Ben's bookshelf: all en-US Sun, 23 Mar 2025 19:09:33 -0700 60 Ben's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle]]> 40033006
There are eight days, and eight witnesses for you to inhabit.

We will only let you escape once you tell us the name of the killer.

Understood? Then let's begin . . .

Evelyn Hardcastle will die. Every day until Aiden Bishop can identify her killer and break the cycle. But every time the day begins again, Aiden wakes up in the body of a different guest. And some of his hosts are more helpful than others . . .

The most inventive debut of the year twists together a mystery of such unexpected creativity it will leave listeners guessing until the very last second.]]> 482 Stuart Turton Ben 0 3.78 2018 The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
author: Stuart Turton
name: Ben
average rating: 3.78
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/23
date added: 2025/03/23
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]]> <![CDATA[The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany]]> 50853153 National Book Award Winner: The definitive account of Nazi Germany and “one of the most important works of history of our time� (The New York Times).
Ěý
When the Third Reich fell, it fell swiftly. The Nazis had little time to destroy their memos, their letters, or their diaries. William L.ĚýShirer’s sweeping account of the Third Reich uses these unique sources, combined with his experience living in Germany as an international correspondent throughout the war.
Ěý
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich earned Shirer a National Book Award and continues to be recognized as one of the most important and authoritative books about the Third Reich and Nazi Germany ever written. The diaries of propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, as well as evidence and other testimony gained at the Nuremberg Trials, could not have found more artful hands.
Ěý
Shirer gives a clear, detailed, and well-documented account of how it was that Adolf Hitler almost succeeded in conquering the world. With millions of copies in print, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a chilling and illuminating portrait of mankind’s darkest hours.
Ěý
“A monumental work.â€� —Theodore H.ĚýWhite]]> 1280 William L. Shirer 0795316992 Ben 0 4.62 1960 The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany
author: William L. Shirer
name: Ben
average rating: 4.62
book published: 1960
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/15
date added: 2025/03/15
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]]> The Underground Railroad 54102715
Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. Life is hell for all the slaves, but especially bad for Cora; an outcast even among her fellow Africans, she is coming into womanhood—where even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a recent arrival from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they decide to take a terrifying risk and escape. Matters do not go as planned—Cora kills a young white boy who tries to capture her. Though they manage to find a station and head north, they are being hunted.

In Whitehead’s ingenious conception, the Underground Railroad is no mere metaphor—engineers and conductors operate a secret network of tracks and tunnels beneath the Southern soil. Cora and Caesar’s first stop is South Carolina, in a city that initially seems like a haven. But the city’s placid surface masks an insidious scheme designed for its black denizens. And even worse: Ridgeway, the relentless slave catcher, is close on their heels. Forced to flee again, Cora embarks on a harrowing flight, state by state, seeking true freedom.

Like the protagonist of Gulliver’s Travels, Cora encounters different worlds at each stage of her journey—hers is an odyssey through time as well as space. As Whitehead brilliantly re-creates the unique terrors for black people in the pre–Civil War era, his narrative seamlessly weaves the saga of America from the brutal importation of Africans to the unfulfilled promises of the present day. The Underground Railroad is at once a kinetic adventure tale of one woman’s ferocious will to escape the horrors of bondage and a shattering, powerful meditation on the history we all share.]]> 306 Colson Whitehead Ben 5 4.35 2016 The Underground Railroad
author: Colson Whitehead
name: Ben
average rating: 4.35
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> Doctor Zhivago 9782059
First published in Italy in 1957 amid international controversy—the novel was banned in the Soviet Union until 1988, and Pasternak declined the Nobel Prize a year later under intense pressure from Soviet authorities—Doctor Zhivago is the story of the life and loves of a poet-physician during the turmoil of the Russian Revolution. Taking his family from Moscow to what he hopes will be shelter in the Ural Mountains, Zhivago finds himself instead embroiled in the battle between the Whites and the Reds. Set against this backdrop of cruelty and strife is Zhivago’s love for the tender and beautiful Lara: pursued, found, and lost again, Lara is the very embodiment of the pain and chaos of those cataclysmic times.

Stunningly rendered in the spirit of Pasternak’s original—resurrecting his style, rhythms, voicings, and tone—and including an introduction, textual annotations, and a translators� note, this edition of Doctor Zhivago is destined to become the definitive English translation of our time.]]> 706 Boris Pasternak 0307379965 Ben 4 3.85 1957 Doctor Zhivago
author: Boris Pasternak
name: Ben
average rating: 3.85
book published: 1957
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> A Confederacy of Dunces 18162555
Over the next several hundred pages, our hero stumbles from one adventure to the next. His stint as a hotdog vendor is less than successful, and he soon turns his employers at the Levy Pants Company on their heads. Ignatius's path through the working world is populated by marvelous secondary characters: the stripper Darlene and her talented cockatoo; the septuagenarian secretary Miss Trixie, whose desperate attempts to retire are constantly, comically thwarted; gay blade Dorian Greene; sinister Miss Lee, proprietor of the Night of Joy nightclub; and Myrna Minkoff, the girl Ignatius loves to hate. The many subplots that weave through A Confederacy of Dunces are as complicated as anything you'll find in a Dickens novel, and just as beautifully tied together in the end. But it is Ignatius--selfish, domineering, and deluded, tragic and comic and larger than life--who carries the story. He is a modern-day Quixote beset by giants of the modern age. His fragility cracks the shell of comic bluster, revealing a deep streak of melancholy beneath the antic humor. John Kennedy Toole committed suicide in 1969 and never saw the publication of his novel. Ignatius Reilly is what he left behind, a fitting memorial to a talented and tormented life. --Alix Wilber]]> 417 John Kennedy Toole Ben 3 3.86 1980 A Confederacy of Dunces
author: John Kennedy Toole
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1980
rating: 3
read at: 2024/12/14
date added: 2025/03/11
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]]> <![CDATA[Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2)]]> 7967
In the aftermath of his terrible war, Ender Wiggin disappeared, and a powerful voice arose: The Speaker for the Dead, who told the true story of the Bugger War.

Now, long years later, a second alien race has been discovered, but again the aliens' ways are strange and frightening...again, humans die. And it is only the Speaker for the Dead, who is also Ender Wiggin the Xenocide, who has the courage to confront the mystery...and the truth.

Speaker for the Dead, the second novel in Orson Scott Card's Ender Quintet, is the winner of the 1986 Nebula Award for Best Novel and the 1987 Hugo Award for Best Novel.]]> 382 Orson Scott Card 0812550757 Ben 0 to-read 4.10 1986 Speaker for the Dead (Ender's Saga, #2)
author: Orson Scott Card
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1) 77507 In his most ambitious project to date, award-winning author Kim Stanley Robinson utilizes years of research and cutting-edge science in the first of a trilogy chronicling the colonization of Mars.

For eons, sandstorms have swept the desolate landscape. For centuries, Mars has beckoned humans to conquer its hostile climate. Now, in 2026, a group of 100 colonists is about to fulfill that destiny.

John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers and Arkady Bogdanov lead a terraforming mission. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness. For others it offers an opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. For the genetic alchemists, it presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life and death. The colonists orbit giant satellite mirrors to reflect light to the surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth. Massive tunnels, kilometers deep, will be drilled into the mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves and friendships will form and fall to pieces—for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Brilliantly imagined, breathtaking in scope and ingenuity, Red Mars is an epic scientific saga, chronicling the next step in evolution, creating a world in its entirety. It shows a future, with both glory and tarnish, that awes with complexity and inspires with vision.]]> 572 Kim Stanley Robinson 0553560735 Ben 0 to-read 3.86 1992 Red Mars (Mars Trilogy, #1)
author: Kim Stanley Robinson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1992
rating: 0
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]]> The River We Remember 101160844 In 1958, a small Minnesota town is rocked by the murder of its most powerful citizen, pouring fresh fuel on old grievances in this dazzling standalone novel.

On Memorial Day, as the people of Jewel, Minnesota gather to remember and honor the sacrifice of so many sons in the wars of the past, the half-clothed body of wealthy landowner Jimmy Quinn is found floating in the Alabaster River, dead from a shotgun blast. Investigation of the murder falls to Sheriff Brody Dern, a highly decorated war hero who still carries the physical and emotional scars from his military service. Even before Dern has the results of the autopsy, vicious rumors begin to circulate that the killer must be Noah Bluestone, a Native American WWII veteran who has recently returned to Jewel with a Japanese wife. As suspicions and accusations mount and the town teeters on the edge of more violence, Dern struggles not only to find the truth of Quinn’s murder but also put to rest the demons from his own past.

Caught up in the torrent of anger that sweeps through Jewel are a war widow and her adolescent son, the intrepid publisher of the local newspaper, an aging deputy, and a crusading female lawyer, all of whom struggle with their own tragic histories and harbor secrets that Quinn’s death threatens to expose.

Both a complex, spellbinding mystery and a masterful portrait of midcentury American life, The River We Remember is an unflinching look at the wounds left by the wars we fight abroad and at home, a moving exploration of the ways in which we seek to heal, and a testament to the enduring power of the stories we tell about the places we call home.]]> 432 William Kent Krueger 198217921X Ben 0 to-read 4.19 2023 The River We Remember
author: William Kent Krueger
name: Ben
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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]]> Mansfield Park 45032 488 Jane Austen Ben 0 to-read 3.86 1814 Mansfield Park
author: Jane Austen
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1814
rating: 0
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]]> I, Robot (Robot, #0.1) 41804
I, ROBOT

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on perhaps its greatest adventure: the invention of the first positronic man. It was a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities—and unforeseen risks. For the scientists who invented the earliest robots weren't content that their creations should ' remain programmed helpers, companions, and semisentient worker-machines. And soon the robots themselves; aware of their own intelligence, power, and humanity, aren't either.

As humans and robots struggle to survive together—and sometimes against each other—on earth and in space, the future of both hangs in the balance. Human men and women confront robots gone mad, telepathic robots, robot politicians, and vast robotic intelligences that may already secretly control the world. And both are asking the same questions: What is human? And is humanity obsolete?

In l, Robot Isaac Asimov changes forever our perception of robots, and human beings and updates the timeless myth of man's dream to play god. with all its rewards—and terrors.
--front flap]]> 224 Isaac Asimov 0553803700 Ben 4 4.22 1950 I, Robot (Robot, #0.1)
author: Isaac Asimov
name: Ben
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1950
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West]]> 76401 The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down."

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold almost four million copies and has been translated into seventeen languages. For this elegant thirtieth-anniversary edition—published in both hardcover and paperback—Brown has contributed an incisive new preface.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows the great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them demoralized and defeated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was really won.]]> 509 Dee Brown 0805066691 Ben 5 4.24 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West
author: Dee Brown
name: Ben
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1970
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI]]> 29496076 Ěý
In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian Nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, the Osage rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions, and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, they began to be killed off. One Osage woman, Mollie Burkhart, watched as her family was murdered. Her older sister was shot. Her mother was then slowly poisoned. And it was just the beginning, as more Osage began to die under mysterious circumstances.

In this last remnant of the Wild West—where oilmen like J. P. Getty made their fortunes and where desperadoes such as Al Spencer, “the Phantom Terror,� roamed � virtually anyone who dared to investigate the killings were themselves murdered. As the death toll surpassed more than twenty-four Osage, the newly created F.B.I. took up the case, in what became one of the organization’s first major homicide investigations. But the bureau was then notoriously corrupt and initially bungled the case. Eventually the young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to try unravel the mystery. White put together an undercover team, including one of the only Native American agents in the bureau. They infiltrated the region, struggling to adopt the latest modern techniques of detection. Together with the Osage they began to expose one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history.

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann revisits a shocking series of crimes in which dozens of people were murdered in cold blood. The book is a masterpiece of narrative nonfiction, as each step in the investigation reveals a series of sinister secrets and reversals. But more than that, it is a searing indictment of the callousness and prejudice toward Native Americans that allowed the murderers to operate with impunity for so long. Killers of the Flower Moon is utterly riveting, but also emotionally devastating.]]> 359 David Grann 0385534256 Ben 5 4.12 2017 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI
author: David Grann
name: Ben
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2017
rating: 5
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]]> <![CDATA[The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World]]> 35425437 From the best-selling, award-winning author of 1491 and 1493--an incisive portrait of the two little-known twentieth-century scientists, Norman Borlaug and William Vogt, whose diametrically opposed views shaped our ideas about the environment, laying the groundwork for how people in the twenty-first century will choose to live in tomorrow's world.
In forty years, Earth's population will reach ten billion. Can our world support that? What kind of world will it be? Those answering these questions generally fall into two deeply divided groups--Wizards and Prophets, as Charles Mann calls them in this balanced, authoritative, nonpolemical new book. The Prophets, he explains, follow William Vogt, a founding environmentalist who believed that in using more than our planet has to give, our prosperity will lead us to ruin. Cut back! was his mantra. Otherwise everyone will lose! The Wizards are the heirs of Norman Borlaug, whose research, in effect, wrangled the world in service to our species to produce modern high-yield crops that then saved millions from starvation. Innovate! was Borlaug's cry. Only in that way can everyone win! Mann delves into these diverging viewpoints to assess the four great challenges humanity faces--food, water, energy, climate change--grounding each in historical context and weighing the options for the future. With our civilization on the line, the author's insightful analysis is an essential addition to the urgent conversation about how our children will fare on an increasingly crowded Earth.]]> 598 Charles C. Mann 0307961702 Ben 0 4.39 2018 The Wizard and the Prophet: Two Remarkable Scientists and Their Dueling Visions to Shape Tomorrow's World
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Ben
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2024/11/18
date added: 2024/11/18
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]]> <![CDATA[3001: The Final Odyssey (Space Odyssey #4)]]> 53087570 The mysteries of the monoliths are revealed in this inspired conclusion to the Hugo Award–winning Space Odyssey series—“there are marvels aplenty� (The New York Times).
Ěý
On an ill-fated mission to Jupiter in 2001, the mutinous supercomputer HAL sent crewmembers David Bowman and Frank Poole into the frozen void of space. Bowman’s strange transformation into a Star Child is traced through the novels 2010 and 2061. But now, a thousand years after his death, Frank Poole is brought back to life—and thrust into a world far more technically advanced than the one he left behind.
Ěý
Poole discovers a world of human minds interfacing directly with computers, genetically engineered dinosaur servants, and massive space elevators built around the equator. He also discovers an impending threat to humanity lurking within the enigmatic monoliths. To fight it, Poole must join forces with Bowman and HAL, now fused into one corporeal consciousness—and the only being with the power to thwart the monoliths� mysterious creators.
Ěý
â€�3001Ěýis not just a page-turner, plugged in to the great icons of HAL and the monoliths, but a book of wisdom too, pithy and provocative.â€� â€�New Scientist]]> 188 Arthur C. Clarke 0795324898 Ben 0 4.02 1999 3001: The Final Odyssey (Space Odyssey #4)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Ben
average rating: 4.02
book published: 1999
rating: 0
read at: 2024/06/26
date added: 2024/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[2061: Odyssey Three (Space Odyssey #3)]]> 53145152 This New York Times–bestselling chapter in the Hugo Award–winning Space Odyssey series is “intriguing and satisfyingĚý.Ěý.Ěý. the all-round best Odyssey so farâ€� (Kirkus Reviews).
Ěý
The third book in Clarke’s beloved Space Odyssey continues the story of Heywood Floyd, survivor of two previous encounters with the mysterious monoliths and the alien intelligences behind them. Floyd is chosen as one of a handful of celebrity guests to witness the first manned touchdown on the surface of Halley’s Comet on the privately-owned spaceship Universe.
Ěý
But on Jupiter’s moon Europa, scientists have spotted the sudden appearance of a single diamond the size of a mountain—a fragment of Jupiter’s core. When the spaceship Galaxy is hijacked and forced to crash into Europa’s ocean, the Universe is diverted from its original mission to rescue the crew.
Ěý
Now Heywood Floyd must once again survive an encounter with HAL, David Bowman, and the mysterious monolith-building race with its own inscrutable agenda to shape the destiny of the human race.]]> 218 Arthur C. Clarke 0795324863 Ben 0 4.12 1987 2061: Odyssey Three (Space Odyssey #3)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Ben
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at: 2024/04/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed]]> 20408500 In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilization


Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of fascinating historical-cultural narratives. Collapse moves from the Polynesian cultures on Easter Island to the flourishing American civilizations of the Anasazi and the Maya and finally to the doomed Viking colony on Greenland. Similar problems face us today and have already brought disaster to Rwanda and Haiti, even as China and Australia are trying to cope in innovative ways. Despite our own society’s apparently inexhaustible wealth and unrivaled political power, ominous warning signs have begun to emerge even in ecologically robust areas like Montana.


Brilliant, illuminating, and immensely absorbing, Collapse is destined to take its place as one of the essential books of our time, raising the urgent question: How can our world best avoid committing ecological suicide?


]]> 626 Jared Diamond 1101502002 Ben 0 4.05 2004 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
author: Jared Diamond
name: Ben
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2004
rating: 0
read at: 2024/03/27
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]]> Meditations 30659 Meditations of Marcus Aurelius offer a remarkable series of challenging spiritual reflections and exercises developed as the emperor struggled to understand himself and make sense of the universe. While the Meditations were composed to provide personal consolation and encouragement, Marcus Aurelius also created one of the greatest of all works of philosophy: a timeless collection that has been consulted and admired by statesmen, thinkers and readers throughout the centuries.]]> 254 Marcus Aurelius 0140449337 Ben 0 to-read 4.29 180 Meditations
author: Marcus Aurelius
name: Ben
average rating: 4.29
book published: 180
rating: 0
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date added: 2024/02/12
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]]> Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1) 6088007 Neuromancer is a cyberpunk, science fiction masterpiece—a classic that ranks with 1984 and Brave New World as one of the twentieth century’s most potent visions of the future.

The Matrix is a world within the world, a global consensus-hallucination, the representation of every byte of data in cyberspace...

Henry Dorsett Case was the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employees crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on an adventure that ups the ante on an entire genre of fiction.

The winner of the Hugo, Nebula, and Philip K. Dick Awards, Neuromancer was the first fully-realized glimpse of humankind’s digital future—a shocking vision that has challenged our assumptions about our technology and ourselves, reinvented the way we speak and think, and forever altered the landscape of our imaginations.]]> 288 William Gibson 110114646X Ben 0 3.94 1984 Neuromancer (Sprawl, #1)
author: William Gibson
name: Ben
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1984
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69]]> 49255 Nothing Like It in the World gives the account of an unprecedented feat of engineering, vision, and courage. It is the story of the men who built the transcontinental railroad—the investors who risked their businesses and money; the enlightened politicians who understood its importance; the engineers and surveyors who risked, and sometimes lost, their lives; and the Irish and Chinese immigrants, the defeated Confederate soldiers, and the other laborers who did the backbreaking and dangerous work on the tracks.

The U.S. government pitted two companies—the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railroads—against each other in a race for funding, encouraging speed over caution. Locomotives, rails, and spikes were shipped from the East through Panama or around South America to the West or lugged across the country to the Plains. In Ambrose's hands, this enterprise, with its huge expenditure of brainpower, muscle, and sweat, comes vibrantly to life.]]> 432 Stephen E. Ambrose 0743203178 Ben 0 3.97 2000 Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-69
author: Stephen E. Ambrose
name: Ben
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2000
rating: 0
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]]> Middlemarch 53529328 "Middlemarch", der berühmteste Roman von Mary Ann Evans, die unter dem männlichen Pseudonym George Eliot auftrat, um als schreibende Frau wahrgenommen zu werden, gilt bis heute zu Recht als Höhepunkt englischer Romankunst des 19. Jahrhunderts; seine Mischung aus Realismus, farbiger Personenzeichnung, psychologischer Einfühlung, naturwissenschaftlichem und philosophischem Interesse und historischem und sozialgeschichtlichem Bewusstsein ist unerreicht. Das Buch zeichnet ein lebhaftes Gemälde von den Skurrilitäten der englischen Provinz und ihrer Bewohner. Es ist mit scheinbar leichter Hand geschrieben, in einem Stil, den eine verhaltene, doch stets präsente elegante Ironie prägt, wie sie ähnlich vollendet in der englischen Literatur vielleicht am ehesten Jane Austen ein halbes Jahrhundert vor George Eliot zu Gebote stand. Für Virginia Woolf war es „das herrliche Buch" schlechthin.





Taking place in the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Middlemarch explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar: Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician: the passionate artist Will Ladislaw: and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein.]]> 801 George Eliot 1542024439 Ben 0 4.37 1872 Middlemarch
author: George Eliot
name: Ben
average rating: 4.37
book published: 1872
rating: 0
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]]> Nausea 55226501
Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation. His thoughts culminate in a pervasive, overpowering feeling of nausea which “spreads at the bottom of the viscous puddle, at the bottom of our time � the time of purple suspenders and broken chair seats; it is made of wide, soft instants, spreading at the edge, like an oil stain.�

Winner of the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature (though he declined to accept it), Jean-Paul Sartre � philosopher, critic, novelist, and dramatist � holds a position of singular eminence in the world of French letters. La Nausée, his first and best novel, is a landmark in Existential fiction and a key work of the twentieth century.]]> 211 Jean-Paul Sartre Ben 0 currently-reading 3.94 1938 Nausea
author: Jean-Paul Sartre
name: Ben
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1938
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/08/20
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]]> <![CDATA[The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West]]> 42201377
As part of the Treaty of Paris, in which Great Britain recognized the new United States of America, Britain ceded the land that comprised the immense Northwest Territory, a wilderness empire northwest of the Ohio River containing the future states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. A Massachusetts minister named Manasseh Cutler was instrumental in opening this vast territory to veterans of the Revolutionary War and their families for settlement. Included in the Northwest Ordinance were three remarkable conditions: freedom of religion, free universal education, and most importantly, the prohibition of slavery. In 1788 the first band of pioneers set out from New England for the Northwest Territory under the leadership of Revolutionary War veteran General Rufus Putnam. They settled in what is now Marietta on the banks of the Ohio River.

McCullough tells the story through five major characters: Cutler and Putnam; Cutler’s son Ephraim; and two other men, one a carpenter turned architect, and the other a physician who became a prominent pioneer in American science. They and their families created a town in a primeval wilderness, while coping with such frontier realities as floods, fires, wolves and bears, no roads or bridges, no guarantees of any sort, all the while negotiating a contentious and sometimes hostile relationship with the native people. Like so many of McCullough’s subjects, they let no obstacle deter or defeat them.]]> 330 David McCullough 1501168681 Ben 0 to-read 3.75 2019 The Pioneers: The Heroic Story of the Settlers Who Brought the American Ideal West
author: David McCullough
name: Ben
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier]]> 45546 592 Stephen E. Ambrose 074347788X Ben 0 to-read 4.21 1996 Undaunted Courage: The Pioneering First Mission to Explore America's Wild Frontier
author: Stephen E. Ambrose
name: Ben
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1996
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"]]> 2590136
In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.

Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.]]> 193 Zora Neale Hurston 0060921706 Ben 0 4.03 2018 Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: Ben
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2018
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]]> The Kite Runner 77203 371 Khaled Hosseini 159463193X Ben 5 4.34 2003 The Kite Runner
author: Khaled Hosseini
name: Ben
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2003
rating: 5
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date added: 2023/06/05
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]]> Great Expectations 35619412
With its indelible cast of characters, immersive epic narrative, and startling dramatic twists, Charles Dickens’s powerful classic continues to enthrall generations of new readers.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as Great Expectations, this edition of Great Expectations (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 498 Charles Dickens 1542097681 Ben 0 4.25 1861 Great Expectations
author: Charles Dickens
name: Ben
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1861
rating: 0
read at: 2023/04/02
date added: 2023/04/02
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]]> <![CDATA[Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States]]> 35829998 An account of all the new and surprising evidence now available for the beginnings of the earliest civilizations that contradict the standard narrative Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains, and governed by precursors of today’s states? Most people believe that plant and animal domestication allowed humans, finally, to settle down and form agricultural villages, towns, and states, which made possible civilization, law, public order, and a presumably secure way of living. But archaeological and historical evidence challenges this narrative. The first agrarian states, says James C. Scott, were born of accumulations of first fire, then plants, livestock, subjects of the state, captives, and finally women in the patriarchal family—all of which can be viewed as a way of gaining control over reproduction. Scott explores why we avoided sedentism and plow agriculture, the advantages of mobile subsistence, the unforeseeable disease epidemics arising from crowding plants, animals, and grain, and why all early states are based on millets and cereal grains and unfree labor. He also discusses the “barbarians� who long evaded state control, as a way of understanding continuing tension between states and nonsubject peoples.]]> 335 James C. Scott 0300231687 Ben 0 4.21 2017 Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
author: James C. Scott
name: Ben
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2017
rating: 0
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]]> Demon Copperhead 60194162 "Anyone will tell you the born of this world are marked from the get-out, win or lose."

Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, this is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father's good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. In a plot that never pauses for breath, relayed in his own unsparing voice, he braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses. Through all of it, he reckons with his own invisibility in a popular culture where even the superheroes have abandoned rural people in favor of cities.

Many generations ago, Charles Dickens wrote David Copperfield from his experience as a survivor of institutional poverty and its damages to children in his society. Those problems have yet to be solved in ours. Dickens is not a prerequisite for readers of this novel, but he provided its inspiration. In transposing a Victorian epic novel to the contemporary American South, Barbara Kingsolver enlists Dickens' anger and compassion, and above all, his faith in the transformative powers of a good story. Demon Copperhead speaks for a new generation of lost boys, and all those born into beautiful, cursed places they can't imagine leaving behind.]]> 560 Barbara Kingsolver 0063251922 Ben 0 to-read 4.46 2022 Demon Copperhead
author: Barbara Kingsolver
name: Ben
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2022
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]]> The Sound and the Fury 10975 366 William Faulkner Ben 0 to-read 3.86 1929 The Sound and the Fury
author: William Faulkner
name: Ben
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1929
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/03/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)]]> 52439531
To receive her inheritance, Avery must move into sprawling, secret passage-filled Hawthorne House, where every room bears the old man's touch -- and his love of puzzles, riddles, and codes. Unfortunately for Avery, Hawthorne House is also occupied by the family that Tobias Hawthorne just dispossessed. This includes the four Hawthorne grandsons: dangerous, magnetic, brilliant boys who grew up with every expectation that one day, they would inherit billions. Heir apparent Grayson Hawthorne is convinced that Avery must be a conwoman, and he's determined to take her down. His brother, Jameson, views her as their grandfather's last hurrah: a twisted riddle, a puzzle to be solved. Caught in a world of wealth and privilege, with danger around every turn, Avery will have to play the game herself just to survive.]]> 386 Jennifer Lynn Barnes 1368052401 Ben 0 to-read 4.13 2020 The Inheritance Games (The Inheritance Games, #1)
author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
name: Ben
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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]]> The Plague 11989
It tells the story from the point of view of a narrator of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. The narrator remains unknown until the start of the last chapter, chapter 5 of part 5. The novel presents a snapshot of life in Oran as seen through the author's distinctive absurdist point of view.

The book tells a gripping tale of human unrelieved horror, of survival and resilience, and of the ways in which humankind confronts death, The Plague is at once a masterfully crafted novel, eloquently understated and epic in scope, and a parable of ageless moral resonance, profoundly relevant to our times. In Oran, a coastal town in North Africa, the plague begins as a series of portents, unheeded by the people. It gradually becomes an omnipresent reality, obliterating all traces of the past and driving its victims to almost unearthly extremes of suffering, madness, and compassion.

The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label. The novel stresses the powerlessness of the individual characters to affect their destinies. The narrative tone is similar to Kafka's, especially in The Trial, whose individual sentences potentially have multiple meanings; the material often pointedly resonating as stark allegory of phenomenal consciousness and the human condition.]]> 308 Albert Camus Ben 0 to-read 4.05 1947 The Plague
author: Albert Camus
name: Ben
average rating: 4.05
book published: 1947
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]]> Metamorphoses 1715
In Metamophoses, Ovid brings together a dazzling array of mythological tales, ingeniously linked by the idea of transformation—often as a result of love or lust—where men and women find themselves magically changed into new and sometimes extraordinary beings. Beginning with the creation of the world and ending with the deification of Augustus, Ovid interweaves many of the best-known myths and legends of ancient Greece and Rome, including Daedalus and Icarus, Pyramus and Thisbe, Pygmalion, Perseus and Andromeda, and the fall of Troy. Erudite but light-hearted, dramatic and yet playful, Metamorphoses has influenced writers and artists throughout the centuries from Shakespeare and Titian to Picasso and Ted Hughes.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.]]> 723 Ovid 014044789X Ben 0 to-read 4.08 8 Metamorphoses
author: Ovid
name: Ben
average rating: 4.08
book published: 8
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World]]> 30962339 304 Paul E. Miller 1631466836 Ben 0 currently-reading 4.41 2009 A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World
author: Paul E. Miller
name: Ben
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2009
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/02/08
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]]> <![CDATA[The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)]]> 386162
Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years.

Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!]]> 193 Douglas Adams Ben 0 to-read 4.28 1979 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)
author: Douglas Adams
name: Ben
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1979
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)]]> 9969571 Librarian's note: An alternate cover edition can be found here

IN THE YEAR 2044, reality is an ugly place. The only time teenage Wade Watts really feels alive is when he's jacked into the virtual utopia known as the OASIS. Wade's devoted his life to studying the puzzles hidden within this world's digital confines, puzzles that are based on their creator's obsession with the pop culture of decades past and that promise massive power and fortune to whoever can unlock them.

But when Wade stumbles upon the first clue, he finds himself beset by players willing to kill to take this ultimate prize. The race is on, and if Wade's going to survive, he'll have to win—and confront the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.]]> 480 Ernest Cline 030788743X Ben 0 to-read 4.21 2011 Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)
author: Ernest Cline
name: Ben
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2023/01/18
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]]> <![CDATA[Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania]]> 22551730
On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era's great transatlantic "Greyhounds" and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship - the fastest then in service - could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game, and Walther Schwieger, the captain of Unterseeboot-20, was happy to oblige. Meanwhile, an ultra-secret British intelligence unit tracked Schwieger's U-boat, but told no one. As U-20 and the Lusitania made their way toward Liverpool, an array of forces both grand and achingly small - hubris, a chance fog, a closely guarded secret, and more--all converged to produce one of the great disasters of history.

It is a story that many of us think we know but don't, and Erik Larson tells it thrillingly, switching between hunter and hunted while painting a larger portrait of America at the height of the Progressive Era. Full of glamour, mystery, and real-life suspense, Dead Wake brings to life a cast of evocative characters, from famed Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat to pioneering female architect Theodate Pope Riddle to President Wilson, a man lost to grief, dreading the widening war but also captivated by the prospect of new love. Gripping and important, Dead Wake captures the sheer drama and emotional power of a disaster that helped place America on the road to war.]]> 430 Erik Larson 0307408868 Ben 0 4.10 2015 Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania
author: Erik Larson
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> American Gods 30165203
Together they embark on a profoundly strange journey across the heart of the USA, whilst all around them a storm of preternatural and epic proportions threatens to break.

Scary, gripping and deeply unsettling, American Gods takes a long, hard look into the soul of America. You'll be surprised by what - and who - it finds there...]]> 635 Neil Gaiman Ben 0 4.11 2001 American Gods
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Ben
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2001
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent]]> 18873616 The classic survey of Latin America's social and cultural history, with a new introduction by Isabel AllendeSince its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx.Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe.Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende’s inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.]]> 336 Eduardo Galeano 1583673113 Ben 0 currently-reading 4.20 1971 Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent
author: Eduardo Galeano
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/10/07
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]]> <![CDATA[The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources]]> 57267938 The modern world is built on commodities - from the oil that fuels our cars to the metals that power our smartphones.

We rarely stop to consider where they have come from. But we should.

In The World for Sale, two leading journalists lift the lid on one of the least scrutinised corners of the world economy: the workings of the billionaire commodity traders who buy, hoard and sell the earth's resources.

It is the story of how a handful of swashbuckling businessmen became indispensable cogs in global markets: enabling an enormous expansion in international trade, and connecting resource-rich countries - no matter how corrupt or war-torn - with the world's financial centres.

And it is the story of how some traders acquired untold political power, right under the noses of western regulators and politicians - helping Saddam Hussein to sell his oil, fuelling the Libyan rebel army during the Arab Spring, and funnelling cash to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin in spite of western sanctions.

The result is an eye-opening tour through the wildest frontiers of the global economy, as well as a revelatory guide to how capitalism really works.]]> 417 Javier Blas 0190078979 Ben 0 4.43 2021 The World for Sale: Money, Power, and the Traders Who Barter the Earth's Resources
author: Javier Blas
name: Ben
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2022/08/09
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]]> <![CDATA[2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey #2)]]> 50980081 The celebrated author continues his Space Odyssey with this Hugo Award winner: “A daring romp through the solar system and a worthy successor toĚý2001â€� (Carl Sagan).
Ěý
In 1968, Arthur C. Clarke’s bestselling 2001: A Space Odyssey captivated the world and was adapted into the classic film by Stanley Kubrick. Fourteen years later, fans and critics were thrilled by the release of 2010: Odyssey Two.
Ěý
Nine years after the ill-fated Discovery One mission to Jupiter, a joint Soviet-American crew travels to the planet to investigate the mysterious monolith orbiting the planet, the cause of the earlier mission’s failure—and what became of astronaut David Bowman. The crew includes project expert Heywood Floyd, and Dr. Chandra, the creator of HAL 9000.
Ěý
What they discover is an unsettling alien conspiracy tampering with the evolution of life on Jupiter’s moons as well as that of humanity itself. Meanwhile, the being that was once Dave Bowman—the only human to unlock the mystery of the monolith—streaks toward Earth on a vital mission of its ownĚý.Ěý.Ěý.
Ěý
“Clarke deftly blends discovery, philosophy, and a newly acquired sense of play.� �Time
Ěý
â€�2010Ěýis easily Clarke’s best book in over a decade.â€� â€�The San Diego Union-Tribune]]> 261 Arthur C. Clarke 0795324839 Ben 0 4.41 1982 2010: Odyssey Two (Space Odyssey #2)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Ben
average rating: 4.41
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[The Silk Roads: A New History of the World]]> 53400154
Frankopan realigns our understanding of the world, pointing us eastward. It was on the Silk Roads that East and West first encountered each other through trade and conquest, leading to the spread of ideas, cultures and religions. From the rise and fall of empires to the spread of Buddhism and the advent of Christianity and Islam, right up to the great wars of the twentieth century—this book shows how the fate of the West has always been inextricably linked to the East.]]> 657 Peter Frankopan Ben 0 4.30 2015 The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
author: Peter Frankopan
name: Ben
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2015
rating: 0
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]]> Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune, #6) 55001208 Frank Herbert's Final Novel in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time

The desert planet Arrakis, called Dune, has been destroyed. The remnants of the Old Empire have been consumed by the violent matriarchal cult known as the Honored Matres. Only one faction remains a viable threat to their total conquest—the Bene Gesserit, heirs to Dune’s power.

Under the leadership of Mother Superior Darwi Odrade, the Bene Gesserit have colonized a green world on the planet Chapterhouse and are turning it into a desert, mile by scorched mile. And once they’ve mastered breeding sandworms, the Sisterhood will control the production of the greatest commodity in the known galaxy—the spice melange. But their true weapon remains a man who has lived countless lifetimes—a man who served under the God Emperor Paul Muad’Dib....]]> 622 Frank Herbert Ben 0 4.19 1985 Chapterhouse: Dune (Dune, #6)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.19
book published: 1985
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/01/11
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]]> Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5) 55712125 Book Five in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time

Leto Atreides, the God Emperor of Dune, is dead. In the fifteen hundred years since his passing, the Empire has fallen into ruin. The great Scattering saw millions abandon the crumbling civilization and spread out beyond the reaches of known space. The planet Arrakis—now called Rakis—has reverted to its desert climate, and its great sandworms are dying.

Now the Lost Ones are returning home in pursuit of power. And as these factions vie for control over the remnants of the Empire, a girl named Sheeana rises to prominence in the wastelands of Rakis, sending religious fervor throughout the galaxy. For she possesses the abilities of the Fremen sandriders—fulfilling a prophecy foretold by the late God Emperor....]]> 683 Frank Herbert Ben 0 4.20 1984 Heretics of Dune (Dune, #5)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1984
rating: 0
read at: 2021/11/24
date added: 2021/11/24
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]]> <![CDATA[Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters]]> 57433539
“Hurricanes and tornadoes are becoming fiercer and more frequent.�

“Climate change will be an economic disaster.�

You’ve heard all this presented as fact. But according to science, all of these statements are profoundly misleading.

When it comes to climate change, the media, politicians, and other prominent voices have declared that “the science is settled.� In reality, the long game of telephone from research to reports to the popular media is corrupted by misunderstanding and misinformation. Core questions—about the way the climate is responding to our influence, and what the impacts will be—remain largely unanswered. The climate is changing, but the why and how aren’t as clear as you’ve probably been led to believe.

Now, one of America’s most distinguished scientists is clearing away the fog to explain what science really says (and doesn’t say) about our changing climate. In What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters, Steven Koonin draws upon his decades of experience—including as a top science advisor to the Obama administration—to provide up-to-date insights and expert perspective free from political agendas.

Fascinating, clear-headed, and full of surprises, this book gives readers the tools to both understand the climate issue and be savvier consumers of science media in general. Koonin takes readers behind the headlines to the more nuanced science itself, showing us where it comes from and guiding us through the implications of the evidence. He dispels popular myths and unveils little-known despite a dramatic rise in greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures actually decreased from 1940 to 1970. What’s more, the models we use to predict the future aren’t able to accurately describe the climate of the past, suggesting they are deeply flawed.

Koonin also tackles society’s response to a changing climate, using data-driven analysis to explain why many proposed “solutions� would be ineffective, and discussing how alternatives like adaptation and, if necessary, geoengineering will ensure humanity continues to prosper. Unsettled is a reality check buoyed by hope, offering the truth about climate science that you aren’t getting elsewhere—what we know, what we don’t, and what it all means for our future.]]> 320 Steven E. Koonin 195329524X Ben 0 4.26 2021 Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters
author: Steven E. Koonin
name: Ben
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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]]> The Lathe of Heaven 53513520 This science fiction classic by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author isĚý"a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion" (The New York Times).

In a near-future world beset by war, climate change, and overpopulation, Portland resident George Orr discovers that his dreams have the power to alter reality. Upon waking, the world he knew has become a strange, barely recognizable place, where only George has a clear memory of how it was before. Seeking escape from these “effective dreams,� George eventually turns to behavioral psychologist Dr. William Haber for a cure. But Haber has other ideas in mind.
Ěý
Seeing the profound power of George’s dreams, Haber believes it must be harnessed for the greater good—no matter the cost. Soon, George is a pawn in Haber’s dangerous game, where the fate of humanity grows more imperiled with every waking hour.

As relevant today as it was when it won the Locus Award in 1971,ĚýThe Lathe of HeavenĚýis a true classic, at once eerie and prescient, entertaining and intelligent. In short, it does “what science fiction is supposed to do" (Newsweek).]]> 194 Ursula K. Le Guin Ben 0 4.24 1971 The Lathe of Heaven
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Ben
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1971
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water]]> 6581453 “I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remainĚýin the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage â€� that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.â€� â€� Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times, January 20,2023"The definitive work on the West's water crisis." --NewsweekThe story of the American West is the story of a relentless quest for a precious water. It is a tale of rivers diverted and dammed, of political corruption and intrigue, of billion-dollar battles over water rights, of ecological and economic disaster. In his landmark book, Cadillac Desert, Marc Reisner writes of the earliest settlers, lured by the promise of paradise, and of the ruthless tactics employed by Los Angeles politicians and business interests to ensure the city's growth. He documents the bitter rivalry between two government giants, the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, in the competition to transform the West. Based on more than a decade of research, Cadillac Desert is a stunning expose and a dramatic, intriguing history of the creation of an Eden--an Eden that may only be a mirage.This edition includes a new postscript by Lawrie Mott, a former staff scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, that updates Western water issues over the last two decades, including the long-term impact of climate change and how the region can prepare for the future.]]> 674 Marc Reisner 1440672822 Ben 0 4.34 1986 Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
author: Marc Reisner
name: Ben
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1986
rating: 0
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]]> <![CDATA[1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created]]> 11081548
More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.

The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason there are tomatoes in Italy, oranges in Florida, chocolates in Switzerland, and chili peppers in Thailand. More important, creatures the colonists knew nothing about hitched along for the ride. Earthworms, mosquitoes, and cockroaches; honeybees, dandelions, and African grasses; bacteria, fungi, and viruses; rats of every description—all of them rushed like eager tourists into lands that had never seen their like before, changing lives and landscapes across the planet.

Eight decades after Columbus, a Spaniard named Legazpi succeeded where Columbus had failed. He sailed west to establish continual trade with China, then the richest, most powerful country in the world. In Manila, a city Legazpi founded, silver from the Americas, mined by African and Indian slaves, was sold to Asians in return for silk for Europeans. It was the first time that goods and people from every corner of the globe were connected in a single worldwide exchange. Much as Columbus created a new world biologically, Legazpi and the Spanish empire he served created a new world economically.

As Charles C. Mann shows, the Columbian Exchange underlies much of subsequent human history. Presenting the latest research by ecologists, anthropologists, archaeologists, and historians, Mann shows how the creation of this worldwide network of ecological and economic exchange fostered the rise of Europe, devastated imperial China, convulsed Africa, and for two centuries made Mexico City—where Asia, Europe, and the new frontier of the Americas dynamically interacted—the center of the world. In such encounters, he uncovers the germ of today’s fiercest political disputes, from immigration to trade policy to culture wars.

In 1493, Charles Mann gives us an eye-opening scientific interpretation of our past, unequaled in its authority and fascination.]]> 836 Charles C. Mann 0307596729 Ben 0 4.20 2011 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2011
rating: 0
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date added: 2021/07/25
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]]> <![CDATA[1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus]]> 19944117 In this groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology, Charles C. Mann radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492.
Ěý
Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized breeding process that it has been called man’s first feat of genetic engineering. Indeed, Indians were not living lightly on the land but were landscaping and manipulating their world in ways that we are only now beginning to understand. Challenging and surprising, this a transformative new look at a rich and fascinating world we only thought we knew.




From the Trade Paperback edition.]]> 864 Charles C. Mann Ben 0 4.26 2005 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus
author: Charles C. Mann
name: Ben
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2005
rating: 0
read at: 2021/06/26
date added: 2021/06/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World]]> 6626792 The fascinating story of the most powerful source of energy the earth can yieldUranium is a common element in the earth's crust and the only naturally occurring mineral with the power to end all life on the planet. After World War II, it reshaped the global order-whoever could master uranium could master the world. Marie Curie gave us hope that uranium would be a miracle panacea, but the Manhattan Project gave us reason to believe that civilization would end with apocalypse. Slave labor camps in Africa and Eastern Europe were built around mine shafts and America would knowingly send more than six hundred uranium miners to their graves in the name of national security. Fortunes have been made from this yellow dirt; massive energy grids have been run from it. Fear of it panicked the American people into supporting a questionable war with Iraq and its specter threatens to create another conflict in Iran. Now, some are hoping it can help avoid a global warming catastrophe. In Uranium, Tom Zoellner takes readers around the globe in this intriguing look at the mineral that can sustain life or destroy it.]]> 364 Tom Zoellner 1101024526 Ben 0 4.01 2009 Uranium: War, Energy, and the Rock That Shaped the World
author: Tom Zoellner
name: Ben
average rating: 4.01
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at: 2021/05/16
date added: 2021/05/16
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]]> <![CDATA[The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug]]> 8219144 In The Demon Under the Microscope, Thomas Hager chronicles the dramatic history of sulfa, the first antibiotic and the drug that shaped modern medicine. The Nazis discovered it. The Allies won the war with it. It conquered diseases, changed laws, and single-handedly launched the era of antibiotics. Sulfa saved millions of lives—among them those of Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr.—but its real effects are even more far reaching. Sulfa changed the way new drugs were developed, approved, and sold; transformed the way doctors treated patients; and ushered in the era of modern medicine. The very concept that chemicals created in a lab could cure disease revolutionized medicine, taking it from the treatment of symptoms and discomfort to the eradication of the root cause of illness. A strange and colorful story, The Demon Under the Microscope illuminates the vivid characters, corporate strategy, individual idealism, careful planning, lucky breaks, cynicism, heroism, greed, hard work, and the central (though mistaken) idea that brought sulfa to the world. This is a fascinating scientific tale with all the excitement and intrigue of a great suspense novel.]]> 352 Thomas Hager 0307352285 Ben 0 4.39 2006 The Demon Under the Microscope: From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor's Heroic Search for the World's First Miracle Drug
author: Thomas Hager
name: Ben
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2021/04/30
date added: 2021/04/30
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]]> The Last of the Mohicans 36271894 The Last of the Mohicans follows an intrepid group of frontiersmen and Native Americans as they navigate the rugged terrain of both the landscape and their racial differences. Together they strive to deliver Colonel Munro’s two daughters to safety at Fort William Henry during the French and Indian War.

Widely considered the first “Great American Novel,� James Fenimore Cooper’s classic encapsulates the violence and beauty, tragedy and heroism at the heart of the American frontier, set against the stunning backdrop of the northern New York wilderness.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as The Last of the Mohicans, this edition of The Last of the Mohicans (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 443 James Fenimore Cooper 1542099595 Ben 0 3.94 1826 The Last of the Mohicans
author: James Fenimore Cooper
name: Ben
average rating: 3.94
book published: 1826
rating: 0
read at: 2021/04/11
date added: 2021/04/11
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]]> The Lost World 36271893
With its cliff-hanging escapes, rousing humor, and nailbiting suspense, The Lost World is a pioneering work of fantasy-adventure that paved the way for every thrill ride to follow.]]> 137 Arthur Conan Doyle Ben 0 4.21 1912 The Lost World
author: Arthur Conan Doyle
name: Ben
average rating: 4.21
book published: 1912
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/25
date added: 2021/02/25
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]]> <![CDATA[2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey #1)]]> 28513085 2001: A Space Odyssey tackles the enduring theme of man's place in the universe. Including a new Foreword by the author and a fascinating new introduction by Stephen Baxter, this special edition is an essential addition to every SF reader's collection.On the moon an enigma is uncovered. So great are the implications that, for the first time, men are sent out deep into the solar system. But, before they can reach their destination, things begin to go wrong. Horribly wrong.]]> 255 Arthur C. Clarke Ben 0 4.39 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey (Space Odyssey #1)
author: Arthur C. Clarke
name: Ben
average rating: 4.39
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at: 2021/02/13
date added: 2021/02/13
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]]> <![CDATA[The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler]]> 6562910 A sweeping history of tragic genius, cutting-edge science, and the Haber-Bosch discovery that changed billions of lives—including your own. At the dawn of the twentieth century, humanity was facing global Mass starvation was about to become a reality. A call went out to the world� s scientists to find a solution. This is the story of the two men who found brilliant, self-important Fritz Haber and reclusive, alcoholic Carl Bosch. Together they discovered a way to make bread out of air, built city-sized factories, and saved millions of lives. But their epochal triumph came at a price we are still paying. The Haber-Bosch process was also used to make the gunpowder and explosives that killed millions during the two world wars. Both men were vilified during their lives; both, disillusioned and disgraced, died tragically. The Alchemy of Air is the extraordinary, previously untold story of a discovery that changed the way we grow food and the way we make war–and that promises to continue shaping our lives in fundamental and dramatic ways.]]> 338 Thomas Hager Ben 0 4.46 2008 The Alchemy of Air: A Jewish Genius, a Doomed Tycoon, and the Scientific Discovery That Fed the World but Fueled the Rise of Hitler
author: Thomas Hager
name: Ben
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2008
rating: 0
read at: 2021/01/19
date added: 2021/01/19
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]]> <![CDATA[God Emperor of Dune (Dune, #4)]]> 55712106 Book Four in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time

Millennia have passed on Arrakis, and the once-desert planet is green with life. Leto Atreides, the son of the world’s savior, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, is still alive but far from human. To preserve humanity’s future, he sacrificed his own by merging with a sandworm, granting him near immortality as God Emperor of Dune for the past thirty-five hundred years.

Leto’s rule is not a benevolent one. His transformation has made not only his appearance but his morality inhuman. A rebellion, led by Siona, a member of the Atreides family, has risen to oppose the despot’s rule. But Siona is unaware that Leto’s vision of a Golden Path for humanity requires her to fulfill a destiny she never wanted—or could possibly conceive....]]> 604 Frank Herbert Ben 0 4.13 1981 God Emperor of Dune (Dune, #4)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.13
book published: 1981
rating: 0
read at: 2021/01/09
date added: 2021/01/09
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]]> Children of Dune (Dune, #3) 8117884 Book Three in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time

The Children of Dune are twin siblings Leto and Ghanima Atreides, whose father, the Emperor Paul Muad’Dib, disappeared in the desert wastelands of Arrakis nine years ago. Like their father, the twins possess supernormal abilities—making them valuable to their manipulative aunt Alia, who rules the Empire in the name of House Atreides.

Facing treason and rebellion on two fronts, Alia’s rule is not absolute. The displaced House Corrino is plotting to regain the throne while the fanatical Fremen are being provoked into open revolt by the enigmatic figure known only as The Preacher. Alia believes that by obtaining the secrets of the twins� prophetic visions, she can maintain control over her dynasty.

But Leto and Ghanima have their own plans for their visions—and their destinies....]]> 623 Frank Herbert 1440630518 Ben 0 4.24 1976 Children of Dune (Dune, #3)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1976
rating: 0
read at: 2020/12/13
date added: 2020/12/13
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]]> <![CDATA[Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?]]> 16280 464 Beverly Daniel Tatum 0465083617 Ben 0 4.32 1997 Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?
author: Beverly Daniel Tatum
name: Ben
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2020/11/28
date added: 2020/11/28
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]]> <![CDATA[A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)]]> 16029682 210 Ursula K. Le Guin 0544084373 Ben 0 4.04 1968 A Wizard of Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #1)
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Ben
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at: 2020/10/12
date added: 2020/10/12
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]]> Dune Messiah (Dune, #2) 8117883 Book Two in the Magnificent Dune Chronicles—the Bestselling Science Fiction Adventure of All Time

Dune Messiah continues the story of Paul Atreides, better known—and feared—as the man christened Muad’Dib. As Emperor of the known universe, he possesses more power than a single man was ever meant to wield. Worshipped as a religious icon by the fanatical Fremen, Paul faces the enmity of the political houses he displaced when he assumed the throne—and a conspiracy conducted within his own sphere of influence.

And even as House Atreides begins to crumble around him from the machinations of his enemies, the true threat to Paul comes to his lover, Chani, and the unborn heir to his family’s dynasty...]]> 350 Frank Herbert Ben 0 4.08 1969 Dune Messiah (Dune, #2)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.08
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at: 2020/09/16
date added: 2020/09/16
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]]> Treasure Island 35281698
When young Jim Hawkins decides to follow a map to buried treasure, he must befriend or outsmart memorable characters such as pirate Long John Silver, captain Billy Bones, and island man Ben Gunn. Mutinous plans, mysterious deaths, and a tangle of double crosses keep Jim guessing all the way to the prize.

Inspired by real-life seafarers, Stevenson captures the adventurous spirit of the times and the imagination of readers, young and old alike.

AmazonClassics brings you timeless works from the masters of storytelling. Ideal for anyone who wants to read a great work for the first time or rediscover an old favorite, these new editions open the door to literature’s most unforgettable characters and beloved worlds.

Revised edition: Previously published as Treasure Island, this edition of Treasure Island (AmazonClassics Edition) includes editorial revisions.]]> 246 Robert Louis Stevenson 1542097703 Ben 0 4.16 1882 Treasure Island
author: Robert Louis Stevenson
name: Ben
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1882
rating: 0
read at: 2020/08/23
date added: 2020/08/30
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]]> Contact 61666 semblent à présent impatients d'établir le contact : ils nous surveillent depuis longtemps, et le moment est peut-être venu pour eux de nous juger...]]> 580 Carl Sagan 2266079999 Ben 0 4.14 1985 Contact
author: Carl Sagan
name: Ben
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at: 2020/08/24
date added: 2020/08/24
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]]> <![CDATA[A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present]]> 2767 Zinn portrays a side of American history that can largely be seen as the exploitation and manipulation of the majority by rigged systems that hugely favor a small aggregate of elite rulers from across the orthodox political parties.
A People's History has been assigned as reading in many high schools and colleges across the United States. It has also resulted in a change in the focus of historical work, which now includes stories that previously were ignored

Library Journal calls Howard Zinn’s book “a brilliant and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those…whose plight has been largely omitted from most histories.”]]> 729 Howard Zinn 0060838655 Ben 0 4.07 1980 A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
author: Howard Zinn
name: Ben
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1980
rating: 0
read at: 2020/08/06
date added: 2020/08/06
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]]> Dune (Dune, #1) 43419431 Frank Herbert’s classic masterpiece—a triumph of the imagination and one of the bestselling science fiction novels of all time.

Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice� melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for....

When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.

A stunning blend of adventure and mysticism, environmentalism and politics, Dune won the first Nebula Award, shared the Hugo Award, and formed the basis of what is undoubtedly the grandest epic in science fiction.]]> 883 Frank Herbert Ben 0 4.44 1965 Dune (Dune, #1)
author: Frank Herbert
name: Ben
average rating: 4.44
book published: 1965
rating: 0
read at: 2020/06/14
date added: 2020/06/25
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]]> <![CDATA[Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before -- and After -- You Marry]]> 27777197 More than a million couples can’t be wrong! And with this updated edition of their award-winning book, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott help you launch lifelong love like never before.

This is more than a book—it’s an experience, especially when you use the his/her workbooks filled with more than 40 fun exercises. Get ready for deeper intimacy with the best friend you’ll ever have.

Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts, in more than 15 languages, is the most widely used marriage prep tool in the world.Ěý

Uncover the misbeliefs of marriage Learn to communicate with instant understanding Discover the secret to resolving conflict Master the skills of money management Get your sex life off to a great start

A compelling video, featuring real-life couples, is available, and with this updated edition Les and Leslie unveil the game-changing SYMBIS Assessment. Now you can discover how to leverage your personalities for a love that last a lifetime.

Make your marriage everything it is meant to be. Save your marriage—before (and after) it starts.

]]> 194 Les Parrott III Ben 0 currently-reading 4.23 1995 Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts: Seven Questions to Ask Before -- and After -- You Marry
author: Les Parrott III
name: Ben
average rating: 4.23
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2020/05/23
shelves: currently-reading
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]]> The Left Hand of Darkness 25837084 Ursula K. Le Guin's groundbreaking work of science fiction—winner of the Hugo and Nebula Awards.

A lone human ambassador is sent to Winter, an alien world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants can change their gender whenever they choose. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.]]> 320 Ursula K. Le Guin Ben 0 4.14 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: Ben
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1969
rating: 0
read at: 2020/05/17
date added: 2020/05/17
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]]> Walden 14601497 262 Henry David Thoreau 1619491958 Ben 3 3.67 1854 Walden
author: Henry David Thoreau
name: Ben
average rating: 3.67
book published: 1854
rating: 3
read at: 2020/04/26
date added: 2020/04/26
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]]> <![CDATA[Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan]]> 767895 A fascinating study of waste-free methods of cultivation, this work reveals the secrets of ancient farming methods and, at the same time, chronicles the travels and observations of a remarkable man. A well-trained observer who studied the actual conditions of life among agricultural peoples, King provides intriguing glimpses of Japan, China, Manchuria, and Korea; customs of the common people; the utilization of waste; methods of irrigation, reforestation, and land reclamation; the cultivation of rice, silk, and tea; and related topics.
Enhanced with more than 240 illustrations (most of them photographs), this book represents an invaluable resource for organic gardeners, farmer, and conservationists. It remains "one of the richest sources of information about peasant agriculture [and] one of the pioneer books on organic farming." � The Last Whole Earth Catalog .]]> 464 Franklin Hiram King 0486436098 Ben 4 4.12 Farmers of Forty Centuries: Organic Farming in China, Korea, and Japan
author: Franklin Hiram King
name: Ben
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 4
read at: 2020/03/18
date added: 2020/03/18
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]]> <![CDATA[The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy, #2)]]> 39792040 S. A. Chakraborty continues the sweeping adventure begun inĚýThe City of Brassâ€�"the best adult fantasy I’ve read sinceĚýThe Name of the Wind" (#1ĚýNew York TimesĚýbestselling author Sabaa Tahir)—conjuring a world where djinn summon flames with the snap of a finger and waters run deep with old magic; where blood can be dangerous as any spell, and a clever con artist from Cairo will alter the fate of a kingdom.

Nahri’s life changed forever the moment she accidentally summoned Dara, a formidable, mysterious djinn, during one of her schemes. Whisked from her home in Cairo, she was thrust into the dazzling royal court of Daevabad—and quickly discovered she would need all her grifter instincts to survive there.

Now, with Daevabad entrenched in the dark aftermath of the battle that saw Dara slain at Prince Ali’s hand, Nahri must forge a new path for herself, withoutĚýthe protection of the guardian who stoleĚýher heart or the counsel of the prince she consideredĚýa friend. But even as she embraces her heritage and the power it holds, she knows she’s been trapped in a gilded cage,Ěýwatched byĚýa king who rules from theĚýthrone that once belonged to her family—and one misstep will doom her tribe.

Meanwhile, Ali has been exiled for daring to defy his father. Hunted by assassins, adrift on the unforgiving copper sands of hisĚýancestral land, he is forced to rely on the frightening abilities the marid—the unpredictable water spirits—have gifted him. But in doing so, he threatens to unearth a terrible secret his family has long kept buried.

And asĚýa new century approaches and the djinn gather withinĚýDaevabad's towering brass wallsĚýfor celebrations, a threat brews unseen in the desolate north. It’s a force that would bring a storm of fire straight to the city’sĚýgates . . . andĚýone that seeks the aid of a warrior trapped between worlds, torn between a violent duty he can never escape and a peace he fears he will never deserve.]]> 653 S.A. Chakraborty 0062678159 Ben 0 4.44 2019 The Kingdom of Copper (The Daevabad Trilogy, #2)
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: Ben
average rating: 4.44
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at: 2020/02/10
date added: 2020/02/10
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]]> <![CDATA[The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy, #1)]]> 34814099 NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY Library Journal | Vulture | The Verge | SYFYWire

Step into The City of Brass, the spellbinding debut from S. A. Chakraborty perfect for fans of The Golem and the Jinni, The Grace of Kings, and Uprooted, in which the future of a magical Middle Eastern kingdom rests in the hands of a clever and defiant young con artist with miraculous healing gifts.

On the streets of eighteenth-century Cairo, Nahri is a con woman of unsurpassed skill. She makes her living swindling Ottoman nobles, hoping to one day earn enough to change her fortunes. But when Nahri accidentally summons Dara, an equally sly, darkly mysterious djinn warrior, during one of her cons, she learns that even the cleverest of schemes can have deadly consequences.

Forced to flee Cairo, Dara and Nahri journey together across hot, windswept sands teeming with creatures of fire and rivers where the mythical marid sleep, past ruins of once-magnificent human metropolises and mountains where the circling birds of prey are more than what they seem, to Daevabad, the legendary city of brass.

It’s a city steeped in magic and fire, where blood can be as dangerous as any spell; a city where old resentments run deep and the royal court rules with a tenuous grip; a city to which Nahri is irrevocably bound—and where her very presence threatens to ignite a war that has been simmering for centuries.

*Finalist for the World Fantasy Award: Best Novel

*Nominated for the Locus Award: Best First Novel

*Finalist for the British Fantasy Award: Best Newcomer

Featuring a stepback and extra content including a bonus scene and an excerpt from The Kingdom of Copper.]]> 569 S.A. Chakraborty Ben 0 4.27 2017 The City of Brass (The Daevabad Trilogy, #1)
author: S.A. Chakraborty
name: Ben
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2020/01/28
date added: 2020/01/28
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]]> The Ragged Edge of Night 38096424
Germany, 1942. Franciscan friar Anton Starzmann is stripped of his place in the world when his school is seized by the Nazis. He relocates to a small German hamlet to wed Elisabeth Herter, a widow who seeks a marriage—in name only—to a man who can help raise her three children. Anton seeks something too—atonement for failing to protect his young students from the wrath of the Nazis. But neither he nor Elisabeth expects their lives to be shaken once again by the inescapable rumble of war.

As Anton struggles to adapt to the roles of husband and father, he learns of the Red Orchestra, an underground network of resisters plotting to assassinate Hitler. Despite Elisabeth’s reservations, Anton joins this army of shadows. But when the SS discovers his schemes, Anton will embark on a final act of defiance that may cost him his life—even if it means saying goodbye to the family he has come to love more than he ever believed possible.]]> 340 Olivia Hawker 1503957144 Ben 0 4.17 2018 The Ragged Edge of Night
author: Olivia Hawker
name: Ben
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at: 2019/12/30
date added: 2020/01/05
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]]> The Adventures of Tom Sawyer 24583
Unlike his brother Sid, Tom receives "lickings" from his Aunt Polly; ever the mischief-maker, would rather play hooky than attend school and often sneaks out his bedroom window at night to adventure with his friend, Huckleberry Finn ­ the town's social outcast. Tom, despite his dread of schooling, is extremely clever and would normally get away with his pranks if Sid were not such a "tattle-tale."

As punishment for skipping school to go swimming, Aunt Polly assigns Tom the chore of whitewashing the fence surrounding the house. In a brilliant scheme, Tom is able to con the neighborhood boys into completing the chore for him, managing to convince them of the joys of whitewashing. At school, Tom is equally as flamboyant, and attracts attention by chasing other boys, yelling, and running around. With his usual antics, Tom attempts to catch the eye of Becky Thatcher, a new girl in town, and persuades her to get "engaged" by kissing him. But their romance collapses when she learns Tom has been "engaged" previously to Amy Lawrence. Shortly after Becky shuns him, he accompanies Huckleberry Finn to the graveyard at night, where they witness the murder of Dr. Robinson.

Excerpt:
"TOM!"
No answer.
"TOM!"
No answer.
"What's gone with that boy, ĚýI wonder? You TOM!"
No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or never lookedĚýthroughĚýthem for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service—she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll�"
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
"I never did see the beat of that boy!"]]> 244 Mark Twain Ben 4 3.92 1876 The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
author: Mark Twain
name: Ben
average rating: 3.92
book published: 1876
rating: 4
read at: 2017/07/21
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)]]> 6316671 nothing is as it seems. Lyra sets out for the top of the world in search of her kidnapped playmate, Roger, bearing a rare truth-telling instrument, the compass of the title. All around her children are disappearing—victims of so-called "Gobblers"—and being used as subjects in terrible experiments that separate humans from their daemons, creatures that reflect each person's inner being. And somehow, both Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter are involved.]]> 399 Philip Pullman Ben 4 4.17 1995 The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials, #1)
author: Philip Pullman
name: Ben
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2017/11/06
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]]> 27161156 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780062300546.

Hillbilly Elegy recounts J.D. Vance's powerful origin story...

From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate now serving as a U.S. Senator from Ohio and the Republican Vice Presidential candidate for the 2024 election, an incisive account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class.

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The disintegration of this group, a process that has been slowly occurring now for more than forty years, has been reported with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually one of their grandchildren would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that J.D.'s grandparents, aunt, uncle, and, most of all, his mother struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, never fully escaping the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. With piercing honesty, Vance shows how he himself still carries around the demons of his chaotic family history.

A deeply moving memoir, with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.]]> 264 J.D. Vance Ben 5 3.81 2016 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
author: J.D. Vance
name: Ben
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2018/03/23
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture]]> 146191 The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural development and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land—from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.
Sadly, as Berry notes in his Afterword to this third edition, his arguments and observations are more relevant than ever. We continue to suffer loss of community, the devaluation of human work, and the destruction of nature under an economic system dedicated to the mechanistic pursuit of products and profits. Although “this book has not had the happy fate of being proved wrong,� Berry writes, there are good people working “to make something comely and enduring of our life on this earth.� Wendell Berry is one of those people, writing and working, as ever, with passion, eloquence, and conviction.]]> 246 Wendell Berry 0871568772 Ben 5 4.34 1977 The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
author: Wendell Berry
name: Ben
average rating: 4.34
book published: 1977
rating: 5
read at: 2018/10/30
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]]> Devil on the Cross 159334 256 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o 0435908448 Ben 4 3.96 1980 Devil on the Cross
author: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
name: Ben
average rating: 3.96
book published: 1980
rating: 4
read at: 2018/09/15
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> All the Light We Cannot See 18143977
In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

An alternate cover for this ISBN can be found here]]> 544 Anthony Doerr 1476746583 Ben 5 4.31 2014 All the Light We Cannot See
author: Anthony Doerr
name: Ben
average rating: 4.31
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2018/11/17
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story]]> 10943812
A Long Walk to Water begins as two stories, told in alternating sections, about two eleven-year-olds in Sudan, a girl in 2008 and a boy in 1985. The girl, Nya, is fetching water from a pond that is two hours� walk from her she makes two trips to the pond every day. The boy, Salva, becomes one of the “lost boys� of Sudan, refugees who cover the African continent on foot as they search for their families and for a safe place to stay.

Enduring every hardship from loneliness to attack by armed rebels to contact with killer lions and crocodiles, Salva is a survivor, and his story goes on to intersect with Nya’s in an astonishing and moving way. Includes an afterword by author Linda Sue Park and the real-life Salva Dut, on whom the novel is based, and who went on to found Water for South Sudan.]]> 133 Linda Sue Park 0547532849 Ben 4 4.49 2010 A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story
author: Linda Sue Park
name: Ben
average rating: 4.49
book published: 2010
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/17
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]]> The Color Purple 12782014 Mister, a brutal man who terrorizes her. Celie eventually learns that her abusive husband has been keeping her sister’s letters from her and the rage she feels, combined with an example of love and independence provided by her close friend Shug, pushes her finally toward an awakening of her creative and loving self.]]> 314 Alice Walker Ben 4 4.47 1982 The Color Purple
author: Alice Walker
name: Ben
average rating: 4.47
book published: 1982
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/17
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold]]> 33512527
Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, the struggles between sacred and profane love are illuminated as Orual learns that we cannot understand the intent of the gods "till we have faces" and sincerity in our souls and selves.]]> 356 C.S. Lewis Ben 4 4.28 1956 Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold
author: C.S. Lewis
name: Ben
average rating: 4.28
book published: 1956
rating: 4
read at: 2018/11/26
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating]]> 31804449 Life Is Never Mainly about Love and Marriage. So Learn to Live and Date for More.

Many of you grew up assuming that marriage would meet all of your needs and unlock God's purposes for you. But God has far more planned for you than your future marriage. Not Yet Married is not about waiting quietly in the corner of the world for God to bring you "the one," but about inspiring you to live and date for more now.

If you follow Jesus, the search for a spouse is no longer a pursuit of the perfect person, but a pursuit of more of God. He will likely write a love story for you different than the one you would write for yourself, but that's because he loves you and knows how to write a better story. This book was written to help you find real hope, happiness, and purpose in your not-yet-married life.]]> 208 Marshall Segal 143355545X Ben 4 4.30 2017 Not Yet Married: The Pursuit of Joy in Singleness and Dating
author: Marshall Segal
name: Ben
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2017
rating: 4
read at: 2018/08/15
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There]]> 210404 A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for America's relationship to the land.

Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the Wisconsin countryside; another part that gathers informal pieces written by Leopold over a forty-year period as he traveled through the woodlands of Wisconsin, Iowa, Arizona, Sonora, Oregon, Manitoba, and elsewhere; and a final section in which Leopold addresses the philosophical issues involved in wildlife conservation. As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was sixty-five years ago.]]> 269 Aldo Leopold 0195007778 Ben 4 4.31 1949 A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
author: Aldo Leopold
name: Ben
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1949
rating: 4
read at: 2019/01/04
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind]]> 23692271 512 Yuval Noah Harari Ben 4 4.34 2011 Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
author: Yuval Noah Harari
name: Ben
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2011
rating: 4
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]]> <![CDATA[The Last Day of a Condemned Man]]> 19830286 Victor Hugo's impassioned early work carries the same power and universality as Les Misérables. A vocal opponent to the barbarity of the guillotine, Hugo attempted to arouse compassion in the service of justice. This tale distills his beliefs and offers a highly significant contribution to the ongoing debate over the death penalty. A new Foreword by activist David Dow examines the message and relevance of Hugo's story to modern society.]]> 130 Victor Hugo 0486120961 Ben 3 4.00 1829 The Last Day of a Condemned Man
author: Victor Hugo
name: Ben
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1829
rating: 3
read at: 2019/01/05
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> Flowers for Algernon 36512332 Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.
Ěý
Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence-a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?]]> 219 Daniel Keyes Ben 5 4.46 1966 Flowers for Algernon
author: Daniel Keyes
name: Ben
average rating: 4.46
book published: 1966
rating: 5
read at: 2019/01/13
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World]]> 93426
Fighting his way to power on the remote steppes of Mongolia, Genghis Khan developed revolutionary military strategies and weaponry that emphasized rapid attack and siege warfare, which he then brilliantly used to overwhelm opposing armies in Asia, break the back of the Islamic world, and render the armored knights of Europe obsolete. Under Genghis Khan, the Mongol army never numbered more than 100,000 warriors, yet it subjugated more lands and people in twenty-five years than the Romans conquered in four hundred. With an empire that stretched from Siberia to India, from Vietnam to Hungary, and from Korea to the Balkans, the Mongols dramatically redrew the map of the globe, connecting disparate kingdoms into a new world order.

But contrary to popular wisdom, Weatherford reveals that the Mongols were not just masters of conquest, but possessed a genius for progressive and benevolent rule. On every level and from any perspective, the scale and scope
of Genghis Khan’s accomplishments challenge the limits of imagination. Genghis Khan was an innovative leader, the first ruler in many conquered countries to put the power of law above his own power, encourage religious freedom, create public schools, grant diplomatic immunity, abolish torture, and institute free trade. The trade routes he created became lucrative pathways for commerce, but also for ideas, technologies, and expertise that transformed the way people lived. The Mongols introduced the first international paper currency and postal system and developed and spread revolutionary technologies like printing, the cannon, compass, and abacus. They took local foods and products like lemons, carrots, noodles, tea, rugs, playing cards, and pants and turned them into staples of life around the world. The Mongols were the architects of a new way of life at a pivotal time in history.

In Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Jack Weatherford resurrects the true history of Genghis Khan, from the story of his relentless rise through Mongol tribal culture to the waging of his devastatingly successful wars and the explosion of civilization that the Mongol Empire unleashed. This dazzling work of revisionist history doesn’t just paint an unprecedented portrait of a great leader and his legacy, but challenges us to reconsider how the modern world was made.


From the Hardcover edition.]]> 312 Jack Weatherford 0609809644 Ben 5 4.02 2004 Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World
author: Jack Weatherford
name: Ben
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2004
rating: 5
read at: 2019/02/09
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]]> <![CDATA[A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories]]> 8737071
"A Good Man Is Hard to Find"
"The River"
"The Life You Save May Be Your Own"
"A Stroke of Good Fortune"
"A Temple of the Holy Ghost"
"The Artificial Nigger"
"A Circle in the Fire"
"A Late Encounter with the Enemy"
"Good Country People"
"The Displaced Person"
1955 Flannery O'Connor; 1954, 1953, 1948 by Flannery O'Connor; renewed 1983, 1981 by Regina O'Connor; renewed 1976 by Mrs. Edward F. O'Connor; (P)2010 Blackstone Audio, Inc.]]> 276 Flannery O'Connor Ben 4 4.07 1955 A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
author: Flannery O'Connor
name: Ben
average rating: 4.07
book published: 1955
rating: 4
read at: 2019/03/31
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest]]> 332613 9780451163967

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electric shock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by the arrival of McMurphy � the swaggering, fun-loving trickster with a devilish grin who resolves to oppose her rules on behalf of his fellow inmates. His struggle is seen through the eyes of Chief Bromden, a seemingly mute half-Indian patient who understands McMurphy's heroic attempt to do battle with the powers that keep them imprisoned. Ken Kesey's extraordinary first novel is an exuberant, ribald and devastatingly honest portrayal of the boundaries between sanity and madness.]]> 325 Ken Kesey Ben 4 4.20 1962 One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
author: Ken Kesey
name: Ben
average rating: 4.20
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/20
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies]]> 1842
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a national bestseller: the global account of the rise of civilization that is also a stunning refutation of ideas of human development based on race.

In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, Jared Diamond convincingly argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world. Societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed writing, technology, government, and organized religion—as well as nasty germs and potent weapons of war—and adventured on sea and land to conquer and decimate preliterate cultures. A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science, the Rhone-Poulenc Prize, and the Commonwealth Club of California's Gold Medal]]> 498 Jared Diamond 0739467352 Ben 5 4.04 1997 Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
author: Jared Diamond
name: Ben
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1997
rating: 5
read at: 2019/03/31
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals]]> 3109 What should we have for dinner? For omnivore like ourselves, this simple question has always posed a dilemma. When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods on offer might shorten your life. Today, buffered by one food fad after another, America is suffering from what can only be described as a national eating disorder. The omnivore’s dilemma has returned with a vengeance, as the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous food landscape. What’s at stake in our eating choices is not only our own and our children’s health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth.
The Omnivore's Dilemma is groundbreaking book, in which one of America’s most fascinating, original, and elegant writers turns his own omnivorous mind to the seemingly straightforward question of what we should have for dinner. The question has confronted us since man discovered fire, but according to Michael Pollan, the bestselling author of The Botany of Desire, how we answer it today, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, may well determine our very survival as a species. Should we eat a fast-food hamburger? Something organic? Or perhaps something we hunt, gather, or grow ourselves?
To find out, Pollan follows each of the food chains that sustain us—industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves—from the source to a final meal, and in the process develops a definitive account of the American way of eating. His absorbing narrative takes us from Iowa cornfields to food-science laboratories, from feedlots and fast-food restaurants to organic farms and hunting grounds, always emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. Each time Pollan sits down to a meal, he deploys his unique blend of personal and investigative journalism to trace the origins of everything consumed, revealing what we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods and flavors reflects our evolutionary inheritance.
The surprising answers Pollan offers to the simple question posed by this book have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. Ultimately, this is a book as much about visionary solutions as it is about problems, and Pollan contends that, when it comes to food, doing the right thing often turns out to be the tastiest thing an eater can do. Beautifully written and thrillingly argued, The Omnivore’s Dilemma promises to change the way we think about the politics and pleasure of eating. For anyone who reads it, dinner will never again look, or taste, quite the same.]]> 450 Michael Pollan 1594200823 Ben 5 4.18 2006 The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
author: Michael Pollan
name: Ben
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2006
rating: 5
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]]> Silent Spring 27333
The book appeared in September 1962 and the outcry that followed its publication forced the banning of DDT and spurred revolutionary changes in the laws affecting our air, land, and water. Carson’s book was instrumental in launching the environmental movement.]]> 378 Rachel Carson 0618249060 Ben 4 4.04 1962 Silent Spring
author: Rachel Carson
name: Ben
average rating: 4.04
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2019/02/28
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> Cat's Cradle 35042171 306 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Ben 5 4.06 1963 Cat's Cradle
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ben
average rating: 4.06
book published: 1963
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/23
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> Slaughterhouse-Five 4981 Slaughterhouse-Five, an American classic, is one of the world’s great antiwar books. Centering on the infamous World War II firebombing of Dresden, the novel is the result of what Kurt Vonnegut described as a twenty-three-year struggle to write a book about what he had witnessed as an American prisoner of war. It combines historical fiction, science fiction, autobiography, and satire in an account of the life of Billy Pilgrim, a barber’s son turned draftee turned optometrist turned alien abductee. As Vonnegut had, Billy experiences the destruction of Dresden as a POW. Unlike Vonnegut, he experiences time travel, or coming “unstuck in time.�

An instant bestseller, Slaughterhouse-Five made Kurt Vonnegut a cult hero in American literature, a reputation that only strengthened over time, despite his being banned and censored by some libraries and schools for content and language. But it was precisely those elements of Vonnegut’s writing—the political edginess, the genre-bending inventiveness, the frank violence, the transgressive wit—that have inspired generations of readers not just to look differently at the world around them but to find the confidence to say something about it.

Fifty years after its initial publication at the height of the Vietnam War, Vonnegut's portrayal of political disillusionment, PTSD, and postwar anxiety feels as relevant, darkly humorous, and profoundly affecting as ever, an enduring beacon through our own era’s uncertainties.]]> 275 Kurt Vonnegut Jr. Ben 4 4.10 1969 Slaughterhouse-Five
author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
name: Ben
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1969
rating: 4
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]]> Their Eyes Were Watching God 43388834 193 Zora Neale Hurston 1773233815 Ben 4 4.32 1937 Their Eyes Were Watching God
author: Zora Neale Hurston
name: Ben
average rating: 4.32
book published: 1937
rating: 4
read at: 2019/09/13
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> The Brothers Karamazov 18886573 546 Fyodor Dostoevsky Ben 4 4.33 1880 The Brothers Karamazov
author: Fyodor Dostoevsky
name: Ben
average rating: 4.33
book published: 1880
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/09
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell & the Second Opening of the West]]> 6571855 Here Wallace Stegner, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, gives us a thrilling account of Powell's struggle against western geography and Washington politics. We witness the successes and frustrations of Powell's distinguished career, and appreciate his unparalleled understanding of the West.

]]> 385 Wallace Stegner 1101075856 Ben 4 3.99 1954 Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell & the Second Opening of the West
author: Wallace Stegner
name: Ben
average rating: 3.99
book published: 1954
rating: 4
read at: 2019/12/26
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God]]> 13000611 Modern culture would make you believe that everyone has a soul-mate; that romance is the most important part of a successful marriage; that your spouse is there to help you realize your potential; that marriage does not mean forever, but merely for now; that starting over after a divorce is the best solution to seemingly intractable marriage issues. All those modern-day assumptions are, in a word, wrong.

Using the Bible as his guide, coupled with insightful commentary from his wife of thirty-six years, Kathy, Timothy Keller shows that God created marriage to bring us closer to him and to bring us more joy in our lives. It is a glorious relationship that is also the most misunderstood and mysterious. With a clear-eyed understanding of the Bible, and meaningful instruction on how to have a successful marriage, "The Meaning of Marriage" is essential reading for anyone who wants to know God and love more deeply in this life.
Just as this book is based on his popular sermon series, so will his Encounters with Jesus series, the first of which, "The Skeptical Student "comes out in December.]]> 286 Timothy J. Keller 1101548045 Ben 4 4.54 2011 The Meaning of Marriage: Facing the Complexities of Commitment with the Wisdom of God
author: Timothy J. Keller
name: Ben
average rating: 4.54
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2019/05/31
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> Siddhartha 35049357 130 Hermann Hesse 1420951491 Ben 3 4.14 1922 Siddhartha
author: Hermann Hesse
name: Ben
average rating: 4.14
book published: 1922
rating: 3
read at: 2019/08/15
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer]]> 7170627 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here and here.

The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography� of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.

Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with - and perished from - for more than five thousand years.

The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.�

The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. From the Persian Queen Atossa, whose Greek slave cut off her malignant breast, to the nineteenth-century recipients of primitive radiation and chemotherapy to Mukherjee’s own leukemia patient, Carla, The Emperor of All Maladies is about the people who have soldiered through fiercely demanding regimens in order to survive—and to increase our understanding of this iconic disease.

Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.]]> 571 Siddhartha Mukherjee Ben 5 4.32 2010 The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
author: Siddhartha Mukherjee
name: Ben
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2010
rating: 5
read at: 2019/06/30
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> The Call of the Wild 1852 The Call of the Wild is regarded as Jack London's masterpiece. Based on London's experiences as a gold prospector in the Canadian wilderness and his ideas about nature and the struggle for existence, The Call of the Wild is a tale about unbreakable spirit and the fight for survival in the frozen Alaskan Klondike.]]> 172 Jack London Ben 5 3.89 1903 The Call of the Wild
author: Jack London
name: Ben
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1903
rating: 5
read at: 2019/09/30
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]> <![CDATA[Outliers: The Story of Success]]> 3228917 Learn what sets high achievers apart � from Bill Gates to the Beatles � in this #1 bestseller from "a singular talent" (New York Times Book Review).

In this stunning book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"—the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?

His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, Outliers is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.]]> 309 Malcolm Gladwell 0316017922 Ben 5 4.19 2008 Outliers: The Story of Success
author: Malcolm Gladwell
name: Ben
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2008
rating: 5
read at: 2019/12/10
date added: 2019/12/30
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]]>