Shakespeare
A
Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
Moo by Jane
Smiley
Quicksilver
by Neal Stephenson
The Bug: A Novel
by Ellen Ullman
All the King's Men
by Robert Penn Warren
The
Intuitionist
by Colson Whitehead
The Importance
of Being Earnest and
Other Plays by Oscar Wilde
Social science
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of
Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
Peopleware:
Productive Projects and
Teams by Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister
The Mommy Myth by Susan Douglas and
Meredith Michaels
Crossings: A
White Man's Journey into
Black America by Walt Harrington
War Is a Force that
Gives Us Meaning by
Chris Hedges
The World
We're In by Will
Hutton
Murder and
the Reasonable Man:
Passion and Fear in the Criminal Courtroom by Cynthia Lee
Limbo:
Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams
by Alfred Lubrano
Class Dismissed: A Year In The Life Of An
American High School, A Glimpse Into The Heart Of A Nation by
Meredith Maran
Afraid of the Dark:
What Whites and Blacks
Need to Know About Each Other by Jim Myers
Reading
Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in
Books by Azar Nafisi
Bowling
Alone: The Collapse and
Revival of American Community by Robert Putnam
A Bed for the
Night: Humanitarianism
in Crisis
by David Rieff
Race: How Blacks and
Whites Think and Feel
About the American Obsession by Studs Terkel
The
Good Women of China
by Xinran
Psychology
and evolutionary biology
Abnormal
Psychology
by Gerald Davison and John Neale
Why is Sex Fun?
by Jared Diamond
Blood Rites:
Origins and History of the
Passions of War by Barbara Ehrenreich
The Hearts of
Men:
American Dreams and
the Flight from Commitment by Barbara Ehrenreich
Stiffed: The
Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi
The
Scientist in the Crib: What Early Learning Tells Us About the Mind
by Alison Gopnik, Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Patricia K. Kuhl
Mother Nature:
Maternal Instincts and How
They Shape the Human Species by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy
Killing
Monsters: Why Children Need
Fantasy, Super Heroes, and Make-Believe Violence
by Gerard Jones
Harmful to Minors:
The Perils of
Protecting Children from Sex by Judith Levine
The
Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
by Stephen Pinker
How the
Mind Works by Stephen
Pinker
The
Geography of Thought: How
Asians and Westerners Think Differently...and Why by Richard
Nisbett
The Way We Talk Now
by Geoffrey Nunberg
Inevitable
Illusions: How Mistakes of
Reason Rule Our Minds by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
The
Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing: The Experience and Treatment of
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
by Judith Rapoport
The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
Philosophy, religion and culture
From Dawn To
Decadence: 1500 to the
Present, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun
Holy Terrors:
Thinking about Religion after
September 11
by Bruce Lincoln
The Metaphysical
Club: A Story of Ideas
in America by Louis Menand
The West and the
Rest: Globalization and
the Terrorist Threat by Roger Scruton
The
World's
Religions by
Huston
Smith
The
Modern Mind: An Intellectual
History of the 20th Century
by Peter Watson
Bad
Thoughts: A Guide to Clear Thinking
by James Whyte
Consilience:
The Unity of Knowledge
by Edward Wilson
The
Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith
by Alan Wolfe
Science and technology
The Weblog Handbook by Rebecca
Blood
The Next Fifty Years:
Science in the First Half of the Twenty-First Century edited by
John Brockman
Napoleon's
Buttons: How 17 Molecules Changed History
by Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson
The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep
Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a
Good Night's Sleep by William Dement and Christophter Vaughan
Complications: A Surgeon's
Notes on an Imperfect Science by Atul Gawande
Isaac Newton by James Gleick
The River: A Journey
to the Source of HIV
and AIDS by Edward Hooper
Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The
Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety by Wendy Kaminer
The
(mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin, and Reward
by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson
Meaning, Medicine, and the ‘Placebo Effect’
by Daniel Moerman
The
Trouble With Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the
Human Predicament
by Robert Sapolsky
Genome: The
Autobiography of a Species in
23 Chapters by Matt Ridley
Nature via Nurture:
Genes, Experience,
& What Makes Us Human by Matt Ridley
Stiff:
The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
by Mary Roach
The Myth of the
Paperless Office by
Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper
Why Things Bite
Back: Technology and the
Revenge of Unintended Consequences by Edward Tenner
Prime Mover: A Natural History of
Muscle by Steven Vogel
