What to Read Now. And Why


THE MISSISSIPPI BOOKS
When Twain turned his attention to the river that ran by his hometown, what was just run-of-the-mill genius in his other books took on a special Krypton-proof dazzle. Think of these as one book, or three ways of telling the same, very American, very tragicomic story.

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AMONG THE THUGS
A philosophical look at the rise of soccer hooliganism in Britain that also examines the way apparently meaningless violence has its roots in cultural class inequities.

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BROOKLYN
Captures the experience of homesickness and, in deceptively unadorned prose, builds to a heart-wrenching conclusion about the impossibility of getting everything you want.

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FRANKENSTEIN
In an age of bioengineering, Shelley's novel about a scientist and his creation is especially unsettling-and its message about the necessity of companionship and sympathy is especially urgent.

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BAD MOTHER
Waldman admits that she's an oversharer-which happens to be a great trait for a memoirist. Her essays about motherhood are hilarious, heartbreaking, and edgy. In our child-centric world, Waldman got slammed for saying she loves her husband more than her kids. What's wrong with that?

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GUESTS OF THE AYATOLLAH
On one level, a page-turner on the 1979 hostage crisis by the author of Black Hawk Down. Beyond that, it is a brilliant introduction to a group of young militant (and often ill-informed) Iranian Islamists who are now the militant (and often ill-informed) leaders of Iran.

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WHITTAKER CHAMBERS
Whittaker Chambers (along with his friend William F. Buckley Jr.) was a crucial avatar of the modern right. The forces are all here, embodied to one degree or another within Chambers himself: religion, a tragic sensibility, a fear of centralized control, and a Manichaean view of good versus evil.

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MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN
"To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world," says the protagonist of Rushdie's freewheeling, fanciful allegory of modern India. Published in 1981, Midnight's Children delivers just the opposite: the world through the life of a young man.

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AMERICAN PROMETHEUS
J. Robert Oppenheimer gave us (and the rest of the world) the atomic bomb, and with it, he found himself at the front of the line over the biggest military tug-of-war of the 20th century-and beyond.

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THE LOST
A memoir chronicling the author's search for the fates of six relatives killed in the Holocaust. Mendelsohn explores memory-what we know, what we can learn, and what we must remember-in ways that are true to both the living and the dead.

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GILEAD
A book for the age of Obama: a letter from a father to a son about fathers and sons-and religion, race relations, and the possibility that the arc of the universe bends toward justice, after all.

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PICTURES AT A REVOLUTION
The 1967 Oscar race pitted old Hollywood (Dr. Doolittle) against a new generation (Bonnie and Clyde). After that, Hollywood would never be the same.

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KIM
A boy orphaned in war becomes a junior spy for the English in Pakistan and Central Asia. Kipling's portrait of a quagmire is eerily contemporary.

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WALKING WITH THE WIND
Lewis's memoir of Freedom Rides, SNCC, Bloody Sunday, the March on Washington, life in Congress, and more. Of all the symbolic moments at President Obama's inauguration, nothing was richer than his embrace of Lewis.

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THE LINE OF BEAUTY
An elegiac and sumptuous story about nostalgia, longing, and regret as AIDS devastated a generation-in case anyone has forgotten those dark days.

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THE DARK IS RISING
Forget Harry Potter. In the tradition of Tolkien, this series of novels about five British children and one mysterious adult battling evil shows how powerful a child's fantasy story can be.

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PERSEPOLIS
Published in 2000, Satrapi's graphic novel about her freewheeling youth in pre-revolutionary Iran quickly became an international hit. Today it's also a glimpse into a country's long, unfinished march toward freedom.

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UNDERWORLD
This sprawling novel traces the currents of anxiety and fear running through the Cold War. The book's first section is as good as fiction gets.

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WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE
Even innocent bystanders in the culture wars should understand the evidence that supports evolution, and this book by a leading evolutionary biologist presents it clearly but not pedantically.

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AMERICAN PASTORAL
The '60s may be over, but the times still tremble with their shock waves. Terrorism, social upheaval, rage-it's all there, in Seymour (Swede) Levov's ordinary life

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Member Comments

  • Posted By: jmatute @ 10/27/2009 12:27:42 PM

    I have taken the list to heart to seriously follow a plan to read more diverse books than I have had in the past. I am amused and somewhat taken aback by some folks who have commented here that the list is "too liberal", or that his book or that book (particularly religious themes) have been left off. I think it is short-sighted that readers think that these 50 books is all you have to know to understand life. That is a very shallow view. To me, this list is like a solid beginning when one goes to college to obtain a good solid liberal arts education. You learn to acquire the critical skills to be able to continue your life by continuing to read and self-educate. I have now taken the list and am finished with or reading five of them, and intend to continue. I hope to be able to read about subject matter that will allow me to be curious enough to read other related books of that subject or era and do so with a an educated platform. Reading is knowledge. Reading 50 books is but a drop in the bucket. As you get to know your library, 50 books here, and 50 books there, and 50 more books, and then 50 more,,,,,pretty soon you just might be able to function as a literate human being. When you get to that stage, you can understand why Fox News is nothing more than a comic page in the Penny Saver. Turn off the tube now and then and read a good book. Suggestions are available if you cannot think of a book to read.

  • Posted By: jps-mm @ 10/12/2009 12:52:19 PM

    Nobel Prize for Herta Müller - Another broad hint for Germany

    The Merkle has seriously abused the trust that the voters put in her four years ago in 2005. The most severe violation of human rights continues.
    It???s even worse: The human rights situation has drastically deteriorated since she came into power.

    A political system is injust whenever the government tolerantes or even approves the violation of human rights, the prosecutor???s office and courts systematically prolong and hamper penal and disciplinary Sanktion against the perpetrators of human right violations and parliament bodies (and public media) keeps silent about most severe human right violations and its perpetrators. In Germany, the human right situation ressembles the situation iof an injust political system.

    The message of the Nobel Prize awarded to Herta Müller is the following: Human rights are violated in Germany.

  • Posted By: Pietr @ 09/06/2009 12:42:17 PM

    I am with you, Cynthia Rose, 100%.

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