Book Notes

Every now and then I put together a blog post where I list a bunch of books I've noticed in the library, book store, or on the web. Sometimes I include notes. This file just collects all of them so I can try to avoid repeating myself.

indicates that there is a book page for the book.

Henry J Aaron/Leonard E Berman, eds: Using Taxes to Reform Health Insurance: Pitfalls and Promises (paperback, 2008, Brookings Institution Press)

Alex Abella: Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire (2008, Harcourt).

John Abramson: Overdosed America: The Broken Promise of American Medicine (2004; paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Just one of a bunch of drug industry exposes, shaded more toward the bad things the drugs do to your body rather than their reckless pursuit of profits. Others include: Marcia Angell: The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It; Ray Moynihan/Alan Cassels: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All into Patients; Melody Petersen: Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines.

Asad Abukhalil: The Battle for Saudi Arabia: Royalty, Fundamentalism, and Global Power (paperback, 2004, Seven Stories).

Ali Abunimah, One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (2006-10, Henry Holt).

Viral V Acharya/Matthew Richardson, eds: Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System (2009, Wiley): Some kind of group project from New York University Stern School of Business, which Amazon attributes as the author, with analysis and lots of recommendations.

Kenneth Ackerman: Young J Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and the Assault on Civil Liberties (2007, Da Capo): I suppose it shouldn't be surprising that Hoover cut his teeth working for the DOJ during the 1919-20 Palmer Raids. He made a lifetime career out of trampling on citizens' civil rights and liberties -- from the first great red scare through the Black Panthers, he almost singularly cornered the market. I remain very interested in Ann Hagedorn's big book on the period: Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919.

Amir D Aczel: The Jesuit and the Skull: Teilhard de Chardin, Evolution, and the Search for Peking Man (2007; paperback, 2008, Riverhead): Stephen J Gould wrote a piece charging that de Chardin was involved in the Piltdown Man fraud, so I figured this to follow up on that. Evidently, Aczel dismisses those charges in a single sentence. Not that Aczel doesn't have anything less controversial or less scandalous to write about.

Amir D Aczel: Uranium Wars: The Scientific Rivalry That Created the Nuclear Age (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Short book on early uranium research, focusing on the 1920s but extending more or less to Hiroshima.

Moshe Adler: Economics for the Rest of Us: Debunking the Science That Makes Life Dismal (2009, New Press): About time someone turned the tables on "the dismal science" and show that what's dismal about it is how susceptible it is to political whims of its practitioners.

John Agresto, Mugged by Reality: The Liberation of Iraq and the Failure of Good Intentions (2007-03, Encounter Books).

Liaquat Ahamed: Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World (2009, Penguin): Actually, a history featuring four bankers from the 1920s, leading up to the 1929 Crash and Depression, and how the central banks bungled the crisis. Still, this appears at a time when the sequel is being acted out. Even if the analogies aren't obvious, the penchant for arrogance and error is still all too evident. Most likely the spookiest part will be Germany, given what happened there.

Akbar S Ahmed: Resistance and Control in Pakistan (1983; revised ed, paperback, 2004, Taylor & Francis): Revision of Religion and Politics in Muslim Society: Order and Conflict in Pakistan (1983).

JS Aikman: When Prime Brokers Fail: The Unheeded Risk to Hedge Funds, Banks, and the Financial Industry (2010, Bloomberg Press): E.g., Lehman Brothers, whose failure set off a chain of repercussions that ultimately convinced many skeptics that it was indeed "too big to fail." Not sure I can handle all this weeping over the poor hedge funds. [Apr. 21]

Taner Akcam, A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility (Henry Holt).

George A Akerlof/Robert J Shiller: Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism (2009, Princeton University Press): A look at how psychological factors impact economic decisions -- presumably a corrective to the ultra-rationalism most economists assume to simplify their equations. Title, I believe, comes from Keynes. Schiller previously wrote Irrational Exuberance, about the stock bubble (second edition in 2006), and The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened and What to Do About It.

Sina Aksin: Turkey: From Empire to Revolutionary Republic: The Emergence of the Turkish Nation From 1789 to Present (paperback, 2007, NYU Press): General history of an important nation that we tend to know little and understand less about.

Nadje Al-Ali/Nicola Pratt: What Kind of Liberation?: Women and the Occupation of Iraq (2009, University of California Press): Al-Ali previously wrote Iraqi Women: Untold Stories From 1948 to the Present. Not a lot of info on this book, but the title raises a good question, one that few have looked into.

Matthew Alexander/John Bruning: How to Break a Terrorist: The US Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq (2008, Free Press): Alexander is evidently a pseudonym for an Air Force interrogator who worked on the intelligence that caught up with Zarqawi. Reviews claim this reads like a thriller, but the key point is that it works as an indictment of Cheney's torture methods.

Paul Alexander: Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove (2008, Rodale Books): One advantage this book has over all other Rove books -- for some reason I haven't been collecting them in these notes -- is that it gives us a taste of fall. Still has a good ways to go -- preferably to jail.

Christian Alfonsi, Circle in the Sand: Why We Went Back to Iraq (2006-10, Doubleday).

Tariq Ali: The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002, Verso).

Tariq Ali: Bush in Babylon: The Recolonisation of Iraq (2003, Verso).

Tariq Ali: Speaking of Empire and Resistance: Conversations With Tariq Ali (paperback, 2005, New Press).

Tariq Ali: Rough Music: Blair Bombs Baghdad London Terror (paperback, 2006, Verso).

Tariq Ali, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (2006, Verso). Actually, I don't have much interest in Castro or Chavez, but I've read three straight books by Ali.

Tariq Ali: Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope (revised/expanded, paperback, 2008, Verso): Originally published in 2006, focusing on Cuba, Venezuela, and Bolivia, with Ecuador added for this edition. I've been reluctant to pick this up -- I have a lot of respect for Ali as a critic of American empire, but distrust advocacy of politicians even when they build their careers on the rejection of that same power. Still, the independence movements in Latin America make for a remarkable story.

Tariq Ali: The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008, Scribner): This, on the other hand, is the book I've been waiting for: Ali's home country, with the Musharraf regime caught between ham-handed American power, popular rebellion of more than one flavor, and its own peculiar interests. Was scheduled for early 2008, but Benazir Bhutto's assassination sent Ali back to the word processor. The situation is still volatile, impossible to keep on top of. This should certainly help one catch up.

Tariq Ali: The Duel: Pakistan on the Flight Path of American Power (2008; paperback, 2009, Scribner): A personal, rather idiosyncratic history of Pakistan willingly but not necessarily all that constructively under America's imperial thumb.

Tariq Ali: The Protocols of the Elders of Sodom: And Other Essays (2009, Verso): Title essay takes off from a Proust quote: if Zionism seeks a biblical homeland for the Jews on the basis of persecution, why not also look for a biblical homeland for gays and lesbians? More pieces on literature and politics.

Ali A Allawi: The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace (2007, Yale University Press).

Ali A Allawi: The Crisis of Islamic Civilization (2009, Yale University Press). Author was a minor functionary in the post-Bremer Iraqi government, a role he described usefully in The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace. This looks at the larger picture, going back to the impact of European colonialism on Muslim nations and the complex and often inadequate response.

Gar Alperovitz/Lew Daly: Unjust Deserts: How The Rich Are Taking Our Common Inheritance and Why We Should Take It Back (2008, New Press): Been meaning to read Alperovitz's America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy for a long time, and now I'm even further behind. Daly wrote a short book, God and the Welfare State, on Bush's faith-based initiative. Not sure what their analysis is, but my own take is that the rich are mostly lucky beneficiaries of market imperfections -- unwanted inefficiencies. They may be impossible to eliminate, but basing a social system on their self-perpetuation is a formula for disaster.

Madawi al-Rasheed: A History of Saudi Arabia (paperback, 2002, Cambridge University Press).

Jonathan Alter: The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope (paperback, 2007, Simon & Schuster): Something to bone up on: Paul Krugman has argued how important it is for a Democrat winning the 2008 election to push critical legislation through in the new administration's first 100 days. I suppose someone could do a comparative analysis for Democrats -- Clinton sure blew his first days, digging a hole that he never climbed out of. In any case, this year is the best prospect we've had in a long time for a Roosevelt-level tsunami. In any case, the history should be inspirational.

David L. Altheide, Terorism and the Politics of Fear (AltaMira Press, paperback).

Daniel Altman: Neoconomy: George Bush's Revolutionary Gamble With America's Future (2004; paperback, 2005, Public Affairs): Focuses on Bush's tax cuts and efforts to trim programs like social security.

Carl F Ameringer: The Health Care Revolution: From Medical Monopoly to Market Competition (2008, University of California Press)

Alice H Amsden: Escape From Empire: The Developing World's Journey Through Heaven and Hell (2007, MIT Press): Focus here is on how the US changed from a relatively benevolent source of development aid ("heaven") to a considerably more malign one ("hell"). I'm curious about how that maps to the political and economic changes within the US. (Curious but not likely to be very surprised.)

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso, paperback).

Fred Anderson/Andrew Cayton: The Dominion of War: Liberty and Empire in North America, 1500-2000 (2005, Viking Books).

Iain Anderson, This Is Our Music: Free Jazz, the Sixties, and American Culture (2006-11, University of Pennsylvania Press).

John Anderson: Follow the Money: How George W Bush and the Texas Republicans Hog-Tied America (2007, Scribner): Michael Lind's Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics is probably the most convincing Bush book I've read thus far, and this seems to be along those lines. Bush and his Texas political cronies managed to take over the Republican national machine, suddenly pushing the country far right. The more behind the money behind the better.

Perry Anderson: The New Old World (2009, Verso): New Left Review editor and historian, surveys Europe after the Cold War, a time when Europe is widely presumed to have come into its own, but still habitually follows US foreign policy, no matter how benighted (which under Bush, in particular, was pretty far gone).

Marcia Angell: The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It (paperback, 2005, Random House).

Natalie Angier, The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science (Houghton Mifflin): A general book on science and what it means to think about. I bought a copy of this recently as a gift for a niece who asked me for recommended readings on science. I was impressed, delighted even, by the few pages I read in the store.

Mark Anielski: The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth (paperback, 2007, New Society): Asks why people aren't happier given the amount of economic growth that has occurred since the 1950s. Economists are good at promoting growth because they have some idea how to measure it. If they could only measure happiness, they might be able to promote it as well. This is an idea that's been floating around for a while, even showing up on the political right in Arthur C Brooks: Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America -- and How We Can Get More of It. I'm not sure that happiness, even if you can somehow quantify it, is the right measure, but we need something more than money, because there is more to life than just money.

Greg Anrig: The Conservatives Have No Clothes: Why Right-Wing Ideas Keep Failing (2007, Wiley): Not sure if this passes my criteria -- I have a copy on my desk, and meant to get to it next until a couple of other books got in the way -- but it deserves a mention anyway. The right spent all that time market testing ideas to use as tools to seize power and came up with a bunch of things that sound good but just flat out don't work. This is a catalog.

Tamim Ansary: Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes (2009, Public Affairs): Previously wrote West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan-American Story. Looks like a fairly straightforward history of Islam, occasionally glancing out at the other world, which becomes more problematic when the other world encroaches.

Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2007-02, WW Norton, paperback).

Joyce Oldham Appleby: The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism (2010, WW Norton): General history, touting the culture of capitalism as well as the economics.

Christian G Appy: Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered From All Sides (paperback, 2004, Penguin Books).

Architecture for Humanity (Kate Stohr/Cameron Sinclair, eds.): Design Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises (2006, Metropolitan Books).

Gustavo Arellano: ¡Ask a Mexican! (paperback, 2008, Scribner): Orange County Weekly columnist, fields questions, sprays them to all fields. No idea how useful or informative or, for that matter, funny, this is, but what do I know?

Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational: The Hiden Forces That Shape Our Decisions (2008, Harper Collins): Book shows up in economics sections, where its critique of rational actors can do the most damage. Don't know how predictable they are, or what to make of it.

Karen Armstrong: A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (paperback, 1994, Ballantine).

Karen Armstrong: Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World (2001; paperback, 2001, Anchor Books).

Karen Armstrong: The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism (paperback, 2001, Ballantine).

Karen Armstrong: A Short History of Myth (2005, Canongate Books).

Karen Armstrong, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions (2007-04, Knopf, paperback).

Karen Armstrong: The Bible: A Biography (2007, Grove/Atlantic): About the only writer I trust when it comes to sorting out the historical roots of religions. I have a rough idea of how The Bible was put together over hundreds of years, especially the New Testament, but this should be the essential reference to settle, or at least frame, it all.

Karen Armstrong: The Bible: A Biography (2007, Grove/Atlantic; paperback, 2008, Grove): Short discourse on how the book came to be.

Karen Armstrong: The Case for God (2009, Knopf): Probably the best recent writer on the history and historical abuse of religion, she's long hinted that she sees religion as a deep-felt human need. Most likely that's her case, and the history will, once again, be impeccable.

Anthony Arnove, Iraq: The Logic of Withdrawal (2007-01, Henry Holt, paperback).

Erin Arvedlund: Too Good to Be True: The Rise and Fall of Bernie Madoff (2009, Portfolio): Author reportedly wrote the first critical article on Madoff.

Michael Ashby/Hugh Shercliff/David Cebon: Materials: Engineering, Science, Processing and Design (2007, Butterworth-Heinemann): Textbook on materials science. I used to buy things like this just for occasional reference. This is a subject that still fascinated me, and looks like a good one.

William Ashworth: Ogallala Blue: Water and Life on the High Plains (paperback, 2007, Countryman).

Reza Aslan: No Got but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam (2005, Random House).

Reza Aslan: How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of the War on Terror (2009, Random House): Author previously wrote No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, one of the best general books on the history of Islam. Not sure how that plays out here where Jihadism is one aspect both of Islam and politics, and the US anti-terror warriors have trouble understanding either.

Sharon Astyk: Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front (paperback, 2008, New Society).

Abdel Bari Atwan: The Secret History of al Qaeda (2006, University of California Press)

Robert D Auerbach: Deception and Abuse at the Fed: Henry B Gonzalez Battles Alan Greenspan's Bank (2008, University of Texas Press): Gonzalez is a D-TX congressman who chaired the House Financial Services Committee, one of the few politicians who ever tried to exert any oversight on the Fed.

Ken Auletta: Googled: The End of the World As We Know It (2009, Penguin): Author has written extensively about software and telecom industries, including critically about Microsoft, but he seems to have found something even more alarming in Google. I doubt that, but I do believe that the price we pay for advertising-sponsored services is much higher and far more perverse than we can imagine. I think Google tries to look at this pact benignly, asking how much useful service we can provide based on its advertising revenue stream, but I don't think it is so benign. Still, none of this exculpates Microsoft.

Uri Avnery: 1948: A Soldier's Tale: The Bloody Road to Jerusalem (revised, paperback, 2009, One World): First English translation of two books by Avnery published 1949-50. He is now known as one of Israel's most courageous and consistent peaceniks, but back in the day fought in the far-right Irgun. That the war was blood is no doubt something he remembers better than most.

Uri Avnery: Israel's Vicious Circle: Ten Years of Writings on Israel and Palestine (2008, Pluto Press): I've no doubt read most of this already. He never misses a beat or falls for a scam.

Alan Axelrod: The Real History of World War II: A New Look at the Past (2008, Sterling): Despite the title, this looks like a high school textbook, a nicely organized and illustated compendium of what everyone knows, with little or no additional insights. Author also wrote The Real History of the American Revolution: A New Look at the Past, just a year ago.

Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation (Perseus): Revised paperback edition of an older book. Not sure exactly what this is -- game theory, maybe. Author has another book, The Complexity of Cooperation. Important subject, the bedrock of civilization.

Stephen H Axilrod: Inside the Fed: Monetary Policy and Its Management, Martin Through Greenspan to Benanke (2009, MIT Press): Until Bernanke most of what the Fed did was diddle with the money supply, taking the punch bowl away when parties started to get going (unless you're Greenspan and the party is Republican, of course), and this briefly (213 pp) surveys that side, from a long time insider's perspective.

Phoebe Ayers/Charles Matthews/Ben Yates: How Wikipedia Works: And How You Can Be a Part of It (paperback, 2008, No Starch Press): Big (600 page) book on Wikipedia. We've been needing some kind of book to provide an intro to the mechanics and conventions of contributing. I've put a couple of little things in, but have generally been inhibited. I bought John Broughton: Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, but haven't read much yet. (Also Mark S Choate: Professional Wikis, which is more about how to set up your own MediaWiki-based site, which may be the hardcore way to do it.)

George BN Ayittey: Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future (paperback, 2006, Palgrave Macmillan): Relatively optimistic approach to Africa's future, positing a fresh restart from the chaos and depredations of the past. Author, an economist from Ghana, previously wrote Africa in Chaos: A Comparative History.

Andrew Bacevich: American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of US Diplomacy (paperback, 2004, Harvard University Press): Author of The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, a conservative who has been one of the most effective critics of US militariam. This book singles out the post-Cold War period. Note that Bacevich has a new book coming out in August: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism.

Andrew Bacevich: The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War (2005, Oxford University Press).

Andrew J Bacevich, ed: The Long War: A New History of US National Security Policy Since World War II (2007, Columbia University Press): Academics only: 608 pages, list price $77.50. Twelve essays, only a couple of people I've heard of, none other than Bacevich I particularly respect.

Andrew J Bacevich: The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism (2008, Metropolitan Books): Surprise bestseller. Looks short, and may idolize Jimmy Carter more than is really decent, but not a bad idea as a corrective. I think the key to the sales burst has been the way Bacevich has avoided any partisan association with the Democrats, who he correctly recognizes are a little too trigger happy. (Come election time we'll have to balance that off against McCain, who's easily the most trigger-happy presidential candidate since James Polk, maybe ever.) [On my to-be-read shelf.]

René Backmann: A Wall in Palestine (paperback, 2010, Picador): More like the wall in Palestine, cutting through the West Bank, less for security than to impose a new partition on the landscape, and not much about that either given the Israelis show every intent to keep both sides.

James Bacque: Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944-1950 (revised edition, paperback, 2007, Talonbooks): Canadian historian, looks into the underside of post-WWII occupation in Europe -- Giles MacDonogh's After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation is a newer and longer book on same subject. One reason these books are of current interest is that they suggest that all occupations are flawed -- I've seen reports of Young Republicans boning up on the US occupation of Germany and Japan during their flight to Baghdad. History could have served them better (not that they cared).

Joe Bageant: Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches From America's Class War (2007, Crown).

Matt Bai: The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics (2007, Penguin Press): Could be that this is just a pissy attack on web-oriented Democratic Party activists, in which case it's not an argument I much care to get into -- I'm more concerned with what's wrong in the real world than I am about nitpicking people trying to change it. [Paperback July 29]

Joel Bakan: The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power (paperback, 2005, Free Press): Not specifically about banks, but the author could write a sequel that is. For starters, the custom of treating fines for illegal activities to cost-benefit analysis is sociopathic.

Dean Baker: The United States Since 1980 (2007, Cambridge University Press): Short survey of the economic fruits of the right-turn following Reagan's election. Baker has been a pretty sharp observer, especially of the housing bubble. He also wrote a short essay, The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer. He also edited Getting Prices Right: The Debate Over the Accuracy of the Consumer Price Index, the set of statistical changes introduced in the 1990s that serve to understate inflation and thereby to underfund cost-of-living increases.

Dean Baker: Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy (paperback, 2009, Polipoint Press): Short (170 pp) essay on the financial debacle, from one of the few critics who clearly saw it coming.

Dean Baker: False Profits: Recovering from the Bubble Economy (paperback, 2010, Polipoint Press): Cover photos of Bernanke, Greenspan, and Paulson, although I doubt that it ends there. Baker was one of the first to understand the bubble and what its collapse would mean. This looks to be a little more developed than his slim Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of the Bubble Economy.

Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008, Simon & Schuster): Long (576 pages) series of short chronological vignettes -- news items, I guess, but only if we had a much smarter media than we do now or then. Few subjects have been distorted by self-serving myth as the origins of WWII. This looks to be an antidote to most of them, and if it creates a case for pacifism, so much the better. Possibly the most intriguing book I found this trip.

Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization (2008; paperback, 2009, Simon & Schuster): Short vignettes, framed like newspaper clippings, spread out in chronological order up to the end of 1941, by which time the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and the US had entered into the most horrific war of all time. Traces the growth of barbarism, and the inability of pacifists to stop it -- a key point being that no one else tried. An extraordinary book.

Peter Baker/Susan Glasser: Kremlin Rising: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the End of Revolution (2005; updated edition, paperback, 2007, Potomac Books).

Russ Baker: Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, the Powerful Forces That Put It in the White House, and What Their Influence Means for America (2008, Bloomsbury Press): Not what you'd call timely: who, after all, wants to think, much less read 592 pages, about the Bushes anymore. Not sure what all is in here, but one big thread is that GHW Bush had worked for the CIA before he became director under Nixon, and that somehow links him to the JFK assassination.

Tom Baker: The Medical Malpractice Myth (2005; paperback, 2007, University of Chicago Press)

Kevin Bales: Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy (2nd edition, paperback, 2004, University of California Press): Claims that chattel slavery, debt bondage, and contract slavery persist, affecting at least 27 million people. This is the case. Bales also wrote Ending Slavery: How We Free Today's Slaves (2007), and has a new, short book, co-written with Rebecca Cornell, coming out in paperback later this month: Slavery Today.

Philip Ball: Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another (paperback, 2006, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Lots of basics on physical laws with interesting tangents into the social sciences.

Dan Balz/Haynes Johnson: The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election (2009, Viking): Looks like this 2008's The Making of the President. Given that it was just about the only political story of 2008 that was adequately (indeed, excessively) covered in real time, I doubt that they have much to add.

Bill Bamber/Andrew Spencer: Bear Trap: The Fall of Bear Stearns and the Panic of 2008 (2008, Brick Tower): First book out on the subject, well before the crisis had played out, so they tend to view Bear Stearns as the exception rather than the rule -- a martyr for Wall Street's sins.

Chitrita Banerji: Eating India: An Odyssey Into the Food and Culture of the Land of Spices (2007, Bloomsbury): Travel, history, culture, all introduced through food, which is pretty much the way I learned whatever I know about India.

Russell Banks: Dreaming Up America (2008, Seven Stories Press): Historical novelist -- author of The Sweet Hereafter, Continental Drift, Cloudsplitter, most recently The Reserve -- writes a short essay on the self-conception of America over the years.

Benjamin R Barber, Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults, and Swallow Citizens Whole (WW Norton).

Charles Barber: Comfortably Numb : How Psychiatry Is Medicating a Nation (2008, Knopf): Author worked for 10 years in NYC shelters for the homeless mentally ill, so he may have some axes to grind: we spend less and less on mental health therapy, but more and more on drugs: the US accounts for 66% of the world market for antidepressants.

Robert J Barbera: The Cost of Capitalism: Understanding Market Mayhem and Stabilizing our Economic Future (2009, McGraw-Hill): Seems like a fairly establishment guy to go around badmouthing capitalism like that. Hyman Minsky follower, learning lessons from one bubble/panic to the next. Evidently a good deal more readable than Minsky's own recently reprinted Stabilizing an Unstable Economy.

Louise Bardach: Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana, and Washington (2009, Simon & Schuster): Claims to have inside dope on Castro's medical condition, but is mostly interested in speculating on what happens to Cuba once he passes. I imagine she finds a lot of nonsense. Don't know whether she can (or wants to) sort it all out.

Jason Socrates Bardi: The Calculus Wars: Newton, Leibniz, and the Greatest Mathematical Clash of All Time (2007, Basic Books): It is well known that Newton and Leibniz independently discovered calculus. This goes into the history and the dispute over primacy, for whatever that's worth.

Maude Barlow: Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water (2008, New Press): Canadian antiglobalization activist, about dwindling fresh water supplies and the politics surrounding them.

Cynthia Barnett, Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern U.S. (2007-04, Regional).

Donald L Barlett/James B Steele: Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business -- and Bad Medicine (2004, Doubleday).

Frank Barnaby: How to Build a Nuclear Bomb: And Other Weapons of Mass Destruction (paperback, 2004, Nation Books).

Cynthia Barnett: Mirage: Florida and the Vanishing Water of the Eastern US (2007, University of Michigan Press).

Dagmar Barnouw: The War in the Empty Air: Victims, Perpetrators, and Postwar Germans (2005, Indiana University Press): A study of German remembrance and opinion of WWII -- mostly a story of repressed memory and distancing. Don't know how well it addresses a couple of things I wonder about: 1) post-WWII Germany (and Japan) provide a sort of "best case" outcome for defeat and occupation in a modern war, so I wonder just how good that "best case" really is; 2) to the extent Germans (and Japanese) have adopted the American view of responsibility in the war (that they have is why they are best cases) has this allowed the US to take further advantage of them in ways that will ultimately be seen as unfair and self-damaging.

James Barr: Setting the Desert on Fire: T.E. Lawrence and Britain's Secret War in Arabia, 1916-1918 (2008, WW Norton): Although Britain had established effective control over Egypt and the Sudan earlier, their intervention in the Middle East starts here under the pretense of fomenting Arab nationalist revolt against the Ottomans, a schizophrenic mix of imperialism and liberation that they never understood much less mastered.

Allen Barra: Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee (2009, WW Norton): Biography, sorts out the myth and reality of the great NY Yankee catcher. One of my favorite players from my early childhood, I can still vividly recall his swing and his home run trot (in black and white, no less), and remember him from later on, managing, broadcasting, pitching ads, smiling knowingly when Joe Garagiola or Phil Rizzuto would make up a story about him. Still ticking, Berra has his own new book out: You Can Observe a Lot by Watching: What I've Learned About Teamwork From the Yankees and From Life.

Daniel J Barrett: MediaWiki (Wikipedia and Beyond) (paperback, 2008, O'Reilly): Large book on the free software package that underlies Wikipedia. I've been meaning to use MediaWiki for a couple of projects, so this is of special interest to me. On the other hand, I've been accumulating books on Wikipedia without yet getting to the point of using them. Won't have a real opinion on them until I do.

Dave Barry: Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far) (2007, Putnam): Very funny guy, at least once upon a time. Whether that time includes the present, let alone the recent past, remains to be seen. But his biggest problem is likely the material: much of it is too weird to caricature, and too tragic to reduce to doo doo jokes. Jon Stewart seems to be a better fit for the times. Barry was fine back in the Reagan era when you weren't really sure you had to take it all seriously.

Larry M Bartells: Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2008; paperback, 2010, Princeton University Press).

Bruce Bartlett: Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008, Palgrave Macmillan): A brief on why blacks should never trust the Democratic Party, built around a long list of racist misdeeds by prominent Democrats (mostly but not exclusively Southerners). Much of this history is worth recounting -- Woodrow Wilson's extension of segregation is a case in point -- although Bartlett never knows when to let up (e.g., the KKK member FDR appointed to the Supreme Court was Hugo Black, one of the staunchest supporters of civil rights ever). Then there's the Republican Party's past, some of which isn't buried at all. Bartlett got in trouble a couple of years back over his attempt to attack Bush from the right: Impostor: How George W Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy. Maybe this is his penance?

Bruce Bartlett: The New American Economy: The Failure of Reaganomics and a Way Forward (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Still a self-styled conservative, but whereas his 2006 book still clung to Reagan's legacy (title: Impostor: How George W Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy) and his 2008 book was dishonest (title: Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past) he finally has some doubts about Saint Ronald. Now he's pitching Keynes and the Welfare State to his conservative brethren, but it's probably too high and hard for them to touch.

Jacques Barzun: From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life: 1500 to the Present (paperback, 2001, Harper Perennial): Big book, one I keep thinking I should pick up and read, not least because it appeared in Billmon's last reading list.

Rick Bass: Why I Came West: A Memoir (2008, Houghton Mifflin): I read one of his first books, a novel called Oil Notes that read more like a memoir. He has a long list of short books since then. Always meant to read more.

Bradley Bateman/Toshiaki Hirai/Maria Cristina Marcuzzo, eds: The Return to Keynes (2010, Belknap Press): Nothing like a crisis to nudge economists back to studying reality, even to bringing back tools that allow you to do something about it.

Robert H Bates: When Things Fell Apart: State Failure in Late-Century Africa (paperback, 2008, Cambridge University Press): Failed states consume economies in chaos, corruption, and predation, but what causes states to fail? One suggestion here is that globalization, especially backed by IMF policies, undermined efforts to build stable, adequately financed state organizations.

Ravi Batra, The New Golden Age: The Coming Revolution Against Political Corruption and Economic Chaos (2007-01, Palgrave Macmillan).

William J Baumol/Robert E Litan/Carl J Schramm: Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism: And the Economics of Growth and Prosperity (2007, Yale University Press): Admits that capitalism exists both for good and bad, but doesn't seem to have realized that it may be both at the same time. Part of that may be due to seeing growth as good always.

William J Baumol/Robert E Litan/Carl J Schramm: Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity (2007, Yale University Press): This just in: "capitalism comes in different flavors, and some of those flavors taste very much better than others."

Jason Beaird: The Principles of Beautiful Web Design (paperback, 2007, SitePoint): Short, pricey primer, looks like it might be inspirational but somehow none of those web design books have ever nudged me into becoming a better web designer. Part of a series, including Jonathan Snook: The Art & Science of CSS and Cameron Adams: The Art & Science of JavaScript.

Alan Beattie: False Economy: A Surprising Economic History of the World (2009, Riverhead): Financial Times world trade editor skips his way through world history, picking up all sorts of more or less relevant connections, analogies, or innuendos. Sounds like it's oriented to entertain the general reader, with the fertile cross-polination of ideas sparking occasional insight.

Jack Beatty, Age of Betrayal: The Triumph of Money in America, 1865-1900 (2007, Knopf; paperback, 2008, Vintage). Important history of the coming of the Gilded Age and its resultant subversion of American democracy.

Dan Beauchamp: Health Care Reform and the Battle for the Body Politic (paperback, 1996, Temple University Press)

Glenn Beck: Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government (2009, Threshold Editions): I thumbed through this incoherent comic book last night, finding it virtually impossible to read. Back cover is covered with critical attacks on Beck, mostly pegging him as a vile moron. It says something about his niche marketing that he figures they're good for sales. Looks like his readers are the idiots, and the point of argument is to work up fury. Haven't looked at his other new bestseller, Glenn Beck's Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-Control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, let alone such earlier efforts as America's March to Socialism: Why We're One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades.

Antony Beevor: The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1938 (paperback, 2006, Penguin Books): The latest big book on a subject I wish I knew more about. Americans who fought for Republican Spain were subsequently diagnosed and disparaged as "premature anti-fascists" -- a rather bizarre ailment given what the fascists went on to do, all the more so given the way Neville Chamberlain is castigated for his appeasement of Hitler over the Czechoslovakian Sudetenland. The first great appeasement was over Spain, as the British, French, et al., failed to recognize what those "premature anti-fascists" knew damn well. Beevor has several war books, including previous ones on Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege 1942-1943 and The Fall of Berlin 1945.

Yossi Beilin: The Path to Geneva: The Quest for a Permanent Solution, 1996-2003 (2004, RDV Books).

Larry Beinhart: Fog Facts: Searching for Truth in the Land of Spin (2005; paperback, 2006, Nation Books).

Michael Belfiore: The Department of Mad Scientists: How DARPA Is Remaking Our World, from the Internet to Artificial Limbs (2009, Smithsonian): DARPA is the Pentagon's R&D arm, which often came up with useful inventions -- at least until Reagan redirected its attention to the Star Wars nonsense. Since then their reputation for reclusiveness has increased, probably for shame. Author also wrote Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots is Boldly Privatizing Space, which sounds pretty gushy.

David A Bell: The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It (2007, Houghton Mifflin).

Chris Bellamy: Absolute War: Soviet Russia in the Second World War (2007, Knopf): Big book on the side of the war that usually gets underrecognized here. Not sure how good it is.

SSG David Bellavia: House to House: An Epic Memoir of War (2007, Free Press): Reportedly a detailed, relentless, guilt-free assault on Fallujah, the author a "real American hero" with 5 confirmed kills and not the least bit of respect or sympathy for the other side. I suspect I'd find this book horrifying. But at least it has the ring of truth, unlike Michael Yon: Moment of Truth in Iraq: How a New "Greatest Generation" of American Soldiers Is Turning Defeat and Disaster Into Victory and Hope.

Walden Bello: Dilemmas of Domination: The Unmaking of the American Empire (paperback, 2006, Holt): Picks apart the increasing thrashing of the war on terror -- more specifically the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan -- combined with the economic thrust of US global policy. Previously wrote: De-Globalization: Ideas for a New World Economy.

Walden Bello: The Food Wars (paperback, Verso, 2009): A third world view of US agribusiness and its designs on what the world eats, how it is grown, and who profits.

Shlomo Ben-Ami: Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (2006; paperback, 2007, Oxford University Press).

Walter Benjamin: The Arcades Project (paperback, 2002, Belknap Press): A Marxist literary critic of great depth and sweep, this somehow assembles his unfinished, perhaps unfinishable, great project. Back when I was devoted to critical theory I was aware of this, but not as something that actually exists -- an analogy might be the Beach Boys' Smile. Haven't read Benjamin or any other Frankfurt School eminence in 30 years, but regard him as an old, dear friend.

Yochai Benkler: The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (2006, Yale University Press).

Owen Bennett Jones: Pakistan: Eye of the Storm (2002; paperback, 2003, Yale University Press; 3rd ed, paperback, 2009, Yale University Press)

Phyllis Bennis: Understanding the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict: A Primer (paperback, 2009, Olive Branch Press): I saw this as a pamphlet several years ago, but at 208 pp. most likely this has been updated. Bennis has a bunch of primers like this, including Ending the Iraq War, Understanding the US-Iran Crisis, and most recently Ending the US War in Afghanistan (with David Wildman). She's very good at getting to the point.

Mats Berdal: Building Peace after War: A Critical Assessment of International Peacebuilding from Cambodia to Afghanistan (paperback, 2009, Taylor & Francis): Short (186 pp) primer, drawing on multiple cases including Congo. Most likely this is one of those subjects where successes are all alike but failures each break apart in their own ways.

John Berger: Hold Everything Dear: Dispatches on Survival and Resistance (2007, Pantheon).

Peter Berger/Anton Zijderveld: In Praise of Doubt: How to Have Convictions Without Becoming a Fanatic (2009, Harper One): Sociologists, authors respectively of The Social Construction of Reality and The Abstract Society, seek moderate, measured grounds on which to base contingent beliefs. I'd like to think I do this already, but I'm not so sure about everyone else.

Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire (WW Norton).

Ben S Bernanke: Essays on the Great Depression (paperback, 2004, Princeton University Press): Predates Bernanke's appointment as head of the Federal Reserve. Suggests he actually knows something relevant to what's going on now -- not sure Lawrence Summers can make that claim.

Bruce Bernard: Century: One Hundred Years of Human Progress, Regression, Suffering and Hope (2001; mini edition, 2002, Phaidon Press).

Anna Bernasek: The Economics of Integrity: From Dairy Farmers to Toyota, How Wealth Is Built on Trust and What That Means for Our Future (2010, Harper Studio): It's hard to overstate how important trust is for any sort of functioning economy. Not sure how much of this concerns itself with finance reform, but clearly there is a need for restoring integrity and trust there.

Jared Bernstein: Crunch: Why Do I Feel So Squeezed? (And Other Unsolved Economic Mysteries) (2008, Berrett-Koehler): Short book by an economist who doesn't toe the party line about the gospel of economics. I ordered a copy, and will get to it before long.

Jeremy Bernstein: Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know (2007, Cambridge University Press).

Jeremy Bernstein: Plutonium: A History of the World's Most Dangerous Element (2007, Joseph Henry Press): One of the best physics writers working on the synthetic element that makes nuclear weapons possible. Also wrote Nuclear Weapons: What You Need to Know, which I've read, and Hitler's Uranium Club: The Secret Recordings at Farm Hall, which despite its marginal interest -- it collects transcripts of German nuclear scientists sequestered by the Allies after WWII -- I'm sure is fascinating.

Jeremy Bernstein: Physicists on Wall Street and Other Essays on Science and Society (2008, Springer): Scattered essays, the title having something to do with physicists creating financial models for profit or mischief; also something on South Africa's nuclear program. One of the best writers on physicists and their science around.

Peter L Bernstein: Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (paperback, 1998, Wiley): Big economic history of risk management; also available as part of a box set with Capital Ideas and The Power of Gold.

Peter W Bernstein/Annalyn Swan: All the Money in the World: How the Forbes 400 Make -- and Spend -- Their Fortunes (2007, Knopf): Seems to be a spinoff from Forbes, the magazine that cares about such things, with a lot of charts breaking the list down in various ways.

Wendell Berry: Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community ().

Wendell Berry: The Way of Ignorance: And Other Essays (2005, Shoemaker & Hoard): The latest (I believe) of many short essay collections, some profound, some just cranky and contrary. His essay about the first Gulf War (see Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays) did as much as anything to convince me of the rightness of pacifism. There's also a recent biography by Jason Peters: Wendell Berry: Life and Work.

Wendell Berry: Bringing It to the Table: On Farming and Food (2009, Counterpoint): A collection of old essays from over 30 years, with a new introduction by Michael Pollan. Probably leans more toward farming, which is Berry's passion.

Donald M Berwick: Escape Fire: Designs for the Future of Health Care (2004, Wiley)

Michael Bérubé: The Left at War (2009, New York University Press): Something on the US Left's response to Bush's War on Terror, possibly inching back to Clinton's Balkan wars; details "a left at war with itself," presumably between liberal hawks who have no sense of what war actually does, and those of us who do. Focuses on "Manichean" Noam Chomsky, "juxtaposing him with Stuart Hall" (whoever that is). Bérubé seems to be one of those self-appointed thought police who identify with the left just to muddle it up.

Barbara Bick: Walking the Precipice: Witness to the Rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan (paperback, 2008, Feminist Press at CUNY): Peace/women's rights activist, moved to Afghanistan in 1990 as civil war superseded the US-backed mujahideen war against the Soviet-backed regime, again in 2001 to the anti-Taliban Panjshir Valley before 9/11, again in 2004.

Derek Bickerton: Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World's Lowliest Languages (paperback, 2009, Hill and Wang): A book about creoles and pidgins, part memoir of a lifetime's study.

RE Biedermann: Health Care Cure! (paperback, 2002, Wheatmark): As far as I can tell, his cure is positive thinking.

Bill Bishop: The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart (2008, Houghton Mifflin): Bishop uses the phrase "way-of-life segregation" -- makes me think of those housing developments clustered around golf courses that have their own internal draw and external exclusion. Not sure if he's only concerned with this sort of microdivision, since sorting occurs at all levels on just about every axis. I don't see it as entirely bad -- the concentration of like-minded people can be intensely creative; e.g., Black Mountain, or the old Jewish Lower East Side -- but it often makes it harder to recognize and respect diversity. Robert Reich had a whole riff on how upscale suburbs are seceding from the rest of the country -- one obvious political impact is that it makes it real easy to see poverty as someone else's problem. [May 7]

Matthew Bishop/Michael Green: The Road from Ruin: How to Revive Capitalism and Put America Back on Top (2010, Crown Business): Of course, you first have to explain the road to ruin before moving on. Not sure where they're going, but seems to be a realistic analysis of how we got here.

Tom Bissell: Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia (paperback, 2004, Vintage Books).

Tom Bissell, The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam (Pantheon): Travel journalist goes to Vietnam with his father, who fought there in 1965-66. I read his book on Uzbekistan -- beautifully written, and thoughtful enough that he no doubt has something to say about what Vietnam did to America and vice versa, some of which is bound to be uncomfortable.

Richard Bitner: Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance (paperback, 2008, Wiley): I suppose there's a need for books by scum about how they screwed ordinary people out of their savings and homes and fed a profiteering ring that ultimately wrecked the whole economy.

Mark Bittman: How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food (1998, John Wiley).

Mark Bittman: The Best Recipes in the World: More Than 1,000 International Dishes to Cook at Home (2005, Broadway Books).

Ian Black/Benny Morris: Israel's Secret Wars: A History of Israel's Intelligence Services ().

William K Black: The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One: How Corporate Executives and Politicians Looted the S&L Industry (paperback, 2005, University of Texas Press): A couple years old and looking back on several scandals ago, but the title is as true as ever, and the lessons evidently still haven't been learned.

Robin Blackburn: Age Shock: How Finance Is Failing Us (2007, Verso): A sequel to his 2004 book, Banking on Death: Or Investing in Life: The History and Future of Pensions.

Ned Blackhawk, Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West (2006-11, Harvard University Press).

Douglas A Blackmon: Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008, Doubleday): Not just a general critique of the failure of reconstruction and the imposition of Jim Crow segregation, as if that wasn't enough. This book recounts how black convicts sentenced to "hard labor" were lent or sold to commercial interests, about as close to slavery as you can get. This practice continued "well into the twentieth century"

Tim Blanning: The Pursuit of Glory: The Five Revolutions That Made Modern Europe: 1648-1815 (2007; paperback, 2008, Penguin): Big book (736 pages), part of the "Penguin History of Europe" series, which evidently slices up history into time periods allotted to each author, covering a little bit of everything -- not just the five revolutions of the subtitle, a list that I haven't seen enumerated in any review (1648 marked the Treaty of Westphalia, ending the 30 Years War; 1815 ended the Napoleonic wars).

Harvey Blatt: America's Environmental Report Card: Are We Making the Grade? ().

Eric Blehm: The Only Thing Worth Dying For: How Eleven Green Berets Forged a New Afghanistan (2010, Harper): Heroic war literature with all those touchingly valorous little details. Hard to tell what actually happened from the hype, but it looks like this team dropped into Afghanistan in late 2001 to help organize Karzai's anti-Taliban Pashtun rebellion, which didn't exactly work out even then let alone for the long haul. More Afghan war memoirs/stories since last I collected a list: Jon Lee Anderson: The Lion's Grave: Dispatches From Afghanistan; Colin Berry: The Deniable Agent: Undercover in Afghanistan; Christie Blatchford: Fifteen Days: Stories of Bravery, Friendship, Life and Death from Inside the New Canadian Army; Matthew Currier Burden: The Blog of War: Front-Line Dispatches from Soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan; John T Carney: No Room for Error: The Covert Operations of America's Special Tactics Units From Iran to Afghanistan; Dayna Curry/Heather Mercer: Prisoners of Hope: The Story of Our Captivity and Freedom in Afghanistan; Ed Darack: Victory Point: Operations Red Wings and Whalers - The Marine Corps ' Battle for Freedom in Afghanistan; Lt Gen Michael DeLong: A General Speaks Out: The Truth About the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Mike Friscolanti: Friendly Fire: The Untold Story of the US Bombing That Killed Four Canadian Soldiers in Afghanistan; Chuck Larson: Heroes Among Us: Firsthand Accounts of Combat from America's Most Decorated Warriors in Iraq and Afghanistan; Marcus Luttrell/Patrick Robinson: Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10; Malcolm MacPherson: Roberts Ridge : A Story of Courage and Sacrifice on Takur Ghar Mountain, Afghanistan; Sean Maloney: Enduring the Freedom: A Rogue Historian in Afghanistan, and Confronting the Chaos: A Rogue Military Historian Returns to Afghanistan; Sean Naylor: Not a Good Day to Die: The Untold Story of Operation Anaconda; Johnny Rico: Blood Makes the Grass Grow Green: A Year in the Desert with Team America; Peter Telep: Direct Action: Special Forces in Afghanistan; Chris Wattie: Contact Charlie: The Canadian Army, the Taliban and the Battle That Saved Afghanistan; Stephen D Wrage, ed: Immaculate Warfare: Participants Reflect on the Air Campaigns Over Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq; Thomas W Young: The Speed of Heat: An Airlift Wing at War in Iraq and Afghanistan; also: Masood Farivar: Confessions of a Mullah Warrior; Emmanuel Guibert/Frederic Lemercier/Didier Lefevre: The Photographer: Into War-Torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders; Patrick Macrory: Retreat from Kabul: The Catastrophic British Defeat in Afghanistan 1842; Matthew J Morgan: A Democracy Is Born: An Insider's Account of the Battle Against Terrorism in Afghanistan; Jules Stewart: Crimson Snow: Britain's First Disaster in Afghanistan (i.e., 1841); Christine Sullivan: Saving Cinnamon: The Amazing True Story of a Missing Military Puppy and the Desperate Mission to Bring Her Home; Mary Tillman: Boots on the Ground by Dusk: My Tribute to Pat Tillman.

Philipp Blom: The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 (2008, Basic Books): Tries to recapture the experience of the times without the burden of subsequent history -- the Great War, the spectre of Communism, the rise of Fascism, an even greater war. I recall John Berger doing the same in "The Moment of Cubism" -- a more succinct and graphic summary. Cubism was just one of a dizzying range of inventions of the age, with technology just one dynamic vector; the psychological dislocations were at least as significant.

David Blumenthal/James Morone: The Heart of Power: Health and Politics in the Oval Office (2009, University of California Press): New history of the politics of health care policy.

Max Blumenthal: Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement That Shattered the Party (2009, Nation Books): Attempts to show that the movers and shakers of the Republican right wing are scum at a personal level, as well as ignorant and vile politically. Came up with enough examples to write 416 pages. Given how the post-Bush right has broken down, he may be right.

Sidney Blumenthal, How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime (Princeton University Press).

Sidney Blumenthal: The Strange Death of Republican America: Chronicles of a Collapsing Party (2008, Union Square Press): Essay collection, carrying on from his previous How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime. Author best known for defending Clinton from all corners, including when he had it coming. I rarely read him at Salon, so don't see much value in permanently binding him in hardcover. I am, however, more intrigued by the new reprint of his 1985 book: The Rise of the Counter-Establishment: The Conservative Ascent to Political Power. Only an establishment liberal like Blumenthal could see the neofascists half-way through the Reagan reign as a political counterculture.

Paul Blustein: The Chastening: Inside the Crisis That Rocked the Global Financial System and Humbled the IMF (paperback, 2003, Public Affairs): For 50+ years the IMF had been the stern parent of the third world, doling out money to keep first world banks afloat while tying its loans to forcing pro-capitalist "Washington consensus" policies on nations in dire need of development. Then came the 1997-99 East Asia crisis, where recovery and development was inversely related to IMF "help." Within a decade, no one would want IMF money on the old terms, and the IMF would be scrambling to change its usual prescriptions.

Paul Blustein: And the Money Kept Roling In (and Out): Wall Street, the IMF, and the Bankrupting of Argentina (paperback, 2006, Public Affairs): Another turning point for the IMF was its disastrous handling of Argentina's collapse, one of many important data points on the trail to the current recession.

Paul Blustein: Misadventures of the Most Favored Nations: Clashing Egos, Inflated Ambitions, and the Great Shambles of the World Trade System (2009, Public Affairs): Mostly on the failed Doha Round of trade talks -- the one that might actually help the third world but was postponed and ultimately shelved.

Philip Bobbitt: Terror and Consent: The Wars for the Twenty-First Century (2008, Knopf): Almost skipped this after seeing blurb praise from Tony Blair, and I still have my reservations: why, really, do we need wars in, let alone for, the 21st century? Big book (688 pages), claims to have the solution for terrorism. Bobbitt previously wrote the even bigger (960 pages) The Shield of Achilles: War, Peace, and the Course of History, frequently described (and not just by Blair) as "breathtaking" and "magisterial" -- sounds like hyperintellectual war porn to me. [May 1]

Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press).

John C Bogle: Enough: True Measures of Money, Business, and Life (2008, Wiley): Big shot financial tycoon, made a fortune pursuing more; now that it's collapsing, maybe the time to take a philsophical turn and contemplate how much is enough. Seems like a good idea even for folks who don't have enough (as opposed to those who merely think they don't). Bogle has previously written books like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing: The Only Way to Guarantee Your Fair Share of Stock Market Returns.

Giles Bolton: Africa Doesn't Matter: How the West Has Failed the Poorest Continent and What We Can Do About It (paperback, 2008, Arcade): Another book on the failure of aid to develop Africa. Don't know that he has any special insights, but he no doubt has stories.

Sara Bongiomi: A Year Without "Made in China": One Family's True Life Adventure in the Global Economy (2007, Wiley): The story of the author's attempt to spend a whole year without buying anything made in China -- the difficulties testifying to just how much in our daily lives is imported from China.

Richard Bookstaber: A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (2007, Wiley): Evidently the author was a pioneer in some of the novelties he now warns of. They basically seek to disguise risk, thereby inflating apparent value now and amplifying risk later. Should have been clear enough, but who believes they'll wind up holding the bag? -- especially in a world where profits are private but liabilities are easily sloughed off on the public.

Richard Bookstaber: A Demon of Our Own Design: Markets, Hedge Funds, and the Perils of Financial Innovation (2007; paperback, 2008, Wiley): Too early to catch the whole blow-up, but the author was a pioneer in some of the innovations he now warns of, which gives the book a sense both of expertise and prophecy.

Max Boot: The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (2002; paperback, 2003, Basic Books).

Max Boot: War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (2006, Gotham): Boot's The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power offered useful history wrapped up in a profoundly dangerous bag of theorizing, in essence arguing that small wars always work out fine for America, regardless of how ill-conceived or half-assed. The book was written to argue against the Powell Doctrine, appearing before the Afghanistan and Iraq wars that were intended as small wars before they got out of hand. The new book looks to technology to solve the problems of the old book. Anything to keep the war romance going.

Kristina Borjesson, ed: Feet to the Fire: The Media After 9/11: The Journalists Speak Out (2005, Prometheus): Interviews with 21 journalists on the pressures to support the Bush terror wars. Not sure who all is interviewed, but some war critics are included -- Paul Krugman, Juan Cole, Chris Hedges -- as well as bigwigs like Ted Koppel. Borjesson previously edited Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press.

Artyom Borovik: The Hidden War: A Russian Journalist's Account of the Soviet War in Afghanistan (paperback, 2001, Grove Press)

Anthony Bourdain: A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines ().

Mark Bowden, Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War With Militant Islam (Grove/Atlantic). As opposed to Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, and for that matter Iran in 1953, where the Islamists were doing our bidding.

Mark Bowen: Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming (2007, Dutton): Author previously wrote Thin Ice: Unlocking the Secrets of Climate in the World's Highest Mountains back when it was enough just to get the story out.

Gary Braasch: Earth under Fire: How Global Warming Is Changing the World (2007; updated edition, paperback, 2009, University of California Press): Photojournalist, previously wrote Photographing the Patterns of Nature.

Bill Bradley: The New American Story (2007, Random House).

James Bradley: The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War (2009, Little Brown): Author wrote Flags of Our Fathers, about his own father's experience in the war over Iwo Jima. Despite the broad subtitle, this appears to be a book about some specific mischief President Theodore Roosevelt and then-Secretary of War William Taft undertook in 1905 to fix US interests in the east Pacific by dividing up Asia.

Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 (Simon & Schuster, paperback). I have, but have not read, the two previous volumes, a luxury I hope to get to sooner or later.

Taylor Branch: The Clinton Tapes: Wrestling History with the President (2009, Simon & Schuster): The great historian of the civil rights movement sat down with Clinton 79 times to keep a contemporary record of Clinton's sense of his own history. This book is evidently not the verbatim tapes but Branch's comments from each session. Not quite primary sources, but not far removed either.

HW Brands: The Money Men: Capitalism, Democracy, and the Hundred Years' War over the American Dollar (paperback, 2007, WW Norton): Historian, has written books on Benjamin Franklin, Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, the somewhat more intriguing The Reckless Decade: America in the 1890s (the decade of the worst depression in US history up to the 1929 crash), a book on Texas, one on the Cold War. This one has five faces on the cover: Alexander Hamilton, Nicholas Biddle, Jay Cooke, Jay Gould, and JP Morgan.

Allan M Brandt: The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product That Defined America (2007, Basic Books): Definitive, or at least long enough (640 pages) to be, with major sections on advertising and public health politics.

Jurgen Brauer/Hubert van Tuyll: Castles, Battles, and Bombs: How Economics Explains Military History (2008, University of Chicago Press): Strikes me as a cheap argument, but the juxtaposition of economic and military logic, all those rational actors in pursuit of madness, is likely to offer some peculiar edification. But note that the economics of war has been drenched in even more red ink than blood for a long time now.

Gary Brecher: War Nerd (paperback, 2008, Soft Skull Press): Reportedly a data entry clerk in Fresno, CA, writing a column for the Moscow-based The Exile, Matt Taibbi's home for much of the 1990s. Scattered columns. Loves everything about the history of war. Doesn't think the US is very good at it.

T H Breen: The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence (paperback, 2004, Oxford University Press).

Piers Brendon: The Decline and Fall of the British Empire, 1781-1997 (2008, Knopf): Big book (816 pp), natch. Nice to see that he dates the decline from the American Revolution: nice to think that we started off by doing something right. Most Brits note that the empire achieved its greatest growth later, but the hideous effect the British had on their subject peoples makes it all look like decline in one sense of another.

Robert Brenner: Property and Progress: The Historical Origins and Social Foundations of Self-Sustaining Growth (2009, Verso): Essay collection, evidently some quite old, working out the historical transition from feudalism to capitalism. Also wrote: The Boom and the Bubble: The US in the World Economy and The Economics of Global Turbulence, both on more recent topics.

Howard Brick, Transcending Capitalism: Visions of a New Society in Modern American Thought (2006-12, Cornell University Press).

Robert K. Brigham, Is Iraq Another Vietnam? (Public Affairs). Seems doubtful this comparison by a McNamara collaborator will pan out.

Douglas Brinkley, The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Coast (Harper Collins).

David Brock/Paul Waldman: Free Ride: John McCain and the Media (paperback, 2008, Anchor): Following Matt Welch's McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, a quickie, with more on the way.

George Brockway: Economics Can Be Bad for Your Health ().

Howard Brody, Hooked: How Medicine's Dependence on the Pharmaceutical Industry Undermines Professional Ethics (Rowman & Littlefield).

Tom Brokaw: Boom!: Voices of the Sixties Personal Reflections on the '60s and Today (2007, Random House): Broadcaster, author of The Greatest Generation tries to do it again. Not sure what "it" is, perhaps just to haphazardly reduce a slice of time to a set of clichés. Given how badly the decade has been abused in the popular media lately, it's unlikely that this will make things much worse. At best people will start to be disabused of the notion that the quest for justice by children of an affluent society was nothing but naked self-indulgence, drug-induced fantasy, and hypocrisy. It still seems to me like a nobel attempt to achieve the ideals we were brought up to think the country was always about. The backlash of sheer hatred took us aback, especially how it was exploited by political hacks who have done little since them except grind us into the ground. Compared to their legacy, any sense of normal human aspirations in the 1960s would be a blessing.

Rachel Bronson: Thicker Than Oil: America's Uneasy Partnership With Saudi Arabia (2007, Oxford University Press): Reportedly one of the more balanced histories of Saudi Arabia and its relationship with the US -- she contrasts it with Rober Baer's Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude and Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties. The Saudis make for easy targets with their medieval theology, vast oil wealth, and nuanced pro-America/anti-Israel foreign policy.

Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism (Perseus). Argues that conservatives are more compassionate because they give more to charity.

Arthur C Brooks: Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America -- and How We Can Get More of It (2008, Basic Books): One of the few right-wingers who still seems to be trying to come up with new ideas, although it's certainly possible that this reduces to some syllogism like having money makes people happy and only the rich have money so the way to make the whole nation happier is to give the rich more money.

Cynthia Stokes Brown, Big History: From the Big Bang to the Present (New Press): Still human-oriented, but in in big chunks favoring pre-history, focusing on things like agriculture and cities.

Shannon Brownlee: Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer (2007, Bloomsbury): One of those books one mistrusts politically even though there is little doubt that its fundamental premise is true -- the big problem is that its opposite is also true, that despite all the oversell much of America is undertreated. You can spin these arguments any way you like politically, but if the author is honest we'll see overtreatment as one of many bad effects of a system that is fundamentally corrupted by business.

Harold H Bruff: Bad Advice: Bush's Lawyers in the War on Terror (2009, University Press of Kansas): That's putting it, uh, thoughtfully. John Yoo's book title, War By Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror, suggests that he wasn't even trying to be a lawyer. David Addington was always a guy who wrapped the law around his politics. Bush had no training in law: the only point he grasped was that as long as you could get away with it the law didn't apply. He hired lawyers to defend that insight. But then he also thought the only point of democracy was winning.

Robert F Bruner/Sean D Carr: The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm (2008; paperback, 2009, Wiley): One of those depressions from back in the good old days when the federal government was powerless as well as uninterested in doing anything about it. Fortunately, the bankers could appeal to a higher authority: J Pierpont Morgan.

Robert Bryce: Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of "Energy Independence" (2008, Public Affairs): The good news is this book does a hatchet job on the platitudes politicians spew about energy independence, mostly by showing how nothing they propose actually does the job. The bad news is that leaves us back with fossil fuels, and he may not have much of a sense of how limited that is. Previous books: Pipe Dreams: Greed, Ego, and the Death of Enron and Cronies: Oil, the Bushes, and the Rise of Texas, America's Superstate.

Bill Bryson: Shakespeare: The World as Stage (paperback, 2007, Eminent Lives): One of my favorite writers -- humorist, traveler, archeologist of the English language -- knocks off a short book on a subject obviously up his alley. I've read almost everything he's written, but lately fallen behind, barely conscious that his memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is now out in paperback.

Zbigniew Brzezinski/Brent Scowcroft: America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy (2008, Basic Books): Dialogue between two prominent brand names of foreign policy ideology, moderated by David Ignatius. How sad that it took George W Bush to make these guys look sane -- excepting Ignatius, of course.

Mark Buchanan: Ubiquity: Why Catastrophes Happen (paperback, 2002, Three Rivers Press).

Patrick J Buchanan: Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World (2008, Crown): Looks more like how Buchanan lost his mind. The loss of the British empire was pretty much in the cards regardless of the world wars that nudged Britain along. But the wars themselves were part of the mindset that built the empire in the first place. Germany's will to war came from the same desire for empire, pumped up marginally by revenge fantasies. To say the world wars could have been avoided is to say that Britain and Germany should have been allies instead of rivals. Right-wingers have often noted the availability of a worthy common enemy in Stalin, but in order to get that far you have to reconcile yourself to Hitler and all he stood for. I doubt that even Buchanan really wants to go that far, so why is he entertaining the prospect?

Frank Büchmann-Møller: Someone to Watch Over Me: The Life and Music of Ben Webster (2006, University of Michigan Press): Career-spanning biography, one of the all-time tenor sax greats, started in Kansas City and wound up in Copenhagen.

Christopher Buckley: Losing Mum and Pup (2009, Twelve): The author's famous parents died 11 months apart, triggering this memoir. As mine died three months and three days apart, I can relate, although our sets of parents had nothing at all in common. The Buckleys were born filthy rich, and spent their whole lives in fervent ideological celebration of their good fortune. The son somehow found a sense of humor in this, which sometimes helps him overcome his upbringing.

Grace Budrys: Our Unsystematic Health Care System (2nd edition, 2005, Rowman & Littlefield)

Vincent Bugliosi: The Prosecution of George W Bush for Murder (2008, Vanguard Press): I'd be happy to nab Bush on this or any other charge, anything to drive him from power, but I'd think the clearer case would be for fraud, as Elizabeth de la Vega has shown.

Paul Buhle, ed: The Beats: A Graphic History (2009, Hill and Wang): Text by Harvey Pekar and others; art by Ed Piskor and others. Not sure who all the others are. Short, celebratory, maybe a little critical when it comes to sexism. Stuff I used to care a lot about, not just when I read Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti but also when I followed Buhle's comics jones in Radical America.

Elisabeth Bumiller: Condoleezza Rice: An American Life: A Biography (2007, Random House): Winner of the 2004 Wimblehack sweepstakes for the most inane and obsequious reporting on the 2004 presidential campaign moves on to a subject worthy of her talents. I like the line about how Rice "has until now remained a mystery behind an elegant, cool veneer" -- shows you what a pro like Bumiller can do, whereas I'd just settle for describing Rice as a deceitful, shallow-brained psychopath.

Will Bunch: Tear Down This Myth: How the Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics and Haunts Our Future (2009, Free Press): Has there ever been any US president more deliberately mythologized for political purposes? A shill who fronted the most corrupt administration in American history, turning the federal government into an incubator for the far-right fanatics who have since done even more damage to the republic. A necessary book, but unlikely that Bunch goes anywhere near far enough.

Alan Burdick: Out of Eden: An Odyssey of Ecological Invasion (paperback, 2006, Farrar Straus Giroux).

Avraham Burg: The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Rise From Its Ashes (2008, Palgrave Macmillan). The former speaker of Israel's Knesset takes a hard look at what Zionism has done to Israel today.

Kathleen Burk: Old World, New World: Great Britain and America from the Beginning (2008, Atlantic Monthly Press): Big book (848 pages), tries to straddle the Atlantic from 1497 on.

Michael Burleigh: Blood and Rage: A Cultural History of Terrorism (2009, Harper Collins): A broad ranging smorgasbord of evil terrorists starting with 19th century anarchists, culminating in Al-Qaeda, most European or more/less directly tied to Europe. Lots of detail, but doesn't seem to have any overarching logic -- other than that terrorism is bad, of course.

Jennifer Burns: Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right (2009, Oxford University Press): Right-wing libertarian hero, one of the more unorthodox and unruly figures in American conservatism, all but worshipped for her two big novels, the main point of which seems to be that you can never be too greedy. I developed an intense dislike for her based on exposure to acolyte Nathaniel Branden, which may or may not be fully deserved.

Lawton R Burns: The Health Care Value Chain: Producers, Purchasers, and Providers (2002, Jossey-Bass)

Lawton Robert Burns, ed: The Business of Healthcare Innovation (paperback, 2005, Cambridge University Press)

Bryan Burrough: The Big Rich: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Texas Oil Fortunes (2009, Penguin): Big history of Texas oil men starting with Spindletop in 1901, continuing through their ultra-right-wing dynastic politics. Author recently wrote Public Enemies: The True Story of America's Greatest Crime Wave, which seems relevant, but is even better known as co-author of Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco, one of the big business scandals of the 1980s.

David Callahan, The Moral Center: How We Can Reclaim Our Country From Diehard Extremists, Rogue Corporations, Hollywood Hacks, and Pretend Patriots (Harcourt). Author of The Cheating Culture, he probably has some points, despite an annoying preference for railing against the left. "Callahan argues that the problems for most Americans are not abortion and gay marriage but rather issues that neither party is addressing -- the selfishness that is careening out of control, the effect of our violent and consumerist culture on children, and our lack of a greater purpose."

Thomas J Campanella: The Concrete Dragon: China's Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World (2008, Princeton University Press): Urban planning professor looks at China's building boom over the last 20-30 years, creating a substantially new and often precarious urban landscape.

Lou Cannon/Carl M Cannon: Reagan's Disciple: George W Bush's Troubled Quest for a Presidential Legacy (2008, Perseus): Unfair, I'd say. Both authors have their reasons to belittle Bush (cf. cover for graphic illustration). Lou has built his career as Reagan's consummate biographer. Carl already co-wrote another book giving Bush's credits away: Boy Genius: Karl Rove, the Architect of George W Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs. Personally, I don't see Reagan as much of a guru, nor Bush as modest enough to be anyone's disciple. Bush had help but mostly he managed to screw up on his own, for reasons as intrinsic as his sick character. As for Reagan, people have been covering up his messes for nearly 30 years now. This book is another way of denying them.

Michael F Cannon/Michael D Tanner: Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It (paperback, 2005, Cato Institute): Nothing wrong here consumer choice in a free market can't fix.

Bryan Douglas Caplan, The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies (2007-04, Princeton University Press).

Roane Carey/Jonathan Shanin, eds: The Other Israel: Voices of Refusal and Dissent ().

Roane Carey, ed: The New Intifada: Resisting Israel's Apartheid ().

Timothy P Carney: The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money (2006, Wiley): Described as a "small government conservative," at least he sees business as no better than government. Imagine he has some examples.

Caleb Carr: The Lessons of Terror: A History of Warfare Against Civilians: Why It Has Always Failed and Why It Will Fail Again (2002, Random House): Historical novelist comes up with a quick historical framework to 9/11, framed in the context of war against civilians going as far back as Rome, something the US is not unfamiliar with.

Matthew Carr, The Infernal Machine: A History of Terrorism: From the Assassination of Tsar Alexander II to Al-Qaeda (paperback, 2008, New Press): A global, comparative history, going back at least to 19th century anarchists, with at least some concern for what states do before and after terrorists attack.

Matthew Carr: Blood and Faith: The Purging of Muslim Spain (2009, New Press): In 1492 the Christian Reconquista defeated the last Muslim enclave in Spain. It also marked the beginning of the Inquisition, which killed or expelled all of the Muslims and Jews from Spain. This focuses on the Muslim side of the story, a horrific episode of what we now call ethnic cleansing.

Nicholas Carr: The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google (2008, WW Norton): Another big thinking book about the internet. Not clear whether it's good thinking, although the historical sketch might be useful.

James Carroll: Crusade: Chronicles of an Unjust War (2004, Metropolitan).

James Carroll: House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power (2006, Houghton Mifflin).

Tom Carson: Gilligan's Wake ().

Dan T Carter: The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (paperback, 2000, Louisiana State University Press): In reading several broad histories of the rise of the new right, one thing I've been struck by was how the current tone and temper of the movement -- what Jim Geraghty calls "voting to kill" -- only arrived with Wallace. Carter also wrote: From George Wallace to Newt Gingrich: Race in the Conservative Counterrevolution, 1963-1994.

James Carroll: Practicing Catholic (2009, Houghton Mifflin): Son of an Air Force General, ordained as a Catholic priest, long-time Boston Globe columnist, has written major books on the Pentagon (House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power) and Catholic anti-semitism (Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews) -- deeply ingrained stains that he was evidently able to overcome without losing his religion.

Graydon Carter: What We've Lost: How the Bush Administration Has Curtailed Our Freedoms, Mortgaged Our Economy, Ravaged Our Environment, and Damaged Our Standing in the World (2004, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Vanity Fair editor. Seems like a fair and balanced summary.

Jimmy Carter: Palestine Peace Not Apartheid (2006, Simon & Schuster).

Jimmy Carter: We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land: A Plan That Will Work (2009, Simon & Schuster): Most likely another sane and sensible book on the conflict, giving Israel way too much credit while Carter has become the favorite whipping boy of the Dershowitz mob.

David C Cassidy: Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, and the Bomb (2009, Bellevue Literary Press): A follow up to Cassidy's 1992 Uncertainty: The Life and Science of Werner Heisenberg with more info, especially on Heisenberg's controversial role in Nazi Germany's atom bomb project.

John Cassidy: How Markets Fail: The Logic of Economic Calamities (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Another book on the financial collapse of 2008, focusing mostly on the shortcomings of conventional economic theory -- all that stuff about robust, rational, reliable, all-seeing and benificent markets. What he calls Utopian Economics.

Robert M Cassidy, Counterinsurgency and the Global War on Terror: Military Culture and Irregular War (Greenwood).

Christopher Catherwood/Joe DiVanna: The Merchants of Fear: Why They Want Us to Be Afraid (2008, Lyons Press): Hint: Isn't that Bush and Cheney on the cover? The authors find a long history of fearmongering for political gains. Catherwood previously wrote: Churchill's Folly: How Winston Churchill Created Modern Iraq; A Brief History of the Middle East: From Abraham to Arafat; A God Divided: Understanding the Differences Betwen Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.

Christopher Cerf/Victor Navasky: Mission Accomplished! Or How We Won the War in Iraq: The Experts Speak (paperback, 2008, Simon & Schuster). Salon called this "an upper-middle-brow bathroom book," a couple hundred pages of direct quotes from the people who got us into this war -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, and Rice are all on the cover -- and those who cheered them on -- looks like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly too. The authors previously wrote the more generic: The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation.

Zev Chafets, A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (2007, Harper Collins): Enough fish out of water here this might actually be interesting, but the phenomenon is revolting, and celebrating it perverse.

Zev Chafets, A Match Made in Heaven: American Jews, Christian Zionists, and One Man's Exploration of the Weird and Wonderful Judeo-Evangelical Alliance (Harper Collins): Menachem Begin's former press secretary. Strikes me as a pure horror story, but it may help that Chafets at least finds it weird. Another book on the same subject is Timothy P Weber, On the Road to Armageddon: How Evangelicals Became Israel's Best Friend (Baker Academic).

Jonathan Chait: The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics (2007, Houghton Mifflin): The story of "supply side economics," a/k/a "voodoo economics," a theory I thought was long dead. It was originally cooked up to justify tax cuts on the rich, but nowadays the Republicans don't even need theories to do that -- it's burned into their DNA, isn't it?

Lisa Chamberlain: Slackonomics: Generation X in the Age of Creative Destruction (2008, Da Capo Press): Portrait of Gen X (those born in the mid-1960s through '70s) as pioneering entrepreneurs; one review tags this "gushing, anecdotal" -- not very useful attributes.

Giles Chance: China and the Credit Crisis: The Emergence of a New World Order (paperback, 2010, Wiley): Some allusions here about China's role in precipitating the credit crisis, whatever that means. From what I know, China mostly put its surplus into US treasury bonds. They did take a hit as the credit crisis crippled world trade, and they responded with a huge stimulus program that put them on a faster recovery track than anyone else did. Obviously, how the whole thing sloshed through countries like China (and India) should be of interest. How to blame them is less clear.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone (2006; paperback, 2007, Vintage Books).

Ha-Joon Chang: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism (2007, Bloomsbury Press): Another promising book I have lined up in my queue. One of the big problems in the world today is development, and there is little reason to think the self-interested superpowers are helping anyone else to improve their standards of living.

Peter Chapman: Bananas!: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World (2008, Canongate): The force behind the CIA in Guatemala, and so much more. Does feel like old news, but that's history for you.

Pratap Chatterjee: Halliburton's Army: How a Well-Connected Texas Oil Company Revolutionized the Way America Makes War (2009, Nation Books): Not sure how this changed war, but it did do much to bring back the spoils system, where politically connected firms reaped cushy jobs based on little more than their proximity.

Melody Ermachild Chavis: Meena, Heroine of Afghanistan: The Martyr Who Founded RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (paperback, 2004, St Martin's Press)

Sarah Chayes, The Punishment of Virtue: Inside Afghanistan After the Taliban (2006; paperback, 2007, Penguin Books).

Zaki Chehab, Inside Hamas: The Untold Story of the Militant Islamic Movement (Nation Books): Probably an honest account, although a David Ignatius comment on the back cover makes one wonder ("it's obvious that Chehab has had access to some of the PLO's most sensitive files"). Chehab also wrote Inside the Resistance: Reporting From Iraq's Danger Zone. Both are impossibly difficult subjects, shrouded in secrecy and propaganda, and ultimately far less significant than the public policies of occupation that those groups are fighting against. There's also a boomlet of books on Hezbollah, including some I could have listed here but didn't bother.

Ron Chernow: The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (1990; paperback, 2010, Grove Press): Ancient history, dusted off for another round. Author has a long history of writing about the moneyed, including Alexander Hamilton and John D. Rockefeller.

Ira Chernus: Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin (paperback, 2006, Paradigm).

Jeff Chester, Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy (2007-01, New Press).

Mike Chinoy: Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis (2008, St Martin's Press): Author is an ex-CNN reporter, which doesn't really make this an "inside" account -- but then you really wouldn't want to read a book on this by the likes of John Bolton.

Derek Chollet/James Goldgeier: America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 (2008, Public Affairs): Washington think-tankers on the decade-plus from the collapse of the Berlin Wall to the fall of the World Trade Center -- something they describe as "a holiday from history," as if war really is the only thing that gives us (think-tankers) meaning.

Aviva Chomsky, "The Take Our Jobs!" and 20 Other Myths About Immigration (Beacon Press): You can probably guess the rest; most likely, you can also come up with a list of counter-myths.

Noam Chomsky: Middle East Illusions ().

Noam Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance (2003, Metropolitan; paperback, 2004, Owl Books).

Noam Chomsky/Gilbert Achcar: Perilous Power: The Middle East and US Foreign Policy (2006, Paradigm).

Noam Chomsky, Failed States: The Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy (paperback, 2007, Henry Holt).

Noam Chomsky: What We Say Goes: Conversations on US Power in a Changing World (paperback, 2007, Metropolitan Books).

Clayton M Christensen/Jerome H Grossman/Jason Hwang: The Innovator's Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care (2008, McGraw-Hill): Christensen's a business researcher/writer who came up with some solid research and revealing thinking in his first book, The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business, and then parlayed that into a small fortune flacking for big companies. His book raised a lot of discussion when I was at SCO -- I saw it as very critical of the way they ran the company, but they had no trouble hiring him to deliver the opposite message. The other two are MDs who plug some details into his shtick. Probably a few interesting ideas in here somewhere.

Kathleen Christison: Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on US Middle East Policy (paperback, 2001, University of California Press).

Kathleen Christison/Bill Christison: Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the Israeli Occupation (paperback, 2009, Pluto Press): Short book with 50 photographs depicting life in the Occupied Territories.

Amy Chua: World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability (paperback, 2004, Anchor).

Amy Chua: Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- and Why They Fall (2007, Doubleday): One more comparative macro history. Her concepts -- tolerance is key to rising empires, which fall when they lose it -- may be worth exploring, but I keep thinking the whole notion of hyperpower is so outdated these days this winds up being a curio study, and it may not be the best one. I read her World on Fire: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability, which was marked by her broad learning and marred by her overgeneralizations.

Larry R Churchill: Self-Interest and Universal Health Care: Why Well-Insured Americans Should Support Coverage for Everyone (1998, Harvard University Press)

Ward Churchill: A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas, 1492 to the Present ().

Joseph Cirincione, Bomb Scare: The History and Future of Nuclear Weapons (2007, Columbia University Press).

Rodney Clapp: Johnny Cash and the Great American Contradiction: Christianity and the Battle for the Soul of a Nation (paperback, 2008, Westminster): Short book from a writer who specializes in religion -- an interesting past title is: A Peculiar People: The Church as Culture in a Post-Christian Society.

Eric Clark, The Real Toy Story: Inside the Ruthless Battle for America's Youngest Consumers (Free Press): The toy racket; the muckraking possibilities are endless.

Gregory Clark: A Farewell to Alms: A Brief Economic History of the World (2007, Princeton University Press): 440 pages isn't my idea of brief, but it is a big subject. Seen mixed reviews, which may mean he bit off too much, or didn't chew enough.

Victoria Clark: Allies for Armageddon: The Rise of Christian Zionism (2007, Yale University Press): The rabid support of apocalyptic Christians for Israel has long struck me as the dirty understory of Zionism -- for one thing, the core concept is profoundly antisemitic. Author is English, so presumably she won't neglect David Lloyd George, but most recent examples are American.

Peter Clarke: The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire: Churchill, Roosevelt, and the Birth of Pax Americana (2008, Bloomsbury Press): That would be a little over three years, presumably backdated not from the British withdrawal from Aden or Kenya but from India in 1947 -- Palestine was slightly later in 1948 (I guess the British saw how well their partition of India turned out). Even so that doesn't leave a lot of overlap with Roosevelt. One question I'm unclear about is to what extent the US chose to supplant the British empire (as happened most clearly in the Persian Gulf) as opposed to merely dismantling it. This may have some answers, although I'm just as inclined to go back to Gabriel Kolko's The Politics of War and The Limits of Power, books from the early 1970s still worth consulting. [May 13]

Peter Clarke: Keynes: The Rise, Fall, and Return of the 20th Century's Most Influential Economist (2009, Bloomsbury Press).

Richard A Clarke: Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters (2008, Harper Collins): Reportedly "goes far beyond terrorism, to examine the inexcusable chain of recurring US government disasters" -- the examples range from Vietnam to Katrina. Question is how far.

Charles Clover, The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat (2006, New Press; paperback, 2008, University of California Press).

Adam Clymer: Drawing the Line at the Big Ditch: The Panama Canal Treaties and the Rise of the Right (2008, University Press of Kansas): In his 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan made a big stink about Jimmy Carter having signed away the Panama Canal -- a pretty successful campaign ploy, but Reagan never did anything to undo the treaty, nor did his VP Bush when the latter was president and invaded Panama and overthrew the government.

Michael Cobb, God Hates Fags: The Rhetorics of Religious Violence (New York University Press).

Helena Cobban: Re-Engage! American and the World After Bush: An Informed Citizen's Guide (paperback, 2008, Paradigm): Journalist, especially expert on Middle East in general, Lebanese Shiites in particular; one of my favorite bloggers, not least because her pacifism is so firm. Recently wrote Amnesty after Atrocity?: Healing Nations after Genocide and War Crimes.

Gregory Cochran/Henry Harpending: The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (2009, Basic Books): Argues for genetic evolution within the last 10,000 years, contrary to the more common expectation of genetic stability in large populations.

Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy (Macmillan).

Patrick Cockburn: The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq (2006, Verso).

Patrick Cockburn: Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq (2008, Scribner): One of the best correspondents covering Iraq -- cf. his The Occupation: War and Resistance in Iraq. [April 8]

John F Cogan/R Glenn Hubbard/Daniel P Kessler: Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Five Steps To A Better Health Care System (2005, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research): Calls for patient empowerment (i.e., CDHC).

William D Cohan: House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street (2009, Doubleday): Focuses on ten days around the collapse of Bear Stearns, the beginning of the 2008 financial meltdown. Book has been described as novelistic, which I don't find very reassuring. Bigger issues like why and what it all means get lost in immediate details, but not nearly enough bankers flung themselves out of windows to make those details do.

William D Cohan: House of Cards: A Tale of Hubris and Wretched Excess on Wall Street (2009, Doubleday; paperback, 2010, Anchor): Focuses on ten days around the collapse of Bear Stearns, the beginning of the 2008 financial meltdown. Book has been described as novelistic, which I don't find very reassuring or entertaining -- maybe if more bankers flung themselves out of windows? Big issues like why and what it all means get lost in immediate details.

Adam Cohen: Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and the Hundred Days That Created Modern America (2009, Penguin Press): Focuses on intense arguments between five key confidants -- Lewis Douglas, Harry Hopkins, Raymond Moley, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace -- within the 100 days framework that FDR established as canonical. This sudden interest in all things Roosevelt is a clear sign of the times.

Daniel Cohen: Globalization and Its Enemies (2006; paperback, 2007, MIT Press).

Daniel Cohen: Three Lectures on Post-Industrial Society (2008, MIT Press): Short (108 pages). Cohen wrote one of the better globalization books I've read (Globalization and Its Enemies), plus another short big picture synopsis, Our Modern Times: The Nature of Capitalism in the Information Age. Sharp, balanced, able to get to the point.

Jay S Cohen: Over Dose: The Case Against the Drug Companies: Prescription Drugs, Side Effects, and Your Health (2001, Tarcher)

Lizabeth Cohen: A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America (paperback, 2003, Vintage): That post-WWII America turned into a shopper's paradise is pretty much a given -- this goes into details like advertising, shopping malls, suburban sprawl, but perhaps more significantly relates them to growing inequality rooted earlier than most studies report. Previously wrote: Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939.

Hillel Cohen: Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948 (2008, University of California Press): An important, little known story about how the Zionists used collaborators to seize control of Israel. Collaboration has always been critical to any successful colonial dominance, but one major effect here is how it hollowed out any prospect for a middle ground between the immigré Jews and native Palestinians.

Hillel Cohen: Good Arabs: The Israeli Security Agencies and the Israeli Arabs, 1948-1967 (2010, University of California Press): Important book on Israel's recruitment and use of collaborators. Cohen previously covered the earlier period in Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948. Subsequent volumes are likely to get ever stickier, especially after 1967 when Israel occupied Gaza and the West Bank, and after 1988 when Intifada broke out. Still, the principles were established early, and the effects within Palestinian society have been devastating. (I've read reviews of the original Hebrew edition.)

Rich Cohen: Israel Is Real: An Obsessive Quest to Understand the Jewish Nation and Its History (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Sweeping history of Judaism's obsession with Jerusalems (temples, Israels) both metaphorical and physical. I'm more than half way through, often amazed, sometimes thinking about a similarly shaped book I had imagined writing someday (like after I learned a lot more detail than I had before reading this). It confirms some of my views, challenges others, makes me nervous. My guess is that Palestinians will find it completely meshugganah.

Robert Cohen: Freedom's Orator: Mario Savio and the Radical Legacy of the 1960s (2009, Oxford University Press): Savio was the leader of the Free Speech Movement in Berkeley in the early 1960s, an interesting and iconic new left figure who largely faded from the spotlight from the mid-1960s.

Stephen F Cohen: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War (2009, Columbia University Press): The main interest here is probably the path by which the US and post-Soviet Russia returned to a quasi-Cold War standoff. Not sure how much of that there is, since Cohen is a Soviet studies guy, and likes to show off his expertise back to prime Stalinism.

Stephen P Cohen: Beyond America's Grasp: A Century of Failed Diplomacy in the Middle East (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Plenty to write about, but unless one tackles Israel, petrodollars, and military hubris there's not much to say about it. Cohen is a think tank "expert" on the region, which means he's on someone's payroll.

Stephen S Cohen/J Bradford DeLong: The End of Influence: What Happens When Other Countries Have the Money (2010, Basic Books): Well, China, for instance, as opposed to the US, which used to be the world's banker but isn't even its own these days. Short book (176 pp.), simple point.

Jonathan Cohn: Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis -- and the People Who Pay the Price (2007; paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Out in paperback now. This strikes me as the breaker in the glut of health care books -- the one to give someone non-wonkish who needs convincing. Meant myself to pick it up when it came out in paperback, but right now I figure I don't need convincing.

Gerald Colby/Charlotte Dennett: Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (1995, Harper Collins).

David Cole/Jules Lobel, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror (New Press): Two law professors, so I suspect this leans toward less free, which is the less interesting part of the equation, not necessarily the less important.

David Cole, ed: The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (paperback, 2009, New Press): Given the intellects involved, I wouldn't call what they did unthinkable; shameful, of course, and unconscionable, criminal even. Seems like a lot of these memos have made the rounds already.

Juan Cole: Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007, Palgrave Macmillan).

Juan Cole: Engaging the Muslim World (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Cole's long been the first person you check for news on Iraq and analysis thereof, so anything he has to say is likely to be of interest.

Brian Coleman: Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies (paperback, 2007, Villard): Expanded version of the author's Rakim Told Me: Wax Facts Straight from the Original Artists -- The '80s with short essays that provide necessary background info on critical hip-hop albums. Probably the essential music book of the year. I only put off buying it because I was hoping to get a freebie. Hasn't happened, and I haven't had time.

Steve Coll: Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004, Penguin Books).

Steve Coll: The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008, Penguin Press): Coll's Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 is the main book on the CIA misadventure in Afghanistan. This is another big one (688 pages).

Paul Collier, The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (2007, Oxford University Press): Development economics, gets compared favorably to Jeffrey Sachs and William Easterly, both of whose books sit unread on my shelf; e.g., by Niall Ferguson, whose paeans to imperialism cost him all credibility.

Paul Collier: The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (2007, Oxford University Press): This is regarded as one of the better books around on world poverty and development, which may just mean that it sticks to tried and failed formulas. (Nicholas Kristof calls it "the best book on international affairs so far this year" -- which doesn't resolve the question one way or the other.)

Lizzie Collingham: Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (paperback, 2007, Oxford University Press): A history of Indian cuisine in India and the world, with various comings and goings, compromises and coups. Less exploitative, more complex than an economic history.

Len Colodny/Tom Schachtman: The Forty Years War: The Rise and Fall of the Neocons, from Nixon to Obama (2009, Harper Collins): Faces on the cover: Kissinger, Cheney, Nixon, Bush, Perle (I think), Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Obama. Only some of those are neocons, although Kissinger's usual exemption doesn't seem all that stury. Unfortunate that Obama hasn't been able to shake this association, especially given how completely the prime neocon movers had been disgraced under Bush. Foreword by Roger Morris, who knows his way around this topic.

Jennet Conant: The Irregulars: Roald Dahl and the British Spy Ring in Wartime Washington (2008, Simon & Schuster): Third book by Conant as she digs around WWII for interesting stories. I'm not much for spy stories, but the other two books looked like they might be interesting: Tuxedo Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II and 109 East Palace: Robert Oppenheimer and the Secret City of Los Alamos.

Joe Conason, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush (2007-02, St. Martin's Press).

Matthew Connelly: Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population (2008, Belknap Press): History of the "underside" of the population control movement, especially the tendency to frame such programs in racial terms. Before the US right discovered the political utility of the "right to life" issue, it tended to be the right who promoted population control and the left who resisted them. I'm not sure where this book lands.

Jonathan Cook: Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East (paperback, 2008, Pluto Press): English journalist, writes quite a bit about Israel -- as I recall, he's based in Nazareth, a mostly Palestinian town within Israel proper. Cook also has a 2006 book, Blood and Religion: The Unmasking of the Jewish and Democratic State.

Jonathan Cook: Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair (paperback, 2008, Zed): The longer the occupation continues, the bleaker the critical books are becoming.

Richard Cook/Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings (8th edition, paperback, 2006, Penguin Press).

Richard Cook/Brian Morton: The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings: Ninth Edition (paperback, 2008, Penguin): New editions have been coming out every two years. This one caught me by surprise, probably because I haven't finished listing the changes in the Eighth Edition. This has long been the essential guide to recorded jazz; even for experts it remains invaluable for covering Europe better than any other guide, and for keeping a balance that spans trad jazz and the avant-garde. I found more good records in it than any other guide I have. Still, I've had more and more nits to pick with the last couple of editions. Not sure if that marks a change, or it just means that I'm becoming less suggestable as I listen to more and more stuff before reading the reviews. Also, note that each edition loses about as much as it gains. I keep all eight on a fat shelf, and will have to find room for one more.

John Cooley: Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism (3rd ed, paperback, 2002, Pluto Press)

Gregoire Coombs: The Rise and Fall of the HMO Movement: An American Health Care Revolution (2005, University of Wisconsin Press)

Christopher Cooper, Disaster: Hurricane Katrina and the Failure of Homeland Security (Henry Holt).

George Cooper: The Origin of Financial Crises: Central Banks, Credit Bubbles, and the Efficient Market Fallacy (paperback, 2008, Vintage): Seems to lay much of the blame on central bankers. He is certainly right that the present crisis was made much worse (if not necessarily caused) by the expansion of credit the Fed used to prop up the post-9/11 economy in its desperate attempt to prop up Bush's election prospects -- not that he puts it that way.

David Corn: The Lies of George W Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception ().

Jerome R Corsi: Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (2008, Threshold Editions): Author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry cashes in on another election. Came out same day as David Freddoso's The Case Against Barack Obama: The Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate, with the same discounts and promo push. At this point Corsi is leading in sales, #7 on Amazon vs. #15 for Freddoso. Both books show extreme 5-star/1-star splits.

Trevor Corson, The Zen of Fish: The Story of Sushi, From Samurai to Supermarket (Harper Collins): Food business, culture industry, etc.

Brian Coughley: War, Coups and Terror: Pakistan's Army in Years of Turmoil (2009, Skyhorse): A British "expert" on all aspects of the Pakistan military, having spent a good deal of his life in Imperial armies.

Tyler Cowen: Discover Your Inner Economist: Use Incentives to Fall in Love, Survive Your Next Meeting, and Motivate Your Dentist (paperback, 2008, Plume): I looked Cowen up after seeing Paul Krugman dis him. Easy to see why. His previous books include In Praise of Commercial Culture and Creative Destruction: How Globalization Is Changing the World's Cultures. Even the subtitle of this reductio ad absurdum economicum gives me the shivers: I don't want my dentist motivated; I want him to act like a conscientious professional, not a cash register.

Diane Coyle: The Soulful Science: What Economists Really Do and Why It Matters (2007; paperback, 2008, Princeton University Press): A new attempt to dress up the dismal science. Not sure what the point is or why it matters, but often these meta-books turn out to be more interesting than the primary research. Author has written a bunch of books, such as Paradoxes of Prosperity: Why the New Capitalism Benefits All. Hadn't noticed that it did.

Christopher Coyne: After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy (paperback, 2007, Stanford Economics and Finance): Seems like a heavy read, but probes deeply into why the US is unable to rebuild any of those countries we're so good at destroying. Examples go back to Germany and Japan, which aren't translatable into places like Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Somalia.

Jerry A Coyne: Why Evolution Is True (2009, Viking): Or, more or less implicitly, why creationism is crap. Sounds like a thorough brief for the defense -- a useful book, enlightening in its details even if you already accept the general notion. Amazon has a good letter from "Esk," raised as a conservative creationist, who writes how he "was entralled with the elegant simplicity and beauty and shear explanatory power of the ideas I was learning."

Gary Cox, Think Again: A Response to Fundamentalism's Claim on Christianity (University Congregational Press): Normally, I wouldn't give a second thought to an attempt to save Christianity from the Christians, but the late Cox was a local minister involved in the peace movement here, and I appreciate the slack his emphasis on non-judgmentalism cut me. Incidentally, another Wichitan, Gerald Paske, has a book called Why the Fundamentalist Right Is So Fundamentally Wrong (Marquette). Paske taught the first philosophy class I took at Wichita State.

Campbell Craig/Sergey S Radchenko: The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (2008, Yale University Press): The real roots are slightly deeper, but the atomic bomb was one of the initial sticking points in US-Soviet relations. Covered from both sides, as it needs to be.

Campbell Craig/Fredrik Logevall: America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009, Belknap Press): Argues that American war planners were unable to shake an insecurity complex which led them to distorted and perverse cold war policies. No doubt that there is something to this, but it's also true that at ever stage the US had dominating firepower and was able to aggressively project and assert that power far around the world. American insecurity was more psychological than anything else, perhaps rooted in fears about the viability of capitalism.

Campbell Craig/Fredrik Logevall: America's Cold War: The Politics of Insecurity (2009, Harvard University Press): One thing that's always striking about the Cold War is the sense of insecurity that motivated its US protagonists, not just because atomic weapons had raised the stakes so much as because they so often sensed that they were on the wrong wide of history. We know now that the Soviet Union was never a military threat, that it had next to no interest in third world revolutionary movements, and that it was economically and politically hollow. We've also seen US cold warriors psychotically struggle on past the collapse of the Soviet Union with disastrous results. This is something that needs to be rethought, and this sounds like a reasonable start.

Clayton E Cramer, Armed America: The Remarkable Story of How and Why Guns Became as American as Apple Pie (2007-02, Nelson Current).

Richard Ben Cramer: How Israel Lost: The Four Questions (2004, Simon & Schuster).

Gwyneth Cravens: Power to Save the World: The Truth About Nuclear Energy (2007, Knopf). Good rule of thumb is never trust a book that purports to tell you the truth. I am impressed that Richard Rhodes likes the book, but the author's numerous tours of nuclear power plants give off the whiff of Stockholm syndrome. It bothers me, for instance, when I read specious claims like: "A person living within 50 miles of a nuclear plant receives less radiation from it in a year than you get from eating one banana." Maybe true if the plant is functioning properly with no leaks and no waste moving toward your backyard, but factor in Chernobyl. Author starts with a Marie Curie quote: "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood." I doubt that Cravens adds that Curie died of cancer no doubt due to her experiments. (Her husband died much earlier, unequivocally due to radiation poisoning.)

John Crawford, The Last True Story I'll Ever Tell: An Accidental Soldier's Account of the War in Iraq (Penguin, paperback). I read a bit of this, but didn't find it very illuminating. No surprise that the military sucked, Iraq sucked, the war sucked. This was one of the first of what now are dozens of soldier accounts.

Matthew B Crawford: Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work (2009, Penguin Press): Author owns a motorcycle repair shop, which gives him practical problems to solve. One of the more suggestive explanations for why we seem to keep getting dumber and dumberer is that fewer and fewer people actually work with basic mechanics -- we're more into what Robert Reich touted as symbol manipulation, and it doesn't take much manipulation of symbols to come up with something profoundly stupid.

Matthew Crenson, Presidential Power: Unchecked and Unbalanced (2007-04, WW Norton).

Robert D Crews/Amin Tarzi, eds: The Taliban and the Crisis of Afghanistan (2008; paperback, 2009, Harvard University Press): Eight essays on various aspects of the Taliban, totalling 448 pp.

George Crile: Charlie Wilson's War: The Extraordinary Story of the Largest Covert Operation in History (paperback, 2004, Grove Press).

Patricia Crisafulli: The House of Dimon: How JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon Rose to the Top of the Financial World (2009, Wiley): Possibly even more obsequious than Duff McDonald's Dimon bio. Wall Street Journal calls this a "fiduciary love letter." Wonder if Dimon's quite the stud Midge Decter found Donald Rumsfeld to be.

Donald T. Critchlow: The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (2007, Harvard University Press): General history of US right from early post-WWII. Checked this out from library and started reading it, so you'll hear more.

Molly Caldwell Crosby: The American Plague: The Untold Story of Yellow Fever, the Epidemic That Shaped Our History (2006; paperback, 2007, Berkley): The story of the yellow fever epidemic that swept through Memphis, TN in 1878, killing about half of the population. This was certainly not the only time yellow fever hit the US, but must have been particularly dramatic.

Stanley Crouch, Considering Genius: Writings on Jazz (2007-04, Perseus).

R. Crumb: The Book of Genesis Illustrated (2009, WW Norton): Reportedly favors a very literal translation, consistent with straightforward illustration, as much as may be possible with the source material, which has always struck me as, well, a little weird.

Dave Cullen: Columbine (2009, Twelve): Ten years after the event, tries to explain why it all happened. I've seen this compared to In Cold Blood, which may be what it takes to rehash this oft-rehashed tragedy.

Jim Cullen: The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea That Shaped a Nation (new edition, paperback, 2004, Oxford University Press): A brief history of the stereotypical ideal for all America (well, almost all America).

Barry Cunliffe: Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000 (2008, Yale University Press): Archaeology professor at Oxford; big, illustrated, authoritative looking book, probably much like his previous The Oxford Illustrated History of Prehistoric Europe.

Philip J Cunningham: Tiananmen Moon: Inside the Chinese Student Uprising of 1989 (2009, Rowman & Littlefield): Evidently the author was there, was friends with various protesters, and kept a day-by-day account of the events. Seems a little dated for that kind of detail, but maybe not.

Elizabeth Currid: The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City (2007, Princeton University Press): Something on the arts business in NYC. Not sure how good on either arts or business.

Drew Curtis: It's Not News, It's Fark: How Mass Media Tries to Pass Off Crap as News (2007, Gotham): Easy enough to make that critique, but the main function of the book seems to be to collect as much fark as possible, and its attraction is how readily it digests all this crap that you may not otherwise bother to pay any attention to.

David M Cutler: Your Money or Your Life: Strong Medicine for America's Health Care System (paperback, 2005, Oxford University Press): An economist on questions of choice in the health care system.

William Dalrymple, The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857 (2007, Knopf; 2008, Vintage Books): Large history of England's takeover of India. I've read a bunch of essays/reviews by Dalrymple recently, and they've left a favorable impression, although the subject itself may have sufficed.

Clifton Daniel, ed: 20th Century Day by Day ().

Norman Daniels: Just Health Care (1985, Cambridge University Press)

Mark Danner, Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror (paperback).

Mark Danner: Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War (2009, Nation Books): A collection of essays (656 pp) covering a couple decades of war reporting, from El Salvador and Haiti to Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, where he paid special attention to Abu Ghraib.

Julian Darley: High Noon for Natural Gas: The New Energy Crisis (paperback, 2004, Chelsea Green): It seems likely that peak oil will be followed by problems in the supply of natural gas, although the picture of how that will play out is less clear. This is one of the few books that specifically addresses natural gas.

John Darwin: After Tamerlane: The Global History of Empire Since 1405 (2008, Bloomsbury Press): 592 pages, which qualifies as brief given his macro subject. I can see why he wants no truck with Tamerlane, who blew through the old world like an influenza epidemic leaving nothing but death and destruction in his wake. That leaves him with Europe vs. a few old empires in Asia that more/less resisted and a couple in the Americas that succumbed very fast (although I don't know that he covers them, maybe because he's more interested in the more resilient Asian empires).

Tom Daschle: Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis (2008, Thomas Dunne; paperback, 2009, St Martin's Griffin): Actually, cover credit is to Senator Tom Daschle, as if he still is one, and is followed by "with Scott S Greenberger and Jeanne M Lambrew," who presumably know something about the subject. Probably represents at least one stage in Obama's thinking (to the extent that he has done some), as the sort of compromise only a super-lobbyist could come up with.

Gregory Dattilo/David Racer: Your Health Matters: What You Need to Know About US Health Care (2006, Alethos): From an insurance exec.

Steven M Davidoff: Gods at War: Shotgun Takeovers, Government by Deal, and the Private Equity Implosion (2009, Wiley): Quite a bit here about how private equity groups, sovereign wealth funds, and investment banks takeover businesses, and includes some deals the government set up as part of its bank bailouts. Interesting stuff, almost all of which makes insiders ridiculously rich while putting a drag on the real economy.

Paul Davidson: The Keynes Solution: The Path to Global Economic Prosperity (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): A short book of economic policy prescription, based on the immemorial question, what would John Maynard Keynes say now?

David Brion Davis: Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World (2006, Oxford University Press): Returns to the subject of his 1966 breakthrough, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, which I more/less read not long after it came out in paperback. The short of it is that slavery was more/less invented to solve labor problems in exploiting the new world, and racism was more/less invented to justify slavery. This book likely goes more into abolition, which is another perspective on those issues. Davis has spent a lifetime on this subject, and he should be worth revisiting. [Paperback April 18]

Devra Davis: The Secret History of the War on Cancer (2007, Basic Books): Epidemiologist, focuses on environmental causes of cancer, which often as not got a pass in the so-called war. Also wrote When Smoke Ran Like Water: Tales of Environmental Deception and the Battle Against Pollution.

Lanny Davis, Scandal: How "Gotcha" Politics Is Destroying America (Palgrave Macmillan): From a Clinton Admin insider, who most likely has his own ax to grind.

Mike Davis: The Monster at Our Door: The Global Threat of the Avian Flu (2005; paperback, 2006, Holt)

Mike Davis: Planet of Slums (2006, Verso).

Mike Davis, Buda's Wagon: A Brief History of the Car Bomb (Verso): "The poor man's air force"; I read some of this at TomDispatch, probably enough.

Mike Davis: In Praise of Barbarians: Essays Against Empire (paperback, 2007, Haymarket Books).

Mike Davis/Daniel Bertrand Monk, eds: Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism (paperback, 2008, New Press): Various essays, "a global guidebook to phantasmagoric but real places" -- don't have a list, but Abu Dhabi is certainly on it, as well as smaller, more discreet enclaves for the superrich.

Howard Dean: Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer (paperback, 2009, Chelsea Green): Given all the "team of rivals" talk in assembling the Obama administration, it's rather strange that Obama made no effort to put Dean on the team. This is obviously a quickie lobbed into the debate on an Obama-backed plan that seems to miss the point. Pushes "Medicare for all," which if done right would evolve in to single payer.

John W Dean: Conservatives Without Conscience (2006; paperback, 2007, Penguin Books).

John W Dean: Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial Branches (2007, Viking Adult): Should mention this because I did bother to read his Conservatives Without Conscience -- but not the earlier Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W Bush. He's got a bug up his ass and, well, good for him. Dean also has another book coming April 15: Pure Goldwater, co-written with Barry Jr. Oh well.

Christopher de Bellaigue: The Struggle for Iran (2007, New York Review Books).

Harm de Blij, Why Geography Matters: Three Challenges Facing America: Climate Change, the Rise of China, and Global Terrorism (2007-01, Oxford University Press, paperback).

Kenneth S Deffeyes: Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (2001, Princeton University Press).

Kenneth S Deffeyes: Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (2001; new edition, paperback, 2008, Princeton University Press): Ex-Shell Oil geologist, teaches at Princeton, was John McPhee's guide for his first marvelous geology book, Basin and Range, introduced the concept of "peak oil" in the first edition of this book, and followed it up with the more general Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak in 2005. Deffeyes predicted a peak in 2004-2008, so presumably the new edition refines that prediction. A couple of global recessions since the first edition appeared suppressed demand, as did a couple of historic price run-ups. Hubbert's US peak was much more clearcut because slacking US production could painlessly (or so it seemed) be replaced from foreign sources. The same isn't true of world production, so we should expect the sort of chaos at the peak that we are in fact seeing.

Kenneth S Deffeyes: Beyond Oil: The View From Hubbert's Peak (2005; paperback, 2006, Hill and Wang).

Richard DeGrandpre: The Cult of Pharmacology: How America Became the World's Most Troubled Drug Culture (2006, Duke University Press)

Elizabeth de la Vega: United States V George W Bush et al. (paperback, 2006, Seven Stories Press).

John Derbyshire: We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism (2009, Crown Forum): Author has previously tended to write about math, although he also wrote a novel about Calvin Coolidge. Attitude here is refreshing in a world which has been, in Barbara Ehrenreich's term, bright-sided. I wouldn't have any trouble taking the same theme and running it from the left. Still, I'd be missing out on some inadvertent humor. For instance, Amazon's "frequently bought together" pairs this with Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: An American Life. Customers also bought Harry Stein, I Can't Believe I'm Sitting Next to a Republican: A Survival Guide for Conservatives Marooned Among the Angry, Smug, and Terminally Self-Righteous, and for that matter, Ehrenreich, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.

Alan Derickson: Health Security for All: Dreams of Universal Health Care in America (2005, Johns Hopkins University Press)

Alan Dershowitz: The Case Against Israel's Enemies: Exposing Jimmy Carter and Others Who Stand in the Way of Peace (paperback, 2009, John Wiley & Sons): Second sequel to The Case for Israel, which may be the most deceitful book I've ever read. He followed that up with The Case for Peace, which was a pile of rationalizations for anything but. That Dershowitz, and Israel at least in his mind, has not the slightest desire for peace should be clear from who he targets as Israel's greatest enemy: Jimmy Carter.

Michael C Desch: Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (2008, Johns Hopkins University Press): Dissects the argument, going back to 1815, that Democratic states are inherently more likely to prevail in wars.

Meghnad Desai: Marx's Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (2002; paperback, 2004, Verso): Returns to Marx after the collapse of the Soviet Union to find a thinker who saw capitalism as a necessary stage to socialism, not something one can simply oppose but must move through and beyond -- actually, a position broadly understood before Lenin tried to fudge an exception. As far as I understand it, I think Desai is right. However, it's not clear to me what the value might be of trying to salvage Marx from the Marxists. More recently wrote: Rethinking Islam: The Ideology of the New Terror.

Meghnad Desai: Rethinking Islamism: The Ideology of the New Terror (paperback, 2006, IB Tauris)

Carlo D'Este: Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874-1945 (2008, Harper): A lot of wars here, a lot to chew on, not obviously overblown even at 864 pages, but it does cut Churchill short, before he could get the Cold War off to its proper start, or goad the US into salvaging BP's bacon by staging a coup against the government of Iran in 1953 -- the start of a conflict that smolders even today. Indeed, it's hard to think of a war from the 1890s up to the decade after Churchill's death that he didn't have a substantial hand in, with the "troubles" in Ireland, the three Indo-Pakistani wars, and Israel's endless warmaking prominent among his legacies. I doubt that D'Este is anywhere near critical enough, or maybe even critical at all -- he previously wrote a book called Patton: A Genius for War. But no figure in the 20th century more deserves to be taken down a few notches, shown for the monster that he truly was.

Daniel H Deudney, Bounding Power: Republican Security Theory From the Polis to the Global Village (2006-12, Princeton University Press).

Marq de Villiers: The End: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival (2008, Thomas Dunne): Global warming, of course, but also volcanoes, meteors, massive tsunamis, noxious gases, plagues and pandemics, mass extinctions: stuff that happens all the time.

Alfred-Maurice De Zayas: A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans (second edition, paperback, 2006, Palgrave Macmillan): This is an interesting story, and I think it has some relevance for establishing the historical context of the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine -- Arabs often ask why they and not the Germans should suffer for the Holocaust, so part of the answer is that some Germans did. On the other hand, I'm not convinced that the forced removal of Germans from east Europe was such a terrible revenge -- many were newly planted as part of the Nazi war effort, and the others were used as rationales for Nazi expansionism.

Jared Diamond: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (1997, WW Norton).

Jared Diamond: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2004, Viking).

John Diamond: The CIA and the Culture of Failure: US Intelligence from the End of the Cold War to the Invasion of Iraq (2008, Stanford Security Studies): Another book on the CIA's uncanny ability to screw up everything it touches. I've recently read Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, which dishes the dirt from the beginning. This starts with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and covers the rudderless years in more detail.

Larry Diamond: The Spirit of Democracy: The Struggle to Build Free Societies Throughout the World (2008, Times Books): Sort of a globetrotting grade card on democracy metrics everywhere. Diamond wrote an Iraq insider book, Squandered Victory: The American Occupation and the Bungled Effort to Bring Democracy to Iraq, so you might say he's learned his subject the hard way. If, indeed, he's learned it.

Morris Dickstein: Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (2009, WW Norton): Big survey (624 pp), but a big subject, especially with all the music and literature. Helped that the New Deal made a point of supporting artists, and that they managed to do it while getting and giving relatively little flack.

Joan Didion: Political Fictions (paperback, 2002, Vintage Books).

Joan Didion: Fixed Ideas: America Since 9.11 ().

Joan Didion: The Year of Magical Thinking (paperback, 2007, Vintage Books): Two deaths in the family, survived by one of the premier essayists of our times. One of those books to read just for the magic of it all. Also note that the rest of her nonfiction has been collected as We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live: Collected Nonfiction, part of "Everyman's Library."

Philip M Dine: State of the Unions: How Labor Can Strengthen the Middle Class, Improve Our Economy, and Regain Political Influence (2007, McGraw-Hill): The state of the unions is poor, which has in turn hurt the middle class, the economy, and political prospects for doing anything about it. Dine may make that case, but I'm skeptical that restrengthening unions is the way back. More likely, if unions benefit at all it will be as beneficiaries of a political left that remembers them fondly.

EJ Dionne, Jr: Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith and Politics After the Religious Right (2008, Princeton University Press): Part of the backlash against the equation of religion with the far right -- a matter of much concern to Christians with a sense of social and political justice, and utter irrelevance to the rest of us. Dionne has written some promising books in the past -- Why Americans Hate Politics; They Only Look Dead: Why Progressives Will Dominate the Next Political Era; Stand Up Fight Back: Republican Toughs, Democratic Wimps, and the Politics of Revenge.

Jenny Diski: The Sixties: Big Ideas, Small Books (paperback, 2009, Picador): Something of a memoir from London in the 1960s, which keeps her slightly removed from parochial US concerns like civil rights and Vietnam -- allowing her to focus on the important things, like sex and drugs. Seems to conclude that the "big ideas" of the '60s led to the bad ideas of the '80s. Easy to argue that, but harder to prove culpability.

Michael Dobbs: One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (2008, Knopf): Looks like a major history on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. I just read Tony Judt's short book review on the subject, and found it gripping. Not that I'm up for 448 pages on the subject.

Brian Doherty: Radicals for Capitalism: A Freewheeling History of the Modern American Libertarian Movement (2007, Public Affairs): A mixed bag, most likely way too long (768 pages). I've long admired Murray Rothbard, but don't think his utopianism really works. Most of the rest of the cast of libertarian heroes have pretty tawdry careers, with Milton Friedman the worst because he was by far the most effective. [Paperback May 26]

Adam F Dorin: Jihad and American Medicine: Thinking Like a Terrorist to Anticipate Attacks Via Our Health System (2007, Greenwood): Lots of bad things that could happen; no reason to link them to Jihad.

Gilles Dorronsoro: Revolution Unending: Afghanistan, 1979 to the Present (2005, Columbia University Press): Seems likely to be one of the clearer-headed accounts of the Afghan long war. Author wrote a sensible strategy study for Carnegie called "Focus and Exit."

Ross Douthat/Reihan Salam: Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream (2008, Doubleday): A little cognitive dissonance here. It's not really opposition to "the Democrats' cultural liberalism" that motivates the Republican Party. It's greed. So while they get a kick out of splitting the working class over cultural issues, the principle they're really serious about is picking workers' pockets. Arguing that Republicans should promote workers' economic interests goes so hard against the grain as to be laughable. Of course, if workers want to believe it, they'd be happy to hum a few bars. Just don't expect it to pay off. (In fairness, Kevin Phillips started down this line two decades ago. He never got it to work.)

John W Dower: War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (1986; paperback, 1987, Pantheon Books).

John W Dower: Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (paperback, 2000, WW Norton).

Kirstin Downey: The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR'S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience (2009, Nan A Talese): Perkins was identified as one of the five key New Dealers in Adam Cohen's Nothing to Fear, and possibly the one furthest to the left. Focusing on her is a good place to start re-examining the New Deal.

Morgan Downey: Oil 101 (2009, Wooden Table Press): Runs 452 pages, the first 30 "A brief history of oil," then on to crude oil assays, components, chemistry, exploration, production, refining, standards, finished products, etc., plus 100+ pages on markets and prices. Looks like it hits Einstein's dictum of being as simple as possible, but no simpler than it has to be. Doesn't seem to have any agenda. Reportedly essential.

David Dranove: Code Red: An Economist Explains How to Revive the Healthcare System Without Destroying It (2008, Princeton University Press)

Robert Draper: Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (2007, Free Press): One more political biography; seems likely to have some insights, not that we need them any more. [Paperback March 25]

Tamara Draut: Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead (2006, Doubleday).

Rod Dreher: Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots (2006; paperback, 2006, Three Rivers Press).

Robert Dreyfuss: Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (paperback, 2006, Holt).

Tyler Drumheller, On the Brink: An Insider's Account of How the White House Compromised American Intelligence (2006-11, Avalon).

Andres Duany/Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk/Jeff Speck: Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream (2000; paperback, 2001, North Point Press): The authors are urban designers, evidently Jane Jacobs fans, upset at what they see in most American suburbs. Just running across a bunch of books on suburbia: James Howard Kunstler: The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape, and Home From Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century; Dolores Hayden: Building Suburbia: Green Fields and Urban Growth, 1820-2000, and A Field Guide to Sprawl; Robert Bruegmann: Sprawl: A Compact History; Joel S Hirschhorn: Sprawl Kills: How Blandburbs Steal Your Time, Health and Money; Robert Burchell et al.: Sprawl Costs: Economic Impacts of Unchecked Development; Anthony Flint: This Land: The Battle Over Sprawl and the Future of America; Robert Fishman: Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia; Kenneth T Jackson: Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States; Becky Nicolaides/Andrew Wiese, eds: The Sururb Reader; Joel Garreau: Edge City: Life on the New Frontier; Jane Holtz Kay: Asphalt Nation: How the Automobile Took Over America and How We Can Take It Back; Alex Marshall: How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl, and the Roads Not Taken. And that doesn't begin to scratch the literature of suburban anomie.

Lou Dubose/Jake Bernstein: Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency (2006, Random House): Dubose co-wrote two Molly Ivins books on Bush, here adding a laundry list of dirt on the VP. There must be a dozen or more similar books. One thing I'm struck by is the recurrent use of "hijacking" in books about the Bush regime. It's a graphic verb, but what actually happened was more like a big con job, which works to no small extent because the conned were willing to go along. Now that they realize they've been had, they can take some comfort in metaphors that emphasize their victimhood. But the more interesting question is what made them so gullible in the first place. Other examples, not all from the left: Jonathan Chait: The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics; Philip Gold: Take Back the Right: How the Neocons and the Religious Right Have Hijacked the Conservative Movement; Ariana Huffington: Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe; Peter Irons: War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution; Robert F Kennedy Jr: Crimes Against Nature: How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy; Robert Scheer: The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America; Paul Sperry: Crude Politics: How Bush's Oil Cronies Hijacked the War on Terrorism; Richard Viguerie: Conservatives Betrayed: How George W Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.

Ronald Dworkin, Is Democracy Possible Here? Principles for a New Political Debate (Princeton University Press).

Freeman Dyson, The Scientist as Rebel (New York Review Books): A collection of essays on science, especially book reviews on biographies of interesting scientists.

Michael Eric Dyson: Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster (2006, Basic Civitas)

Michael Eric Dyson: Debating Race (2007, Perseus)

Michael Eric Dyson: April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr's Death and How It Changed America (2008, Basic Civitas): One way it changed America was that it moved King from being an active critic of injustice in America to an icon of America's glorious past. Dyson helps bring that voice back, where it's as needed as ever. Dyson also wrote: I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. Also relevant: Clarence B Jones: What Would Martin Say?

William Easterly: The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001; paperback, 2002, MIT Press).

William Easterly, The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (Penguin; paperback scheduled Feb. 27, 2007). I have, but haven't read, Easterly's well-regarded The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists' Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (MIT, paperback).

Mary Eberstadt, ed, Why I Turned Right: Leading Baby Boom Conservatives Chronicle Their Political Journeys (2007-02, Simon & Schuster).

Thomas B Edsall: Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power (2006, Basic Books).

David B Edwards: Before Taliban: Genealogies of the Afghan Jihad (paperback, 2002, University of California Press): On Nur Muhammad Taraki, Samiullah Safi, and Qazi Amin Waqad. Author previously wrote Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier.

Mickey Edwards: Reclaiming Conservatism: How a Great American Political Movement Got Lost -- and How It Can Find Its Way Back (2008, Oxford University Press): Former Republican congressman, one of a growing growing crowd of conservatives trying to salvage something from the debacle -- cf. Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul: Fundamentalism, Freedom, and the Future of the Right; David Frum's Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win; Newt Gingrich: Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works; many more. One exceptional thing about Edwards' book is the unanimous praise he gets from Amazon reviewers -- mostly true believers, no doubt, but including a favorable blurb from the relatively sane Sean Wilentz.

Timothy Egan: The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (paperback, 2006, Mariner Books): In 1935 a single dust storm stretched from Amarillo TX into the Dakotas, one of the signature events of the Great Depression, a piece of ecological and economic disaster that rivals the worst of the Soviet Union. Egan has a number of books on the northwest, including a Seattle travel guide, The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, and Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West.

Timothy Egan: The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America (2009, Houghton Mifflin): Follow-up to Egan's bestselling book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time. Again he takes an event that was legendary locally and had some political repercussions that he makes the most of: a forest fire in 1910 that burned some 3 million acres, bringing Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot into play.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America (paperback, 2002, Holt).

Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (2007-01, Henry Holt).

Barbara Ehrenreich: This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation (2008, Metropolitan Books): Looks like a short collection of columns from the last few years. Brilliant, I'm sure; I can't think of a deeper or more fearless thinker on the left. Only big mistake she ever made was wasting The Worst Years of Our Lives on the 1980s, not realizing that even worse could still be in the cards.

Barbara Ehrenreich: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (2009, Metropolitan): I suppose you could call this "The Bright Side of the Dark Ages." One problem with positive thinking is when it functions as denial; another is how it personalizes problems. In some ways this seems trivial, but Ehrenreich is a profound critic of this sort of thing -- indeed, of most sorts of things.

Bart D Ehrman: Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) (2009, Harper One): Basic historical deconstruction of the New Testament -- the outline I've seen is mostly stuff I know about, but probably not at this detail. Evidently, Ehrman has been doing this for a while now. Previous books include: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (1996); Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It Into the New Testament (2003); Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (2003); Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005); The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed (2006).

Barry Eichengreen: Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (second edition, paperback, 2008, Princeton University Press): Author previously wrote Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1918-1939, which may be as relevant now. This originally came out around 1996, which would put it ahead of the East Asian meltdown, reason enough for a revised edition. Has released some interesting work recently on the new depression, too.

Gretchen Cassel Eick: Dissent in Wichita: The Civil Rights Movement in the Midwest, 1954-72 (2001; paperback, 2007, University of Illinois Press): Events I lived through -- not that I can claim to have paid sufficient attention at the time, but going back they ring true and the detail is recognizable. A good study of the civil rights movement in a medium-sized northern city that saw an influx of both white and black southerners, most to work in the WWII aircraft factories.

Juliet Eilperin, Fight Club Politics: How Partisanship Is Poisoning the House of Representatives (Rowman & Littlefield).

Peter Eisner, The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq (2007-04, Rodale Press).

Gail A Eisnitz, Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the US Meat Industry (2006-11, Prometheus Books, paperback).

Carl Elliott: Better Than Well: American Medicine Meets the American Dream (paperback, 2004, WW Norton)

Larry Eliott/Dan Atkinson: The Gods that Failed: How Blind Faith in Markets Has Cost Us Our Future (2008; 2009, Nation Books): Two British economics editors go after the IMF, World Bank, and WTO, the running dogs of globalization. Not sure how deep this goes into the currently deepening depression -- one could make a case that one grows naturally out of the other. Paperback previously published by Bodley Head in UK.

Charles D Ellis: The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs (2008; revised ed, paperback, 2009, Penguin): One of the key investment banks, which survived the meltdown partly because its traders had bet heavily against its own toxic CDOs, and partly because its ex-chairman, Hank Paulson, was running the Treasury at the crucial moment (e.g., when AIG, which held Goldman Sachs' CDSs, was going down). Paperback has an extra chapter, which hopefully explains all this.

Marc Ellis: Judaism Does Not Equal Israel: The Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic (2009, New Press): A professor of Jewish Studies with a number of previous books -- Uholy Alliance: Religion and Atrocity in Our Time and Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation: The Challenge of the 21st Century are two. It's not surprising that someone with a sense of justice grounded in Judaism should find problems with how Israel has acted.

Marc Ellis: Judaism Does Not Equal Israel: The Rebirth of the Jewish Prophetic (2009, New Press): Another in what's quickly growing into a bookshelf of books trying to put some distance between Judaism and Israel. Ellis sees this as a loss of Jewish sense of a "prophetic mission" to a narrative based on the intoxication of power, from the Holocaust and the Israeli military state.

Richard Ellis: Tuna: A Love Story (2008, Knopf): More prosaically, the story of tuna: oversized, overfished, sooner or later due to be destroyed, either directly or through farming. Ellis previously wrote: The Empty Ocean, which seems to be the basic book on overfishing, although also cf. Charles Clover: The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat (new in paperback from University of California Press), and Paul Molyneaux: Swimming in Circles: Aquaculture and the End of Wild Oceans.

Ezekiel J Emanuel: Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America (paperback, 2008, Public Affairs): Short book, focuses on the fix rather than the problem, pushing for a government regulated private insurance system that would provide enough transparency to make competition meaningful, with universal coverage funded through a VAT. That strikes me as something easy in theory, but hard in practice, mostly because it leaves private insurance motivations (greed) in need of constant regulation, whereas a fully public system only depends on people cooperating responsibly.

Charles Enderlin: Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002 (2003, Other Press).

Charles Enderlin: The Lost Years: Radical Islam, Intifada, and Wars in the Middle East, 2001-2006 (2007, Other Press): Follows up on Enderlin's Shattered Dreams: The Failure of the Peace Process in the Middle East, 1995-2002, the first clear book on what went wrong at Camp David. Plenty more has gone wrong since.

Tom Engelhardt: Mission Unaccomplished: TomDispatch Interviews With American Iconoclasts & Dissenters (paperback, 2006, Nation Books).

Tom Engelhardt: The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation (1995; second edition, paperback, 2007, University of Massachusetts Press).

Tom Engelhardt, ed: The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (paperback, 2008, Verso): 320 pages scraped from one of the best-written, best-edited web sources, consistently ahead of the learning curve on the numerous interlocking threads of the great war of our times (GWOT?).

Robert Engelman: More: Population, Nature, and What Women Want (2008, Island Press): More people, or more for each person? A book on population growth, and how women have throughout history have sought to manage their fertility to optimize their children's future. [Found this in library but didn't finish it.]

Mark Engler: How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (paperback, 2008, Nation Books): Looks at the future of capitalism in a world where US leadership under Bush has been discredited. Read an excerpt in TomDispatch that didn't go very deep.

Jon Entine: Abraham's Children: Race, Identity, and the DNA of the Chosen People (2007, Grand Central Publishing): Research into the genetic angle of Jewish history, a subject more succinctly covered in David B Goldstein: Jacob's Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History (2008, Yale University Press). This may be one of the few areas where anyone's still talking about races, but then Entine, who draws a paycheck at American Enterprise Institute, previously wrote: Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It.

Randy Charles Epping: The 21st Century Economy: A Beginner's Guide (paperback, 2009, Vintage): Author of the very similar A Beginner's Guide to the World Economy, originally dating from 1992, with a 1995 revised edition and a 2001 reprint. Most likely this title is basically another revision. Elementary, of course.

Rosemarie M Esber: Under the Cover of War: The Zionist Expulsion of the Palestinians (paperback, 2009, Arabicus): Another in-depth (448 pp.) run through the Palestinian disaster of 1948-49, drawing on details from both sides. Ilan Pappe covers similar ground, more briefly, in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine.

John L Esposito/Dalia Mogahed: Who Speaks For Islam?: What a Billion Muslims Really Think (2008, Gallup Press): Results from a six-year study by Gallup's pollsters, some 50000 interviews, sampling the opinions of 1.3 billion muslims. Big surprise is that muslims are pretty much like everyone else. Who would have thought that?

Lyle Estill: Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy (paperback, 2008, New Society).

Steve Ettlinger: Twinkie, Deconstructed: My Journey to Discover How the Ingredients Found in Processed Foods Are Grown, Mined (Yes, Mined), and Manipulated Into What America Eats (2007, Hudson Street Press; paperback, 2008, Plume): Not sure if he goes beyond the Twinkie ingredients list, but that may well suffice for 304 pages.

M Stanton Evans: Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (2007, Crown Forum): Not just an attempt to resurrect McCarthy's soiled reputation -- the goal is show how this conservative saint was martyred by the insidious liberal media. In the old canonical view, McCarthy was sacrificed as a case where a right-winger went too far, like David Duke or Oliver North. But sooner or later the right's think tanks will rehabilitate all of them. Didn't Goldwater say "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice"?

Richard J Evans: The Third Reich at War (2009, Penguin Press): Third volume following The Coming of the Third Reich and The Third Reich in Power, presumably the end of a trilogy, unless he wants to do a The Third Reich in Myth and History, which would itself be interesting, but a change of pace. Long (944 pages), stuff that's been covered a lot -- and continues to be; cf. Mark Mazower's Hitler's Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe. Don't know how good they are. I bought the first on a whim, thinking it might be interesting to note parallels between the emergent Nazis and the Bush fascists, but never actually got to the book.

Larry Everest: Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the US Global Agenda (2003, Common Courage Press): Writer for Revolutionary Worker rehearses the history of US/UK oil politics -- and, well, you only need one guess as to what Iraq was all about.

Stuart Ewen/Elizabeth Ewen: Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Inequality (Revised Edition, paperback, 2007, Seven Stories Press): Popular history/culture critique, pointing out the obvious once you see it. Stuart Ewen has written a bunch of books in this vein: Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture; All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture; PR! A Social History of Spin; and others. Elizabeth Ewen previously wrote Picture Windows: How the Suburbs Happened, and jointly they wrote Channels of Desire: Mass Images and the Shaping of American Consciousness.

David Faber: And Then the Roof Caved In: How Wall Street's Greed and Stupidity Brought Capitalism to Its Knees (2009, Wiley): CNBC business analyst, keeps it short (208 pp) and vivid, but probably not very deep.

David Faber: Munich, 1938: Appeasement and World War II (2009, Simon & Schuster): The event in question is the most clichéd in the 20th century, so it would be good to get a fresh review of the situation. Not sure whether this book does that, but it does appear to be a substantial book on the subject -- at least it weighs out at 528 pp. Not sure that it helps that he's less a historian than a journalist.

Charles S Faddis: Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (2009, Lyons Press): Another 20-year CIA vet with the usual load of FUBAR stories, the only surprise being that the book is remarkably slim (192 pp).

Brian Fagan: The Great Warming: Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations (2008, Bloomsbury Press): A big subject, presumably related to global warming, but book is relatively modest (308 pages). I have to wonder how much evidence he really has, and how useful that evidence really is. While comparative methodologies can be enlightening, they can also be mere exercise. Fagan has several more books along these lines, like Floods, Famines, and Emperors: El Nino and the Fate of Civilizations, and The Long Summer: How Climate Changed Civilization.

Richard Falk/Irene Gendzier/Robert Jay Lifton: Crimes of War: Iraq (2006, Nation Books).

James Fallows, Blind Into Baghdad: America's War in Iraq (Vintage, paperback). Collects his Atlantic Monthly reports. I'm suspicious whenever Andrew Sullivan and David Brooks applaud.

James Fallows: Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China (paperback, 2008, Vintage): A collection of pieces, mostly published in The Atlantic, on various aspects of life and business in China. Seems to be a fairly wide-ranging journalist, with a suggestive book called Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy, a book on Iraq and a previous book loosely related here: Looking at the Sun: The Rise of the New East Asian Economic and Political System.

Susan Faludi: The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (2007, Metropolitan Books): An account of "America's nervous breakdown after 9/11": that much seems on target. Could be insightful, but I don't have a lot of tolerance for Kulturkritik these days, which seems inevitable here.

Rick Fantasia/Kim Voss: Hard Work: Remaking the American Labor Movement (paperback, 2004, University of California Press): On the labor movement and its prospects, more basically on the political economics of work, the factors pushing wages down, not least the virtual disappearance of workers from the American social imagination.

Douglas Farah/Stephen Braun: Merchant of Death: Money, Guns, Planes, and the Man Who Makes War Possible (paperback, 2008, Wiley): Exposé of Russian arms dealer Victor Bout. Certainly not the only one, and a piker compared to the US Government.

Graham Farmelo: The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (2009, Basic Books): One of the pioneering figures of quantum mechanics. I doubt that it's right to call him a "mystic," but I wouldn't bet against strange.

John Farmer: The Ground Truth: The Untold Story of America Under Attack on 9/11 (2009, Penguin): A pretty detailed chronology of 9/11/2001, likely to be useful as reference if not much more. Author was involved in the official 9/11 report, so I'm not sure how much "untold" he has left to tell.

Roger EA Farmer: How the Economy Works: Confidence, Crashes and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies (2010, Oxford University Press): Short overview of economics in light of the meltdown. Strikes me as on the conservative side -- likes quantitative easing as a means to target asset price inflation but doesn't like stimulus spending to grow employment -- but isn't dumb or inflexible about it. [Apr. 7]

Anne Farrow/Joel Lang/Jenifer Frank: Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited From Slavery (paperback, 2006, Ballantine): Written by three Connecticut journalists, who shouldn't have had much trouble digging up the evidence, the sort of history that many would prefer to quietly forget. Some of this is well known; some, like gangs that kidnapped free blacks and sold them into slavery, isn't. I doubt there's enough here to quantify the title assertion -- e.g., certainly there are those who profited, but how much did this profit mean to the North as a whole?

Scot M Faulkner: Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution (2008, Rowman & Littlefield): Looks first at the 1994 "Contract for America" and the failure of the Gingrich Republicans to deliver on those promises, followed by the corrupt K Street racket.

Drew Gilpin Faust: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008, Knopf): An account of the US Civil War that focuses on the staggering destruction of the war.

Drew Gilpin Faust: This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008, Knopf; paperback, 2009, Vintage): Civil war history, focusing on death.

Gregory Feifer: The Great Gamble: The Soviet War in Afghanistan (2009, Harper Collins): Big surprise here is an American journalist writing an account of the Afghanistan war that is sympathetic to the Russians. That was taboo for many years, but the shoe's on the other foot now -- an indication of how far the US position has deteriorated. Still, what else can you do? Certainly not write a hagiography of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar as Afghanistan's George Washington.

Douglas J Feith: War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (2008, Harper Collins): I figure all political memoirs are self-serving cons until proven otherwise, and this is certainly no exception. I'm just wondering whether Tommy Franks will get to write a blurb. [April 8]

Noah Feldman: The Fall and Rise of the Islamic State (2008, Princeton University Press): One of the more dangerously misguided liberals around, probably because he can't distinguish between moral imperatives for individuals and political programs for nation states. Supported Iraq war. After it went sour he tried to guilt-trip us with What We Owe Iraq: War and the Ethics of Nation Building. He followed up with After Jihad: America and the Struggle for Islamic Democracy and now this book, with a break in between to consider our own jihadis in Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem -- and What We Should Do About It. Not sure whether he's profoundly wrong, or just a fool.

Michael Fellman: In the Name of God and Country: Reconsidering Terrorism in American History (2010, Yale University Press): Argues that terrorism has been "a constant and driving force in American history." Casts a fairly wide net: John Brown, Sherman's march through Georgia (but not his efforts to exterminate bison to starve out the Indians?), Ku Klux Klan, Haymarket Square, the Philippines War. We all recall that "violence as as American as apple pie," but I'm doubtful that resurrecting our love/hate affair with terrorism is a good idea.

Alvin S Felzenberg: The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn't): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game (2008, Basic Books): An exercise in such parlor games as "who's the worst president ever?" Breaks them down categorically rather than by just picking them off in order, which makes it more work to use, although possibly more useful to read.

Jonathan Fenby: Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850 to the Present (2008, Ecco): Big, general history of China since 1850, which doesn't seem like a particularly interesting starting date -- sometime after the humiliation of the Opium Wars, if memory serves. It does sort of fill a need, but with all the new books on China coming out -- the Olympics may have something to do with it, but it's ovedue anyway -- I expect it will take a while to sort out which books are really worthwhile. Just as an indication, there's also Rana Mitter: Modern China: A Very Short Introduction (paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press), which covers the same ground in 144 pages.

Stephen Fender: 50 Facts That Should Change The USA (paperback, 2008, The Disinformation Company): A sequel to Jessica Williams: 50 Facts That Should Change the World, reissued in 2007 in a 2.0 Edition. The emphasis is on facts that are non-obvious, counterintuitive even, but Americans are so ignorant -- one, or maybe several, of the facts -- that that isn't too hard.

Charles Ferguson: No End in Sight: Iraq's Descent Into Chaos (paperback, 2008, Public Affairs): The book behind a pretty good documentary about how Bush got us into Iraq and especially how his people screwed up the early occupation.

Niall Ferguson: The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (2008, Penguin): A timely history of finance, not so obviously full of shit as his last three books: Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power, Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire, and The War of the World: Twentieth-Century Conflict and the Decline of the West. Of course, having written those three books extolling the glory days of empire and lamenting their passage, he's probably still full of shit.

Nathaniel Fick: One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer (paperback, 2006, Mariner).

Dexter Filkins: The Forever War (2008, Knopf): By the New York Times' forever war correspondent, who never failed to swallow the government's propaganda whole. Now, he adds his own extensions and elaborations, a little self-fulfilling job security. Book has received extensive praise, including from a few critics of the war, so it may have some value in its details.

Ronald Findlay/Kevin H O'Rourke: Power and Plenty: Trade, War, and the World Economy in the Second Millennium (2007, Princeton University Press): 1000 years in 624 pages.

Howard Fineman: The Thirteen American Arguments: Enduring Debates That Define and Inspire Our Country (paperback, 2009, Random House): Who Is a Person? Who is an American? The Role of Faith; The Limits of Individualism; What Can We Know and Say? Who Judges the Law? Debt and Dollar; Local versus National Authority; Presidential Power; The Terms of Trade; War and Diplomacy; The Environment; A Fair, "More Perfect" Union. Mixed reviews on this, but sore losers abound.

Ann Finkbeiner: The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite (2006, Viking; paperback, 2007, Penguin): A history of elite scientists consulting with the Defense Department, especially after the Sputnik craze in 1958.

Madelon Lubin Finkel: Truth, Lies, and Public Health: How We Are Affected When Science and Politics Collide (2007, Greenwood): AIDS, contraception, stem cell research, marijuana as medicine, breast implants, obesity, vaccination, etc.

Eric A Finkelstein/Laurie Zuckerman: The Fattening of America: How the Economy Makes Us Fat, If It Matters, and What to Do About It (2008, Wiley): Another obesity rant, with some economics thrown in to spoil your appetite.

Norman G Finkelstein: Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (2005, University of California Press).

Norman G Finkelstein: Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2nd ed, paperback, 2003, WW Norton).

Norman G Finkelstein: The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (paperback, 2003, Verso Books).

Stan Finkelstein/Peter Temin: Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis (2008, FT Press): Short book on drug pricing and economics. Important subject. Don't know whether they figured it out.

Barbara Finlay, George W Bush and the War on Women: Turning Back the Clock on Progress (2006-11, Zed Books).

Claude S Fischer/Michael Hout: Century of Difference: How America Changed in the Last One Hundred Years (2006, Russell Sage Foundation).

David Hackett Fischer: Champlain's Dream (2008, Simon & Schuster): The key figure in the French discovery of America, regrettably omitted from Tony Horwitz's A Voyage Long and Strange, although Horwitz wrote a review quoted on Amazon's page. Found the book a bit dull, which is too bad given that Champlain and France had a distinct approach to the Americas.

June Breton Fisher: When Money Was in Fashion: Henry Goldman, Goldman Sachs, and the Founding of Wall Street (2010, Palgrave Macmillan): Gilded age history; thank God we got over all that. [Apr. 27]

Charles Fishman: The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World's Most Powerful Company Really Works -- and How It's Transforming the American Economy (paperback, 2006, Penguin Books): Likely a balanced account, likely critical enough. Other critiques include: Greg Spotts, Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price; Al Nonnan, The Case Against Wal-Mart; John Dicker, The United States of Wal-Mart; Anthony Bianco, The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart's Everyday Low Prices Is Hurting America; Bill Quinn, How Walmart Is Destroying America (and the World): And What You Can Do About It.

Robert Fisk: Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon (1990; paperback, 2002, Nation Books).

Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization: The Conquest of the Middle East (2007-02, Knopf, paperback). Have had this since the hardcover came out. Big book.

Robert Fisk: The Age of the Warrior: Selected Essays (2008, Nation Books): Mostly short columns, 546 pages of them. Not sure how far they go back, but the first section includes one called "Be very afraid: Bush Productions is preparing to go into action." Fisk has covered what he called The Great War for Civilisation at least as far back as the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which he chronicled in Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon. The earlier book is absolutely essential. The later I bought but still haven't found time for. This covers the same ground in small bites, and carries forward -- toward the end is "Who killed Benazir?"

Raymond Fisman/Edward Miguel: Economic Gangsters: Corruption, Violence, and the Poverty of Nations (2008, Princeton University Press): Economists, examine corruption as a prime reason why developing countries don't develop.

Paul Fitzgerald/Elizabeth Gould: Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (paperback, 2009, City Lights): Journalists, not sure how deep they go into history, but there is plenty of recent travail to report in America's haphazard, half-assed occupation.

Laura Flanders: Bushwomen: Tales of a Cynical Species (2004, Verso).

Tim Flannery: The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth (2006, Atlantic Monthly Press).

Tim Flannery: Now or Never: Why We Must Act Now to End Climate Change and Create a Sustainable Future (2009, Atlantic Monthly Press): Short (176 pp) book by a natural scientist, wrote a good book on North America called The Eternal Frontier: An Ecological History of North America and Its Peoples and, more recently, one on climate change, The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What It Means for Life on Earth. This attempts a broadside, but isn't terribly convincing.

Leonard M Fleck: Just Caring: Health Care Rationing and Democracy (2009, Oxford University Press): Takes rationing as a serious ethical issue, insisting that "no one has a moral right to impose rationing decisions on others if they are unwilling to impose those same rationing decisions on themselves in the same medical circumstances."

William A Fleckenstein: Greenspan's Bubbles: The Age of Ignorance at the Federal Reserve (2008, McGraw-Hill): Pretty harsh on Greenspan, but probably more accurate than Woodward's book -- what was it called, Maestro? Note that Peter Hartcher has a similar book, Bubble Man.

Dan Fleshler: Transforming America's Israel Lobby: The Limits of Its Power and the Potential for Change (2009, Potomac Books): About J Street, the relatively peaceable alternative to hyperhawkish Isreal lobby AIPAC. Phillip Weiss gave the book a nice plaudit, so I checked Fleshler's website and found him trying to put distance between himself and "assimilationist" Weiss. That sort of attitude strikes me as too much trouble to bother with. It's OK that some people think they can be Zionists and for peace at the same time. The problem is when they break their vows for peace to prove they're still Zionists in good standing.

Ronald Florence, Lawrence and Aaronsohn: TE Lawrence, Aaron Aaronsohn, and the Seeds of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (Viking Adult): Aaronsohn was a Zionist who organized a British spy ring in Ottoman Palestine, providing a contrast to the Arabophilic Lawrence. But both are tied to British imperialism, which hasn't gotten anywhere near its due share of the blame.

Daniel J Flynn: A Conservative History of the American Left (2008, Crown Forum): The title aims to preach to the choir, assuring them that it's safe to go there, kind of like A Puritan's Guide to the Sexual Revolution. Amazon's product description starts off in subtitle fashion: From Communes to Clinton. Probably not as nutso as Jonah Goldberg: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left or Dinesh D'Souza: The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, but one can't be sure a priori: cf. Flynn's previous Why the Left Hates America: Exposing the Lies That Have Obscured Our Nation's Greatness.

Stephen Flynn, Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation (Random House). A professional disaster-monger, last time wrote America the Vulnerable: How Our Government Is Failing to Protect Us From Terrorism. This time argues that natural disasters may be even worse.

Duncan K Foley: Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology (paperback, 2008, Belknap Press): Adam as in Smith, the starting point for a critical survey of keystone economists Robert Heilbroner covered in The Worldly Philosophers. Foley also wrote Understanding Capital: Marx's Economic Theory.

Sherman Folland/Allen Goodman/Miron Stano: The Economics of Health and Health Care (6th Edition, 2009, Prentice-Hall): At $168, priced like its subject matter.

Eric Foner, Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction (2006-11, Knopf, paperback).

Steve Forbes/Elizabeth Ames: How Capitalism Will Save Us: Why Free People and Free Markets Are the Best Answer in Today's Economy (2009, Crown Business): Forbes started writing this before the crisis, but he's not about to let history affect his convictions. He knows free markets are the answer to whatever ails us. What I'm not sure of is who "us" is.

Meredith Fort/Mary Ann Mercer/Oscar Gish, eds: Sickness and Wealth: The Corporate Assault on Global Health (paperback, 2004, South End Press)

Richard Fortey: Dry Storeroom No. 1: The Secret Life of the Natural History Museum (2008, Knopf): A longtime denizen of the Natural History Museum; likely to be an interesting book.

John Bellamy Foster/Fred Magdoff: The Great Financial Crisis: Causes and Consequences (paperback, 2009, Monthly Review Press): Short (160 pp) Marxian analysis of how capitalism's tendencies toward stagnation led to the current crisis.

Ron Fournier, Douglas B. Sosnik, Matthew J. Dodd, Applebee's America: How Successful Political, Business and Religious Leaders Connect With the New American Community (Simon & Schuster). A portrait of America obtained by interviewing patrons at Applebee's restaurants, written by Clinton and Bush hacks, endorsed by Hillary and McCain. I'm kind of fond of the riblets, myself, but they didn't interview me.

Justin Fox: The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street (2009, Harper Business): Organized thematically, jumping around in time, which lets him sneak a big subject into 400 pages.

Justin Frank: Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (2004; revised paperback, 2007, Harper): I'm very wary of anyone trying to reduce political decisionmaking to psychological factors, but the more the Bush regime's acts come to reflect the personality of the leader, the more clear it is that he has a few screws loose.

Robert Frank: Richistan: A Journey Through the American Wealth Boom and the Lives of the New Rich (2007; paperback, 2008, Three Rivers Press): Wall Street Journal columnist, not economist Robert H Frank. A tour through the world of the ultrarich, long on how they differ and short on what it means.

Robert H Frank: The Economic Naturalist: In Search of Explanations for Everyday Enigmas (paperback, 2008, Basic Books): Another scattered collection in the economics-as-oracle genre (cf. Freakonomics). Frank has several interesting credits: the recent Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class; an older business book I read when it first came out, The Winner-Take-All Society: Why the Few at the Top Get So Much More Than the Rest of Us, co-written with Philip J Cook.

Thomas Frank: What's the Matter With Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (2004, Metropolitan Books).

Thomas Frank: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule (2008, Metropolitan): I snapped this up and will get to it sooner or later. It's very much up the line of what I've been thinking about, and doubtless has a lot of useful details -- especially on the corruption that has become so rampant under the Republicans. Also picked up James Galbraith's The Predator State, which strikes me as more likely to teach me something I don't already know.

Thomas Frank: The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Ruined Government, Enriched Themselves, and Beggared the Nation (2008; paperback, 2009, Holt): A pretty accurate summary of the Republicans' run of ruin in Washington. Paperback added something to the subtitle; not sure if the book has been updated.

Douglas Frantz/Catherine Collins: The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets . . . And How We Could Have Stopped Him (2007, Twelve).

Steve Fraser: Wall Street: America's Dream Palace (2008, Yale University Press): Background on the allure and romance of Wall Street, which goes a long way to letting them get away with it all. A short (208 pp) book following his much longer Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life.

Steve Fraser, ed: Ruling America: A History of Wealth and Power in America (paperback, 2005, Harvard University Press).

Steve Fraser: Every Man a Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life (paperback, 2006, Harper Perennial): Big history of the role Wall Street has played in American culture and history. Fraser more recently wrote the much shorter Wall Street: America's Dream Palace, along much the same lines.

Ian Frazier: On the Rez ().

Ian Frazier: Lamentations of the Father: Essays (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Scattered short pieces, presumably humorous. Author has written some of the better nonfiction books of the past decade -- the three that I've read are Great Plains, Family, and On the Rez.

David Freddoso: The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate (2008, Regnery): The right's first big hatchet job on Obama, rushed into print after the expiry date on dozens of Hillary Clinton books lapsed. Bound for the bestseller lists: Borders introduced it with a 40% discount; Amazon with 45%. Same treatment for Swift Boater Jerome R Corsi: Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality (2008, Threshold Editions).

Lawrence Freedman: A Choice of Enemies: America Confronts the Middle East (2008, Public Affairs): Big picture history of the US in the Middle East (640 pages), the sort of thing reviewers like to call "magisterial." Starts with Carter, so figure the muck up in Iran looms large.

Charles Freeman: The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason (paperback, 2005, Vintage Books).

Howard W French: A Continent for the Taking: The Tragedy and Hope of Africa (paperback, 2005, Vintage Books).

Patrick French: The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of VS Naipaul (2008, Knopf): A major writer and intellectual figure, born in Trinidad but rooted in India.

Bruno S Frey: Happiness: A Revolution in Economics (2008, MIT Press): Economist, has written a couple of books on psychological factors in motivation, sums his research up here. Happiness seems to be the pivotal concept for consolidating work on non-material motivations, regardless of the second thoughts the more philosophically or sociologically inclined are having on the subject.

Jeffrey A Frieden: Global Capitalism: Its Fall and Rise in the Twentieth Century (2006; paperback, 2007, WW Norton): Global history of capitalism in the 20th century, with its obvious fall in the 1930s and a fairly long stretch of expansion after WWII. Seems like it might be a useful overview.

Saul Friedlander: The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 (paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): The latest massive survey of the Holocaust -- actually, the second volume of a set, following Nazi Germany and the Jews: Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939.

Saul Friedländer: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1933-1945 (abridged edition, paperback, 2009, Harper Perennial): Two previous books -- The Years of Persecution: 1933-1939 and The Years of Extermination: 1939-1945 -- slimmed down to 512 pages.

Brandon Friedman: The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War (2007, Zenith Press): Lieutenant, 101st Airborne, in Afghanistan, having the time of his life. Spent some time in Iraq, too. Says: "Americans cannot comprehend what the Iraqi people have been through for the last five, 15 or 35 years." There are hundreds of war memoirs out by now -- I rarely give them a glance, and won't bother with a list.

Daniel Friedman: Morals and Markets: An Evolutionary Account of the Modern World (2008, Palgrave Macmillan): A survey of cases where markets disconnected from morals with various ill effects. Not directly related to the latest financial crisis, but earlier ones appear to similar effect, and of course there are numerous analogous examples.

Thomas Friedman: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (2005, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Thomas L Friedman: Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution -- and How It Can Renew America (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): More garbled clichés from the New York Times' village idiot. Looks like they copped the cover art from Hieronymous Bosch, another faux pas. A skyline shot of Sao Paulo would be much more effective.

David Friend: Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11 (Farrar Straus & Giroux): Mostly a day-by-day photo analysis/record of 9/11 and its immediate aftermath. I think it may be important to return to that record to see just how we were led to war. I doubt that this book does the job, but it may be a useful start.

Simon Frith, ed: The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock (2007-02, Cambridge University Press).

David Fromkin: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East ().

David Fromkin: Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914? (paperback, 2005, Vintage Books).

David Fromkin: The King and the Cowboy: Theodore Roosevelt and Edward the Seventh, Secret Partners (2008, Penguin Press): A portrait of the two principals, centered around the Algeciras Conference of 1906 which was convened to carve up Morocco. Fromkin is a fairly important historian of the period -- his A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East is the best book I know of on where all the trouble in the Middle East came from. (Looks like it will be reissued shortly in a "20th Anniversary Edition.") Fromkin also has an intriguing book called Kosovo Crossing: The Reality of American Intervention in the Balkans, written shortly after Clinton's Kosovo adventure, but a subject that resonates with the Balkan wars and Wilsonian diplomacy of Fromkin's main period.

Philip J Funigiello: Chronic Politics: Health Care Security from FDR to George W Bush (2005, University Press of Kansas)

Betty Fussell: Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef (2008, Houghton Mifflin): Previously wrote The Story of Corn, the memoir My Kitchen Wars, and some cookbooks, including the one I consult when I cook jambalaya. Book on how beef is raised and processed today, with a sidetrip for bison. Ends with a handful of recipes.

Neal Gabler: Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (1998; paperback, 2000, Vintage Books).

James K Galbraith: Unbearable Cost: Bush, Greenspan and the Economics of Empire (paperback, 2006, Palgrave Macmillan): An essay collection, written as the damage piled up under Bush and Greenspan. One of his main focuses has been growing inequality. He also has a new book coming out in August, tackling one of the sacred cows of economists: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too.

James K Galbraith: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (2008, Free Press): I'm not sure what it means, but the first assertion in the title may help to clear the air. What I suspect is: once they seize power (as they have done), conservatives see the state as a tool for advancing their (and to a lesser extent their sponsors') interests, regardless of whatever propaganda they spewed out on the way to the top. Of course, there are other ways of looking at what they've done, such as the promotion of crony capitalism monopolies, another way their practice runs counter to free markets. Galbraith is a sharp economist; this could be a very important book. (It's already on my shelf.)

James K Galbraith: The Predator State: How Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Why Liberals Should Too (2008; paperback, 2009, Free Press): Give corporations the keys to the state and they'll turn it into a system for preying on people, the exact opposite of what a democratic state should do. One of the better political books to appear in the last couple of years. I need to go back and pick up my quotes.

Peter W Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End (Simon & Schuster). He can be an astute observer, but his intimate involvement with the Kurds poisoned his perspective and contributed to the problems.

Peter W Galbraith: Unintended Consequences: How War in Iraq Strengthened America's Enemies (2008, Simon & Schuster): A shrewd observer of the Iraq war, except for the one blind eye he turns toward the Kurds -- a group he advises on the side, and roots for coming and going, leading him to push for the break-up of Iraq into more/less independent sectarian states. He also has a background as a diplomat, which may give him a sense of "America's enemies" that isn't obvious to most Americans. Nonetheless, when he's clear of his entanglements he can be quite sharp.

Eduardo Galeano: Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent (1972; 25th anniversary edition, paperback, 1997, Monthly Review Press): Suddenly shot up to bestseller status after Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez gave Obama a copy. This is a classic account of how the US and its corporations have plundered Latin America. Amazon's reviews are divided, with 59 5-star, 49 1-star, 19 2/3/4-star. Typical 1-star review: "Now, I simply won't read it on principle. I'm tired of the blame game on America." How easy it is for some people to dismiss history by calling blame a game.

Chaim Gans: A Just Zionism: On the Morality of the Jewish State (2008, Oxford University Press): Recommended by Jerry Haber, who blogs as The Magnes Zionist, attempting to recover and continue the more judicious Zionist thinking of Joseph Magnes and Martin Buber. Gans, therefore, accepts that a Jewish state is desirable, then explores what that should mean, which often puts him at odds with the actual Jewish State.

Lloyd C Gardner/Marilyn B Young, eds.: Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn From the Past (2007, New Press).

Lloyd C Gardner: The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of US Foreign Policy From the 1970s to the Present (2008, New Press)

Lloyd C Gardner: Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East After World War II (2009, New Press): No real idea what the title refers to, but up to WWII the Middle East was ruled effectively by Britain through proxy monarchs, ranging from Farouk in Egypt to the Pahlavis in Iran. By the 1970s, the US had supplanted the British, and that's the point of this book. This follows, or perhaps fills in the background for, Gardner's recent The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of US Foreign Policy From the 1970s to the Present (New Press).

Norton Garfinkle: The American Dream vs. The Gospel of Wealth: The Fight for a Productive Middle-Class Economy (paperback, 2007, Yale University Press): Why settle for middle class when you can have a slight chance of becoming rich? That's the question Americans have been gambling on the last few decades. Same years casino gambling has been spreading: good practice at losing.

Laurie Garrett: Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (2000; paperback, 2001, Hyperion)

Arthur Garson/Carolyn L Engelhard: Health Care Half Truths: Too Many Myths, Not Enough Reality (2007, Rowman & Littlefield)

Charles Gasparino: The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System (2009, Harper Collins): CNBC personality blames it all on Wall Street's embrace of risk.

Atul Gawande: Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science (2002; paperback, 2003, Picador): Has a useful discussion of malpractice issues.

Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance (Metropolitan Books): His previous essay collection, Complications, turned out to be a pretty useful book, especially for thinking about malpractice issues, and well written as well. This is evidently more of the same.

Atul Gawande: The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right (2009, Metropolitan): Surgeon-writer, has written a couple of good books and some good essays on practicing his craft, especially on learning to do it better. Argues that checklists not only help but are essential for not screwing up, especially in complex, harried tasks, which include but are hardly limited to surgery.

Peter Gay: Modernism: The Lure of Heresy (2007, WW Norton): Another big (640 pages) book not big enough for its subject. I've seen it said that anyone who reads this and Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century deserves an advanced degree. I remember buying a copy of Gay's The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The Rise of Modern Paganism when it first came out in paperback back around 1967-68, lauded with all sorts of prizes. Never finished it.

Leslie H Gelb: Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy (2009, Harper Collins): One of those select foreign policy mandarins who figures his vast experience qualifies him to tell us how to run the world. You'd think that his previous book, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked, would have permanently put him out to pasture.

David Gelernter, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (Doubleday): I've generally avoided listing examples from the enemy, and this is certainly suspicious with advance praise from William Bennett and Norman Podhoretz, but the idea of Americanism as religion has some attraction, even if it's likely to be misguided. Gelernter's argument that Americanism is "in fact a secular version of Zionism" is pretty scary, but maybe it helps explain what is otherwise simply bizarre.

David Gelernter: Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion (2007, Doubleday): Looks like a horrifying piece of patriotic onanism, but the very conceit -- not least the idea that America was the original Zionist chosen land -- clarifies an attitude that is otherwise hard to fathom. American imperialism makes so much more sense when you realize that we believe that the rest of the world is just yearning to worship us.

Nicole Gelinas: After the Fall: Saving Capitalism from Wall Street -- and Washington (2009, Encounter): Looks like a brief for deeper and more effective regulation, although Amazon seems to be bundling it with conservative books, some utterly nonsensical -- probably the publisher.

Andrew Gelman: Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do (2008, Princeton University Press): Examines why Democrats win in most relatively wealthy states while Republicans win in most relatively poor states, despite the fact that rich people overwhelmingly vote Republican, and poor people primarily vote Democrat.

Jim Geraghty, Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership (Touchstone, paperback). This at least revels in the right's pathology.

Fawaz A Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (paperback, 1999, Cambridge University Press)

Fawaz A Gerges, Journey of the Jihadist: Inside Muslim Militancy (2006; paperback, 2007, Harcourt).

Fawaz A Gerges, The Far Enemy: Why Jihad Went Global (2005; 2nd ed, 2009, Cambridge University Press)

Jack W Germond: Fat Man Fed Up: How American Politics Went Bad (2004, Random House).

Marc Gerstein/Michael Ellsberg: Flirting With Disaster: Why Accidents Are Rarely Accidental (2008, Union Square Press): Examples include Chernobyl and Katrina, Vioxx, the Iraq War, Arthur Andersen/Enron, the 1994 Mexican peso crisis, a half dozen more. Gerstein's a management consultant. Ellsberg's an editor who helped his father publish the Pentagon Papers -- the father adds an introduction nominating Vietnam for the list. I'm on record as saying that how we handle disasters will be the most important political issue of the next few decades -- anticipating and preventing disasters looks like too tall an order, but understanding them when they happen is essential. This looks like a good place to start.

Bill Gertz, Enemies: How America's Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets -- And How We Let it Happen (Crown). Previous books: Breakdown; The China Threat; Betrayal; Treachery: How America's Friends and Foes Are Secretly Arming Our Enemies.

John Geyman: Falling Through the Safety Net: Americans Without Health Insurance (paperback, 2003, Common Courage Press)

John P Geyman: The Corporate Transformation of Health Care: Can the Public Interest Still Be Served? (paperback, 2004, Springer)

John Geyman: Shredding the Social Contract: The Privatization of Medicare (paperback, 2006, Common Courage Press)

John Geyman/Marcia Angell: The Corrosion of Medicine: Can the Profession Reclaim Its Moral Legacy? (paperback, 2007, Common Courage Press)

John Geyman: Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It (paperback, 2009, Common Courage Press): Author is an MD, a professor emeritus of family medicine, active in Physicians for a National Health Program, and has written previous books like The Corrosion of Medicine: Can the Profession Reclaim Its Moral Legacy? One thing of interest here is that he not only looks at the usual suspects, he takes a close look at compromise reform plans like the Massachusetts mandate, and finds them inadequate too.

John Ghazvinian: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil (2007, Harcourt): A report on the oil industry in Africa, especially Nigeria and Angola. Don't know how deep he goes, but the political strife over Nigeria's oil is certainly easy enough to find. The interests of the US and China are also obvious. [Paperback April 14]

Susan Giaimo: Markets and Medicine: The Politics of Health Care Reform in Britain, Germany, and the United States (2002, University of Michigan Press)

John Gibson: How the Left Swiftboated America: The Liberal Media Conspiracy to Make You Think George Bush Was the Worst President in History (2009, Harper Collins): Funniest book title of late. I especially love the list of things the left misrepresented Bush on: "his response to 9/11, the Iraq War, warrantless wiretapping, enhanced interrogation techniques, the Surge, uranium from Niger, the number of deaths in Iraq, the federal response to Katrina, and much, much more." Gibson claims that "Bush's performance was much better than most people now believe." Imagine that.

Gary Giddins, Natural Selection: Gary Giddins on Comedy, Film, Music, and Books (Oxford University Press): Less on music, I think, and much already familiar. One of the great critics of our times.

Gary Giddins/Scott DeVeaux: Jazz (2009, WW Norton): This takes a bunch of famous jazz performances and tears them apart measure by measure, sometimes note by note. The technical level is way too much for me, but Giddins is one of the essential critics of our age, so I figured I had to pick up a copy. The records are also available in a 4-CD, evidently drawing on the Sony catalog, running about $60. I'd be real surprised if there's anything there I don't have somewhere, so it might be a good mixtape project -- when/if I get the nerve to delve deeper.

Rob Gifford: China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power (paperback, 2008, Random House): Travel book, cuts through a cross section of China from Shanghai to Kazakhstan on China's Mother Road, Route 312.

George Gilder: The Israel Test (2009, Richard Vigilante): Do you have what it takes to uncritically support Israel? Can you write: "Tiny Israel stands behind only the United States in its contributions to the hi-tech economy. Israel has become the world's paramount example of the blessings of freedom." Or do you prefer "murderous regimes sustained by envy and Nazi ideology" and "a Marxist zero-sum-game theory of economics [which] has fueled the anti-Semitic ranting of Hitler, Arafat, bin Laden and history's other notorious haters"? I mean, if you have any second thoughts about Israel, how can we be sure you'll line up for all the other Middle East wars we have lined up?

Louisa Gilder: The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics Was Reborn (2008, Knopf): Focuses on the further implications of quantum theory which started appearing with Bell's Theorem in 1964, the work of David Bohm, etc. Some fascinating science there, but I've never made much sense out of it, and too often it gets spun into a weird form of mysticism.

Steven M Gillon: The Pact: Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, and the Rivalry that Defined a Generation (2008, Oxford University Press): Not sure what generation Gillon has in mind; mine was more disgusted than defined. As for the "pact": evidently Clinton and Gingrich were on the verge of making some bipartisan (or counterpartisan) deal on Social Security and Medicare in 1997, which got derailed by more pressing matters (Monica Lewinsky). Sounds like a few blow jobs and a splattered dress were all that saved us.

Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore: Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (2008, WW Norton): Later on civil rights came to be seen as a liberal movement, but before WWII only radicals (principally Communists) stuck their necks out (at least among whites). That history needs to be told, because like the so-called "premature antifascists" who opposed Franco, they were right.

John Gimlette, Theatre of Fish: Travels Through Newfoundland and Labrador (2006-11, Knopf, paperback).

Antonio Giustozzi: Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop: The Neo-Taliban Insurgency in Afghanistan (paperback, 2009, Columbia University Press): Promises a great deal of detail on how the neo-Taliban works, but I suspect it's still sketchy, and I'm not sure how the author got what he got.

Antonio Giustozzi: Empires of Mud: Wars and Warlords of Afghanistan (2009, Columbia University Press): Not sure that the warlord side of the Afghan equation is any easier to research than the Taliban side. Ismail Khan and Abdul Rashid Dostum are prominent subjects here.

Tom Gjelten: Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause (2008, Viking): A portrait of the rum barons as benevolent capitalists in the old Cuba, cast by Castro out of their country to exile in Miami, whereupon they started financing the good fight against the bad revolution.

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success (2008, Little Brown): Bestselling author, known for piquant insights. Dull but presumably marketable subject.

Aaron Glantz: How America Lost Iraq (2005, Jeremy P Tarcher).

Aaron Glantz: Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations (paperback, 2008, Haymarket Books): Reports from US soldiers who took part in Iraq and Afghanistan, from hearings held by Iraq Veterans Against the War. Glantz previously wrote How America Lost Iraq, the first of several books on that theme.

Aaron Glantz: The War Comes Home: Washington's Battle Against America's Veterans (2009, University of California Press): Follows US veterans home after previously writing Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan: Eyewitness Accounts of the Occupations, and before that How America Lost Iraq, which I recall as the first book to figure that out.

Barry Glassner: The Gospel of Food: Why We Should Stop Worrying and Enjoy What We Eat (paperback, 2007, Harper Perennial): Saw this right next to Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto -- don't know how redundant they are. I have Glassner's previous book on the shelf but never got around to it: The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.

James Gleick: Faster: The Acceleration of Just About Everything (paperback, 2000, Vintage).

James Gleick: What Just Happened: A Chronicle of the Information Frontier (paperback, 2003, Vintage).

Misha Glenny: The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers ().

Misha Glenny: McMafia: A Journey Through the Global Criminal Underworld (2008, Knopf): Journalist, started covering the wars in Yugoslavia then backed up and wrote a very good history, The Balkans: Nationalism, War & the Great Powers, 1804-1999. Back to the present here, covering organized crime, especially in the former Soviet Union.

Peter Godwin: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa (2007, Little Brown).

Stan Goff: Full Spectrum Disorder ().

Indur Goklany, The Improving State of the World: Why We're Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet (2007-01, Cato Institute, paperback).

Philip Gold: Take Back the Right: How the Neocons and the Religious Right Have Betrayed the Conservative Movement (paperback, 2004, Carroll & Graf).

Victor Gold, Ivasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP (Sourcebooks): This looks to be the most entertaining of several recent books taking aim at the Busheviks from their right flank -- John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience is another.

Bernard Goldberg: A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (and Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media (2009, Regnery): Front cover also includes "presents" after Goldberg, and "Starring Barack Obama" below the title line. When in doubt, blame the media. The same thing could have been written about McCain, Bush, or Reagan -- on any of those a more judicious writer than Goldberg still would have had little trouble topping the 184 pages behind this quickie.

Jeffrey Goldberg, Prisoners: A Muslim and a Jew Across the Middle East Divide (Knopf).

Jonah Goldberg: Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (2008, Doubleday): Seems like it should be a joke, but this book has improbably wound up on top of bestseller lists. The title isn't very clear: is "liberal" an adjective here? or just an expletive? The argument seems to be transitive: that liberals are fascists, and vice versa. (Chapter titles include "Hitler: Man of the Left" and "Brave New Village: Hillary Clinton and the Meaning of Liberal Fascism"). The point may be to trivialize the word "fascist" as a political epithet. That obviously benefits conservatives like Goldberg more than anyone else.

Michelle Goldberg: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism (2006, WW Norton).

Michelle Goldberg: The Means of Reproduction: Sex, Power, and the Future of the World (2009, Penguin Press): Author previously wrote Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism. In other words, Goldberg is following up her fearful investigation of right-wing Christianity by delving into what those same Christians are most fearful of: sex. That's a welcome change from the moderate tendency to backpeddle whenever confronted, a tendency that has as much as conceded this issue, forgetting how critical it really is.

Marshall I Goldman: Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia (2008, Oxford University Press): Short book on where Russia stands in the world today -- the collapsing criminal economy of the 1990s having some measure of order restored by Putin, to no small extent pumped up by Bush oil prices. I've read a couple of books on the 1990s, and could use an update. This at least seems saner than Edward Lucas' The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West. It's a pretty peculiar viewpoint that thinks Russia is threatening the West rather than the other way around. [May 30]

Jack Goldsmith: The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration (2007, WW Norton): Cover photos: Cheney, Bush, Gonzales. Insider account: Goldsmith worked in DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel until he quit in disgust. You know what they were up to.

Gordon M Goldstein: Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam (2008, Times Books): Views Bundy's persistent role advancing the war somewhat tragically, which may be easier than for Walt Rostow. The fact is that the two of them were always on the front lines derailing any attempt to rethink the mess the US had gotten into. One lesson should concern the power that ideologically committed aparatchiks have to control or limit the agendas of the politicians who supposedly outrank them. (A similar book on Rostow appeared recently: David Milne: America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War.)

Gordon M Goldstein: Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam (2008; paperback, 2009, Holt): Looks at the push to escalate US involvement in Vietnam through the prism of McGeorge Bundy's post-MacNamara revisionist memory. Thankfully, Bundy died before he could whitewash this, but Bundy did manage to keep the focus on what presidents want as opposed to what their stupid advisers tell them.

Joyce Goldstein: Mediterrannean: The Beautiful Cookbook (1994, Collins).

Adrian Goldsworthy: How Rome Fell: Death of a Superpower (2009, Yale University Press): A venerable topic, of course, always more so when one's own sense of superpowership is well nigh keeling over.

Julio Gonzalez: Health Care Reform: The Truth (2009, Aragon): Anti "Democrat agenda"; hint: only right-wingers label their books "The Truth."

Manuel G. Gonzalez, The Politics of Fear: How Republicans Use Money, Race and the Media to Win (Paradigm, paperback).

Jeff Goodell, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future (2007-04, Houghton Mifflin, paperback).

Martin Goodman: Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilizations (2007, Knopf): First century CE conflicts and revolts, a subject I only have a rough outline for. Got rather mixed reviews, and is long (624 pages).

Peter S Goodman: Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy (2009, Times Books): More concerned with Main Street than with Wall Street, perhaps figuring that ultimately the real economy matters more than the casino and its cronies. Looks like more reporting than theorizing, and looks like he's done an impressive job of it.

Larry P Goodson: Afghanistan's Endless War: State Failure, Regional Politics, and the Rise of the Taliban (paperback, 2001, University of Washington Press)

Jason Goodwin: Lords of the Horizons: A History of the Ottoman Empire ().

John C Goodman/Gerald L Musgrave/Devon M Herrick: Lives at Risk (paperback, 2004, Rowman & Littlefield): Anti-single-payer hysteria.

Merrill Goozner: The $800 Million Pill: The Truth Behind the Cost of New Drugs (2004; paperback, 2005, University of California Press)

Adam Gopnik: Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life (2009, Knopf): Coincidentally, both Lincoln and Darwin were born on 12 February 1809, the first link in this attempt to draw both in to a common narrative of 19th century progress.

Michael D Gordin: Red Cloud at Dawn: Truman, Stalin, and the End of the Atomic Monopoly (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Another look at the Soviet Union's first atom bomb test, more concerned with its political ramifications than with the technical details.

Colin Gordon: Dead on Arrival: The Politics of Health Care in Twentieth-Century America (2003, Princeton University Press)

Colin Gordon: Mapping Decline: St. Louis and the Fate of the American City (paperback, 2009, University of Pennsylvania Press): Having lived in St. Louis, I can certainly buy it as a case example for urban decline.

Michael R Gordon/General Bernard E Trainor: Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq (2006, Pantheon).

Neve Gordon: Israel's Occupation (paperback, 2008, University of California Press): One review describes this as a "highly theoretical book" -- something of a surprise given how much empirical evidence there is on Israel's occupation regime. Gordon is a long-on-the-scene critic, should have a lot to say.

Al Gore: The Assault on Reason: How the Politics of Fear, Secrecy, and Blind Faith Subvert Wise Decision Making, Degrade Our Democracy, and Put Our Country and Our World in Peril (2007, Penguin Press).

Al Gore: Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis (paperback, 2009, Rodale): Gore's sequel to An Inconvenient Truth. Still practical, still optimistic. No doubt features outstanding charts and illustrations. Amazon reviews are divided between 28 5-star and 27 1-star. Young reader's edition available, although it's probably already as simple as it can or should be.

Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire: Israel and the Birth of the Settlements, 1967-1977 (2006-03, Times Books; 2007-03, Henry Holt, paperback).

Gary Gorton: Slapped by the Invisible Hand: The Panic of 2007 (2010, Oxford University Press): Rather short (240 pp) big picture survey of the meltdown, with references back to similar events like 1893 and 1907. Argues that this panic was concentrated in the financial sector, which put the panic at a distance from everyday understanding even if it couldn't contain its effects. [Mar. 8]

Peter Gosselin: High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families (2008, Basic Books): Los Angeles Times reporter tells stories about how the "great risk shift" (Jacob Hacker's term, the title of a good book) has affected dozens of ordinary families. Everyone rates the reporting here as superb, but evidently it doesn't go much into causes -- more interesting to me, since I have no trouble envisioning the problem.

Peter Gosselin: High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families (2008; paperback, 2009, Basic Books): A deeper reporter's version of Jacob Hacker's The Great Risk Shift: the small problem is that workers are earning less these days, the bigger one that they are running bigger risks. Needless to say, health insurance (or lack thereof) plays a big role.

Philip Gourevitch/Errol Morris: Standard Operating Procedure (2008, Penguin): Companion book to Morris's documentary, focusing on the Abu Ghraib scandal.

Bradley Graham: By His Own Rules: The Ambitions, Successes, and Ultimate Failures of Donald Rumsfeld (2009, Public Affairs): Big (832 pp), more than I want to know about him, plenty of room for his many idiosyncrasies to get so annoying you lose track of how he fit into the military-industrial complex as well as how he wrecked it.

Edward M Gramlich: Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust (paperback, 2007, Urban Institute Press): A short (120 pp), relatively early primer on on the problem, before it became clear how toxic those mortgages had become, or how crooked the whole affair was.

Greg Grandin, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006-05, Henry Holt).

Greg Grandin: Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (2009, Metropolitan Books): The story of the city Henry Ford built in 1927 in the middle of Brazil: meant to be a huge rubber plantation feeding his automobile empire, it soon turned into an arrogant delusion.

James Grant: Mr. Market Miscalculates: The Bubble Years and Beyond (2008, Axios): Collected from speeches and editorials by the editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer. Seems to have had a clue on the subprime crisis.

David Gratzer, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books).

Lester W Grau/Michael A Gress, eds: The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (paperback, 2002, University Press of Kansas): From the Russian General Staff papers.

Mike Gravel/Joe Lauria: A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and a Man's Fight to Stop It (paperback, 2008, Seven Stories Press): I usually don't bother listing books by politicians, but this one's exceptional, and not just because he isn't much of a politician. Note ghostwriter gets same size type on front cover. Note forward by Daniel Ellsberg.

John Gray: Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern (paperback, 2005, New Press)

John Gray: Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007, Farrar Straus and Giroux): British philosopher examines the history of utopian ideas and how the right, especially the religious right, has taken to them in recent years. Previously wrote: Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern; Beyond the New Right: Markets, Government and the Common Environment.

AC Grayling: Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan (paperback, 2007, Walker & Co.): All of a sudden there are a bunch of books that raise serious questions about the Allied bombing campaigns in WWII -- more general ones like Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke and more specific ones like: Paul Addison/Jeremy A Grant, eds: Firestorm: The Bombing of Dresden, 1945; Frederick Taylor: Dresden: Tueday, February 13, 1945; Keith Lowe: Inferno: The Fiery Destruction of Hamburg, 1943; Hans Erich Nossack: The End: Hamburg 1943; Marshall De Bruhl, Firestorm: Allied Airpower and the Destruction of Dresden. In between: Herman Krell: To Destroy a City: Strategic Bombing and Its Human Consequences in World War II; and Jörg Friedrich, The Fire: The Bombing of Germany, 1940-1945.

Jan Crawford Greenburg: Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court (2007, Penguin): Another book on the packing of the court, up through Roberts and Alito.

Karen J. Greenberg, ed., Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib ().

Mark Green/Michele Jolin, eds: Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President (paperback, 2009, Basic Books): The standard, inevitable collection of slightly leftish wonk briefs, a hefty 704 pages, published a mere two months after Obama's election. I have a similar book on the shelf in front of me, also edited by Green, called Changing America: Blueprints for the New Administration. It was published in 1992. I doubt that much as changed, despite Bill Clinton's stated enthusiasm for both volumes.

Ronnie Greene: Night Fire: Big Oil, Poison Air, and Margie Richard's Fight to Save Her Town (2008, Amistad): The town is Norco, LA, located in what's variously called Chemical Corridor and/or Cancer Alley. The poison air comes from Shell Oil, one of the real big ones. Greene's a Miami Herald reporter, who gets to report for once.

Steven Greenhouse: The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker (2008, Knopf): Mostly case studies -- NYT review claims they were largely selected from lawsuits, a quick way to identify corporate dirty tricks. Barbara Ehrenreich said "my blood boiled when I read [it]."

Alan Greenspan: The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World (2007, Penguin Press): Memoir written shortly after leaving the Fed, shortly before the housing bubble that he failed to recognize burst with all of its repercussions. One of the key actors in deregulating the banks, initiator of the "Greenspan put" which meant the Fed would reliably respond to any dip in the stock market, occasional pitch-man for variable rate subprime mortgages. Some people blame it all on him. Sometimes his ego seems big enough to bear that much responsibility.

Glenn Greenwald: How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values From a President Run Amok (paperback, 2006, Working Assets).

Glenn Greenwald: A Tragic Legacy: How a Good vs. Evil Mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency (2007, Crown): Constitutional lawyer, got upset by Bush's legal advisers and started blogging, spinning off a short book called How Would a Patriot Act? Defending American Values from a President Run Amok, worth reading, especially if you don't know better. Judging from his blog, this is likely bigger, broader, deeper. He claimed to be apolitical before Bush. Not any more. [Paperback April 8]

Glenn Greenwald: Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (2008, Crown): New book in the works. Not sure who he has in mind. Don't recognize the dude in the cowboy hat.

Germaine Greer: Shakespeare's Wife (paperback, 2009, Harper Perennial): Famed feminist author of The Female Eunuch dusts off that old degree in Elizabethan drama -- not for the first time; she's also written Shakespeare: A Very Short Introduction. Admittedly, very little is known about the real Ann Hathaway, but that hasn't prevented much from being written, and that in itself is fodder enough for a critic so skilled as slicing through sexual presumptions.

John Michael Greer: The Long Descent: A User's Guide to the End of the Industrial Age (paperback, 2008, New Society): Archdruid, organic gardener, peak oil blogger. Not clear, but I suspect he sees the descent as future rather than already done, and that he sees it happening slowly as people adapt to alternative lifestyles like, uh, organic gardening. Similar: Sharon Astyk: Depletion and Abundance: Life on the New Home Front; Pat Murphy: Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change; Lyle Estill: Small is Possible: Life in a Local Economy; David Holmgren: Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change; better known is Bill McKibben: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Katharine Greider: The Big Fix: How The Pharmaceutical Industry Rips Off American Consumers (paperback, 2003, Public Affairs)

William Greider: Come Home, America: The Rise and Fall (and Redeeming Promise) of Our Country (2009, Rodale): Seems like a fairly general political opinion tome, but Greider's been way up on the learning curve for a long time now; e.g., he wrote the first important book on the Federal Reserve Bank way back in 1987: Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. He tackled globalization a decade later in One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism, and immediately followed that up with Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace.

Stephen Grey: Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program (2006, St Martin's Press): I wouldn't be surprised if there is more to this story, but this is at least a start: how the CIA kidnapped terrorism suspects, whisking them away to countries where they could be tortured at leisure.

John Gribbin, The Origins of the Future: Ten Questions for the Next Ten Years (2006-11, Yale University Press).

David Ray Griffin: Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive? (paperback, 2009, Olive Branch Press): Short book (120 pp), but the author doesn't claim to know the answer, even though he raises plenty of doubts. Still, it would be nice to know whether you've bumbled into a snark hunt, getting bumped and bruised and wasting your fortune in pursuit of nothing.

Farah Jasmine Griffin/Salim Washington: Clawing at the Limits of Cool: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and the Greatest Jazz Collaboration Ever (2008, Thomas Dunne): An important group, especially once they picked up on George Russell's modal thing and recorded Kind of Blue, but both key musicians did much more pathbreaking work later. Maybe you could say that separately they finally broke through the limits of cool. Griffin has a previous book on Billy Holiday: If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday.

Ryan Grim: This Is Your Country on Drugs: The Secret History of Getting High in America (2009, Wiley): Amazon lists "seven surprising consequences" from this book, which hardly bear repeating other than the obvious one ("past antidrug campaigns actually encouraged drug use"). Sounds like trivia to me, but this a subject where ignorance and misinformation rise to the top levels of policy, so maybe it has a place.

Jerome Groopman: The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness (paperback, 2005), Random House: Author of the more recent How Doctors Think, and several previous books along the same lines.

Jerome Groopman, How Doctors Think (Houghton Mifflin): An intrinsically interesting book. I've seen better reviews for this than for Atul Gawande's Better, which appeared at the same time. Health care is something I figure to write on, and there's something to be said there for the experiences of everyday professionals as opposed to politicians and economists.

Daniel Gross: Dumb Money: How Our Greatest Financial Minds Bankrupted the Nation (paperback, 2009, Free Press): Short (112 pp) account of the current financial debacle, rushed out in paperback first. Even so, I wonder how much news there is here, let alone analysis.

Dave Grossman: On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (1995; paperback, 1996, Back Bay Books).

Dave Grossman: On Combat: The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Combat in War and in Peace (2004; 2nd edition, paperback, 2007, PPCT Research Publications).

Michael Grunwald: The Swamp: The Everglades, Florida, and the Politics of Paradise (paperback, 2007, Simon & Schuster).

Ramachandra Guha: India After Gandhi: The History of the Largest Democracy (2007, Ecco).

Ramachandra Guha: How Much Should a Person Consume?: Environmentalism in India and the United States (paperback, 2006, University of California Press): Interesting question for a point of comparison. Guha also wrote the recent 907 page India After Gandhi: The History of the Largest Democracy, and the briefer, earlier Environmentalism: A Global History.

Alma Guillermoprieto: Looking for History: Dispatches From Latin America ().

Robert Gumbiner: Curing Our Sick Health Care System: A Solution to America's Health Care Crisis (paperback, 2006, Author House): Looks like "Medicare for all."

Roy Gutman: How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban, and the Hijacking of Afghanistan (2008, Potomac Books): A journalist with extensive experience in the area digs into the question of how the media failed to grasp the significance of the relationship between Bin Laden and the Taliban. I doubt that this exonherates Condoleezza ("Who Knew?") Rice.

Donald Gutstein: Not a Conspiracy Theory: How Business Propaganda Hijacks Democracy (paperback, 2009, Key Porter): The argument here seems to be that politicians don't become stooges for business interests because they're corrupt so much as because they're brainwashed. No doubt true, but that hardly proves they're not "greedy, corrupt, double-talking, and unqualified" as well. Indeed, those conditions seem to go together quite agreeably.

DD Guttenplan: American Radical: The Life and Times of IF Stone (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): One of the things I did as a teenager that formed my politics was to subscribe to IF Stone's Weekly, so I always regarded Stone as some kind of saint. Seems like these days people like to harp on Stone's complicated handling of the Sovet Union as if it's still important to score points against anyone who wasn't staunchly anti-Stalin. Given how destructive American anticommunism turned out, I find it hard to nitpick.

Richard N Haass/Martin S Indyk/et al: Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President (paperback, 2008, Brookings Institution Press): Papers from the Saban Center, the first two names being veteran diplomats, with Indyk in particular guilty of much of the imbalance that needs correction. (Indyk has his own disingenuous book out: Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East.)

Richard N Haass: War of Necessity, War of Choice: A Memoir of Two Iraq Wars (2009, Simon & Schuster): A realist functionary in both Bush administrations, a fan of the first Iraq war, a critic of the second, unable to see the connections, e.g., how the first war led to the second.

Nina Hachigan/Mona Sutphen: The Next American Century: How the US Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise (2008, Simon & Schuster): Another entry in the future superpowers sweepstakes game. I normally skip right past the genre because the game itself is less and less worth playing, much less winning, but Matt Yglesias hyped this -- apparently Hachigan works at his progressive think tank. I still think they should think about real problems.

Jacob S Hacker: The Road to Nowhere: The Genesis of President Clinton's Plan for Health Security (1996; paperback, 1999, Princeton University Press): One of the main books on the Clinton fiasco.

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy (2005, Yale University Press). I have this, but haven't gotten around to it. Thought it looked like the best book on how the right-wing machine works.

Jacob S. Hacker, The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement and How You Can Fight Back (2007; paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press).

Jacob S Hacker, ed: Health at Risk: America's Ailing Health System -- and How to Heal It (paperback, 2008, Columbia University Press)

Nortin M Hadler: The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System (2004, McGill-Queen's University Press)

Nortin M Hadler, MD: Worried Sick: A Prescription for Health in an Overtreated America (2008, University of North Carolina Press): Backs off a bit from the health care reform argument to ask whether large classes of current treatments aren't seriously abused and overused -- mammography, colorectal screening, statin drugs, or coronary stents. One effect of having a money-driven, profit-seeking health care system is that there's little check on selling anything.

Ann Hagedorn, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (Simon & Schuster): A big (543 pp.) history book on a subject of minor but genuine interest: post-WWI trauma, the red scare, race riots, flu pandemic, the failed and flawed return to normalcy. The same issues returned after WWII, to be dealt with differently, but one wonders about the connections.

David Halberstam: War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals (paperback, 2002, Scribner): First Bush; had Halberstam lived longer he could have written a sequel, War in a Time of Madness. Never read him, and not sure how sharp he really is, but this covers a big subject: how the armed forces avoided shrinking by finding new enemies and new missions after the cold war ended. I noticed another Halberstam book that might be interesting: The Fifties.

David Halberstam: The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (2007, Hyperion): Major work on Korean War, possibly also on early phase of Cold War. Reportedly focuses heavily on MacArthur while missing other aspects of the war.

Stephen P Halbrook: The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms (2008, Ivan R Dee): Fundamental research into the why and wherefore of the second amendment. Argues that an individual right was seen as a way to check the abusive power of a standing army. Author previously wrote The Swiss and the Nazis: How the Alpine Republic Survived in the Shadow of the Third Reich, which is probably another brief in favor of broad gun ownership.

Fred Halliday: 100 Myths About the Middle East (paperback, 2005, University of California Press): Copy in store was shrinkwrapped, so I couldn't peer inside. Halliday writes for New Left Review. Looks like basic remedial education.

Jeff Halper: An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel (paperback, 2008, Pluto Press): An activist, especially in opposing Israel's demolition of Palestinian houses, Halper wrote a remarkable essay on the Israeli occupation's "matrix of control" showing that it goes far beyond such models as South Africa's bantustans.

Mark Halperin/John F Harris: The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008 (2008, Random House): A couple of insider political hacks playing up their insider grasp of the usual mechanics of prseidential elections. Probably the most instantly disposable book of the season.

George C Halvorson/George J Isham: Epidemic of Care: A Call for Safer, Better, and More Accountable Health Care (2003, Wiley)

George C Halvorson: Health Care Reform Now!: A Prescription for Change (2007, Jossey-Bass)

George C Halvorson: Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User's Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care (2009, Productivity Press): CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the huge health care conglomerate in California, which actually has a relatively reasonable record of cost containment -- i.e., self-reform. Short book (184 pp), don't know how it plays out.

Andy Hamilton: Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art (paperback, 2007, University of Michigan Press): I find interview books fascinating, besides which Konitz has always been such a thinker's saxophonist, with 50+ years on the creative fringe. Foreword by Joe Lovano. Next related book I ran across is the next one you'd want to see: Jason Weiss, ed: Steve Lacy: Conversations.

Dorothy Hamilton/Patric Kuh: Chef's Story: 27 Chefs Talk About What Got Them into the Kitchen (paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Foodie book: wonder if it goes much beyond the usual "my first taste of paté was better than sex" yarns.

Haider Ala Hamoudi: Howling in Mesopotamia: An Iraqi-American Memoir (2008, Beaufort Books): A cousin of Ahmed Chalabi, not quite an insider but something like that, making him a journalist with an unusual perspective on the US occupation of Iraq.

Howard Hampton: Born in Flames: Termite Dreams, Dialectical Fairy Tales, and Pop Apocalypses (2007, Harvard University Press): Big (496 pages) collection of film and music reviews. As I recall, Hampton and I wound up inadvertently reviewing the same William Parker album for the Village Voice once. [Paperback April 15]

Chelsea Handler: Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea (2008, Simon Spotlight Entertainment): Noticed this earlier, but figured it was too far off-topic to mention here, until it somehow showed up in my Amazon Recommendations list. Read a few pages in the store, which were funnier than "Sex and the City" but not as funny as Cynthia Heimel. Haven't heard from Heimel in a while, so maybe this fills a void. Handler previously wrote My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands. Heimel, on the other hand, wrote: Sex Tips for Girls (reissued as Advanced Sex Tips for Girls: This Time It's Personal); When Your Phone Doesn't Ring, It'll Be Me; If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead Yet; and the more poignant Get Your Tongue Out of My Mouth, I'm Kissing You Goodbye!

James Hansen: Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity (2009, Bloomsbury): The NASA scientist best known for pushing the science and issues related to global warming. This book raised some hackles by opposing the cap-and-trade schemes that politicians like -- at least the ones that take the issue seriously at all. Hansen is also the subject of Mark Bowen: Censoring Science: Inside the Political Attack on Dr James Hansen and the Truth of Global Warming.

Mark J Hanson/Daniel Callahan: The Goals of Medicine: The Forgotten Issues in Health Care Reform (paperback, 2001, Georgetown University Press)

Victor Davis Hanson: How the Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security (2009, Encounter): One of a series of short "broadsides" (this one is 48 pp.) slandering Obama. I just picked this one out because it's probably the most vacuous. Others include: John Fund: How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections; David Gratzer: Why Obama's Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster; Stephen Moore: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting the US Economy; Andrew C McCarthy: How the Obama Administration Has Politicized Justice; and, of course, Michael A Ledeen: Obama's Betrayal of Israel.

Hussain Haqqani: Pakistan: Between Mosque and Military (paperback, 2005, Carnegie)

Tim Harford: The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World (2008, Random House): Another study of the fuzzy edges to economic rationality. Harford previously wrote a book I've read: The Undercover Economist: Exposing Why the Rich Are Rich, the Poor Are Poor -- and Why You Can Never Buy a Decent Used Car. He's most convincing about that car, not that he's right.

Chris Harman: A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (paperback, 2008, Verso): New edition, originally published in 1999. Title parallels Howard Zinn's US history primer. Clearly, a comparable survey of world history would be useful. But, but all things considered, concise (760 pages). [April 7]

Chris Harman: A People's History of the World: From the Stone Age to the New Millennium (new edition, paperback, 2008, Verso): Brief for its subject (760 pages), tends in classic Marxist fashion to view everything as class struggle.

Alexandra Harney: The China Price: The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage (2008, Penguin): Big subject, probably a lot of angles to it, with the low-price burden falling harshly on Chinese workers, and their competitiveness undermining workers here as well as elsewhere. One could even look at the waste side-effect of cheap goods, the psychological impact of consumerism, etc., but I'm not aware that Harney does so.

Ethan S Harris: Ben Bernanke's Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan (2008, Harvard Business School): Seems a little premature to sum up Bernanke, especially since he's been through much more since this book appeared than before, but you can understand the urge to put Alan Greenspan behind us.

Ethan S Harris: Ben Bernanke's Fed: The Federal Reserve After Greenspan (2008; revised ed, paperback, 2010, Harvard Business Press): Seemed quick on the draw when it came out before Bernanke got a chance to live up to his reputation as an inflation hawk or get blindsided by the subprime bubble collapse. Paperback has been revised, but most often with these things the stamp is set at the start.

Robert L Harris: Information Graphics: A Comprehensive Illustrated Reference (paperback, 2000, Oxford University Press): An extensive catalog of ideas for presenting data graphically. Not splashy like Edward R Tufte's books, and pricey to boot.

Alan Hart: Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, Volume One: The False Messiah (paperback, 2009, Clarity Press): One should be able to make a strong case for the title. Evidently a second volume is planned.

Thom Hartmann, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class and What We Can Do About It (). Described as a "radio host," which makes me suspicious. I did find an earlier book -- The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late -- intriguing enough to pick up, but haven't gotten to it.

David Harvey: A Short History of Neoliberalism (paperback, 2007, Oxford University Press): Goes back three decades or so, roughly since 1970, the economic doctrines pushed especially by the US through the IMF, the World Bank, and various trade regimes. Harvey has a lot of books, including Limits to Capital and Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development.

Ron Haskins/Isabel V Sawhill: Creating an Opportunity Society (paperback, 2009, Brookings Institution Press): Haskins was a Bush staff adviser on social policy, since moved on to Brookings. He also wrote, Work Over Welfare: The Inside Story of the 1996 Welfare Reform Bill. Sawhill, also at Brookings, has co-edited a book with Alice Rivlin, Restoring Fiscal Sanity. So I figure these for pretty conservative types, but Yglesias recommended this, arguing that how can you study inequality without moving to the left?

Ralph Hassig/Kongdan Oh: Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom (2009, Rowman & Littlefield): Not much else available on this subject. We tend to reduce what little we learn into cartoon form -- South Park is a good example. Also new: Barbara Demick: Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea (2009, Random House).

Max Hastings: Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45 (2008, Knopf): Big book on the last year of the war against Japan, filled with atrocities on all sides. Author of a number of other WWII books, including the matching Armageddon: The Battle for Germany, 1944-1945, plus one on the Korean War.

David Harvey, Limits to Capital (2007-01, Verso, paperback).

Paul Hawken: Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (paperback, 2000, Back Bay Books).

Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming (Viking): Green capitalist, not real sure what the point is, but my cousin was reading this along with Bill McKibben's Deep Economy for a labor conference she's working on. Has a long appendix that looks to be a useful reference.

Fran Hawthorne: Inside the FDA: The Business and Politics Behind the Drugs We Take and the Food We Eat (2005, Wiley)

Tom Hayden: Writings for a Democratic Society: The Tom Hayden Reader (paperback, 2008, City Lights): New Left activist. I'm not sure I've ever read anything by him, but he has a recent book, Ending the War in Iraq. Don't have a table of contents here, but this runs 450 pages, probably 40 years.

Tom Hayden: The Long Sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama (2009, Paradigm): Claims Obama for the 1960s civil rights and antiwar movements that brought Hayden to public attention. Seems like a stretch and a formula for disappointment, although Hayden was hardly alone in investing hope in Obama.

Brian Hayes: Infrastructure: A Field Guide to the Industrial Landscape (paperback, 2006, WW Norton): Large format illustrated book, lots of pictures and explanations of the technology that ties us together, especially the electrical system. Author also wrote a recent volume of math essays: Group Theory in the Bedroom, and Other Mathematical Diversions.

Steven F Hayward: The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution: 1980-1989 (2009, Crown Forum): Second big (768 pp) volume under that rubric. Don't know whether a third volume is in the works: Reagan was pretty much done even before he left office, but his cult has never let up in their campaign to beatify and deify him. Hayward is part of that cult, clearly show in a previous book title: Greatness: Reagan, Churchill, and the Making of Extraordinary Leaders. (Another memorable Hayward title: The Real Jimmy Carter: How Our Worst Ex-President Undermines American Foreign Policy, Coddles Dictators, and Created the Party of Clinton and Kerry.)

David Healy: Let Them Eat Prozac: The Unhealthy Relationship Between the Pharmaceutical Industry and Depression (paperback, 2006, NYU Press)

Jennifer Michael Hecht: The Happiness Myth: The Historical Antidote to What Isn't Working Today (2007; paperback, 2008, Harper One). Original subtitle: Why What We Think Is Right Is Wrong. History part digs into past/present ideas of happiness. Focuses on drugs, money, bodies, celebration. Not sure what she makes of them. My own view is that happiness is overrated as a pursuit, but nice when it comes along, especially if it doesn't take too much trouble. Author also wrote: Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson.

Chris Hedges: War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning (paperback, 2003, Anchor Books).

Chris Hedges: Losing Moses on the Freeway: The Ten Commandments in America (2005, Free Press).

Chris Hedges, American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America (2007, Free Press).

Chris Hedges: I Don't Believe in Atheists (2008, Free Press): A short attack on Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, possibly others. Before he became a war journalist, Hedges did time in a seminary, and he still hasn't gotten over it. I've read three of his books, including Losing Moses on the Freeway: The 10 Commandments in America, which is most pointedly a book of his sense of religion. He hasn't improved my opinion of God, but I do have a lot of respect for Chris Hedges.

Chris Hedges: When Atheism Becomes Religion: America's New Fundamentalists (2008; paperback, Free Press, 2009): New title, a slight improvement over his original I Don't Believe in Atheists, although it introduces new problems. I haven't bothered with the Harris-Dawkins-Hitchens troika, whose books don't look all that interesting even though I reckon myself an atheist.

Chris Hedges/Laila Al-Arian: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (2008, Nation Books): Read an excerpt from this in The Nation already. It's important to realize how inevitable, widespread, and counterproductive all this killing is.

Chris Hedges/Laila Al-Arian: Collateral Damage: America's War Against Iraqi Civilians (2008; paperback, 2009, Nation Books): Atrocity stories, from soldiers on the spot.

Chris Hedges: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle (2009, Nation Books): More on our blighted intellect and moral bankruptcy, an easy target for cheap shots, but Hedges is deep enough he's one of the few people I'm inclined to listen to when he preaches -- I take this more as a sequel to Losing Moses on the Freeway than to American Fascists or I Don't Believe in Atheists.

Jacob Heilbrunn: They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (2008, Doubleday): Covers similar ground to James Mann's Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, which I've read, but probably concentrates more on the ideologues, bench jockeys and backseat drivers.

John Heilemann/Mark Halperin: Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (2010, Harper): Dirt on the campaign trail. It's not like you really thought any of these people were normal.

Richard Heinberg: The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies (2003; paperback, 2005, New Society).

Richard Heinberg: The Oil Depletion Protocol: A Plan to Avert Oil Wars, Terrorism and Economic Collapse (paperback, 2006, New Society).

Richard Heinberg: Peak Everything: Waking Up to the Century of Declines (2007, New Society): Another book in my queue. I think Heinberg's understanding of energy issues (e.g., peak oil) is quite solid -- his The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies is the best book I can recommend on the subject (much better than anything Michael Klare has done). Here he ventures beyond his strong suit into water, food, climate, etc. Should be interesting.

Richard Heinberg: Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis (paperback, 2009, New Society): One of the most persuasive authors on peak oil and what it means, especially why alternative energy sources are at best a limited answer, takes on the biggest and blackest: coal. Should be a very dirty read.

Michael Heller: The Gridlock Economy: How Too Much Ownership Wrecks Markets, Stops Innovation, and Costs Lives (2008, Basic Books): Well, one way there's too much ownership is in the way we parcel out legal monopolies known as patents. That's one of Heller's examples, but it looks like he'd like to see more use of eminent domain -- e.g., he complains about the inability to build 25 new runways that would eliminate most air travel delays. You always have conflicts between private ownership and public utilities, and lately we've leaned so far toward the private side that the public has suffered.

Harry Helms: Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About (paperback, 2007, Feral House): Not much of a travel guide, and evidently not all that complete -- e.g., no Fort Detrick, the evident source of the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, at the very least enabled by your tax dollars.

David Hemenway: Private Guns, Public Health (paperback, 2006, University of Michigan Press)

Obed Hendricks Jr: The Politics of Jesus: Rediscovering the True Revolutionary Nature of Jesus' Teachings and How They Have Been Corrupted (2006, Doubleday).

Arthur Herman: Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry That Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age (2008, Bantam): It rather trivializes matters to see this as a personal rivalry, don't you think? The side-by-side pictures on the cover are evocative, especially if you recognize the economic depredation India underwent at Britain's hands -- India's share of world GDP was reduced from 20% to something like 3% before they were able to throw off the British yoke. Herman previously wrote How the Scots Invented the Modern World: The True Story of How Western Europe's Poorest Nation Created Our World & Everything in It -- not what you'd call an India scholar.

Seymour Hersh: Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib (2004, Harper Collins).

Hendrik Hertzberg: ¡Obámanos!: The Rise of a New Political Era (2009, Penguin): New Yorker political columnist, looks like he's recycling old essays and wrapping them up to look like something new. Includes something on "Palinopsia," which was probably his alternate title if McCain won. "Brouhaha" was about Clinton. I guess he had it covered.

Regina Herzlinger: Market-Driven Health Care: Who Wins, Who Loses in the Transformation of America's Largest Service Industry (paperback, 1999, Basic Books): Harvard Business School prof, sees insurance as the problem for distorting prices; uses eyewear as an example of how an effective market-driven system should work.

Regina Herzlinger, Who Killed Health Care? America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem -- and the Consumer-Driven Cure (McGraw-Hill): Harvard Business School Dean, advocates some kind of market-driven system; not sure how that works, but looks like it could be a useful critique.

Peter Hessler: Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China (2006; paperback, 2007, Harper Perennial).

Duncan Hewitt: China: Getting Rich First: A Modern Social History (2008, Pegasus): Evidently focuses more on the internal upheavals caused by China's breakneck modernization than on the usual themes of superpower envy. Clearly, a lot of things are happening fast over there, and they are likely to defy most of our expectations.

Carl Hiaasen: The Downhill Lie: A Hacker's Return to a Ruinous Sport (2008, Knopf): My first thought was that this would be another test for George Plimpton's ball-size theory of sports books. I've never read any of the golf books Plimpton so admires, and I doubt that I'll try this one. Grew up thinking that golf was the sport of another class, and I've never overcome that mental framework. A Kenneth Rexroth poem about sneaking into the country club at night and shitting in the golf holes didn't help.

Steven Hiatt, A Game As Old As Empire: The Secret World of Economic Hit Men and the Web of Global Corruption (2007-02, Benett-Koehler).

Dave Hickey: The Invisible Dragon: Essays on Beauty (1993; revised and expanded, 2009, University of Chicago Press): I think of him as a rock critic, the author of Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy, but his interests are broader. Something of a manifesto.

Brian Hicks/Chris Nelder: Profit From the Peak: The End of Oil and the Greatest Investment Event of the Century (2008, Wiley): I don't normally go for books that bill themselves as investment guides, even if the occasion is a catastrophe, but is nearly encyclopedic on the peak oil issue, and looks to be pretty level headed. Haven't looked at it close enough to figure out what that investment angle might be. Some of the books in this genre are: Aric McBay: Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for Life After Gridcrash; Mick Winter: Peak Oil Prep: Prepare for Peak Oil, Climate Change and Economic Collapse; Stephen Leeb: The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrell; Stephen Leeb: The Oil Factor: Protect Yourself and Profit From the Coming Energy Crisis; George Orwel: Black Gold: The New Frontier in Oil for Investors; more generally: Daniel A Arnold: The Great Bust Ahead: The Greatest Depression in American and UK History is Just Several Short Years Away/This is Your Concise Reference Guide to Understanding Why and How Best to Survive It; Peter D Schiff: Crash Proof: How to Profit From the Coming Economic Collapse; James Turk/John Rubino: The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit from It: Make a Fortune by Investing in Gold and Other Hard Assets; Addison Wiggin: The Demise of the Dollar . . . : And Why It's Even Better for Your Investments; Michael J Panzner: Financial Armageddon: Protecting Your Future From Four Impending Catastrophes; Howard J Ruff: How to Prosper During the Coming Bad Years in the 21st Century. [Got and read this from library.]

Philip J Hilts: Protecting America's Health: The FDA, Business, and One Hundred Years of Regulation (2002; paperback, 2004, University of North Carolina Press)

David Himmelstein/Steffie Woolhandler: Bleeding the Patient: The Consequences of Corporate Health Care (paperback, 2001, Common Courage Press)

Dilip Hiro: Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm (paperback, 2002, Thunder's Mouth Press).

Dilip Hiro: Secrets and Lies: Operation "Iraqi Freedom" and After: A Prelude to the Fall of US Power in the Middle East? (paperback, 2003, Nation Books).

Dilip Hiro: The Essential Middle East: A Comprehensive Guide (second edition, paperback, 2003, Carroll & Graf).

Dilip Hiro: The Iranian Labyrinth: Journeys Through Theocratic Iran and Its Furies (paperback, 2005, Nation Books).

Dilip Hiro, Blood of the Earth: The Battle for the World's Vanishing Oil Resources (2006, Nation Books, paperback).

Eric Hobsbawm: On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy (2008, Knopf): Essay collection, plenty to write about, one of the major historians of the 20th century.

Adam Hochschild: King Leopold's Ghost ().

Adam Hochschild: Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves (paperback, 2006, Houghton Mifflin): The story of the political movement that over a few decades turned Britain from its leading position in the slave trade to abolitionism, with the British navy working to suppress the slave trade.

Nathan Hodge/Sharon Weinberger: A Nuclear Family Vacation: Travels in the World of Atomic Weaponry (2008, Bloomsbury): Another history-via-travel book, which includes stops in Pakistan, Iran, India, China, North Korea, Israel, Russia, France, UK, as well as numerous spots in the US. Weinberger previously wrote: Imaginary Weapons: A Journey Through the Pentagon's Scientific Underground.

Godfrey Hodgson: The Myth of American Exceptionalism (2009, Yale University Press): One of those ideas that keeps popping up no matter how many times you try to kill it. Not necessarily a good thing either. One Amazon review points out: "In the last third of the book, Hodgson details the areas where America truly is exceptional among industrial nations: last in health care, near last in educational achievement, first in incarceration rates, first in violent crime, last in intercity train service and public transit, first in income inequality, first in the amount spent on the military, first in allowing lobbyists and money to influence the democratic process." Probably helps that Hodgson is British. He's written a number of books on the US, including The World Turned Right Side Up: A History of the Conservative Movement in America.

David E Hoffman: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race & Its Dangerous Legacy (2009, Doubleday): Looks like a major book, based on research on both sides of the Cold War divide. Early on, at least some US military planners saw the arms race as a way to bankrupt the Soviet Union. That led to ever more fanciful schemes, which still possess the "best and brightest" minds of the Pentagon. That arms race almost immediately led to scenarios of apocalyptic destruction. It also caused a persistent unraveling of America's sense of democracy, a moral rot that time and again sided us with despotic regimes in a desperate totalitarian pursuit of gamesmanship. If this book doesn't spell all that out, it should.

David Hoffman: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and its Dangerous Legacy (2009, Doubleday): Not sure whether this is a general history of the arms race and its bizarre mentality or whether it just focuses on the "untold" parts, which seem to have a lot to do with chemican and biological weapons. Either way, likely to be useful for understanding the waste and folly of the cold war.

Stanley Hoffmann, Chaos and Violence: What Globalization, Failed States, and Terrorism Mean for US Foreign Policy (Rowman & Littlefield).

Douglas Hofstadter, I Am a Strange Loop (2007-03, Perseus).

Michael Hogan: Savage Capitalism and the Myth of Democracy: Latin America in the Third Millennium (paperback, 2009, Booklocker.com): Essays on Latin America, recommended by Noam Chomsky. Probably not the Michael J Hogan who has a number of books on cold war diplomatic history, nor the novelist Michael Hogan, but the Michael Hogan with a couple of previous books on Mexico is a possibility.

James Hoggan/Richard Littlemore: Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming (paperback, 2009, Douglas & McIntyre): I basically accept the global warming hypothesis, but what I'm more certain of is that the disinformation campaign of business and political interests is way off base, so this book at least should be on relatively firm ground.

Tom Holland: Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic (paperback, 2005, Anchor Books).

Tom Holland: The Forge of Christendom: The End of Days and the Epic Rise of the West (2009, Doubleday): A history of Europe's 1K crisis -- the apocalyptic expectations surrounding the year 1000. Don't know how far this goes, but it certainly sets the stage for the Crusades beginning in 1095. Holland has written a couple of books on earlier history: Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic and Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West. I found Rubicon to be a very useful introduction to a subject I knew little of.

Leslie Holmes, Rotten States? Corruption, Post-Communism, and Neoliberalism (Duke University Press, paperback).

Stephen Holmes: The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror (2007, Cambridge University Press).

David Holmgren: Future Scenarios: How Communities Can Adapt to Peak Oil and Climate Change (paperback, 2009, Chelsea Green).

William J Holstein: Why GM Matters: Inside the Race to Transform an American Icon (2009, Walker): A timely subject, given that the US government is likely to wind up owning about 50% of the formerly huge automaker, and few people (if anyone) have a clue to do about it. Looks like this has more to do with the size and economic relationships that GM has than the details of car making.

Jed Home, Breach of Faith: Hurricane Katrina and the Near Death of a Great American City (Random House).

Thomas Homer-Dixon: The Ingenuity Gap ().

Thomas Homer-Dixon: The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization (paperback, 2008, Island Press): Big thinker, able to draw on a vast range of knowledge, but his skills at manipulating possible world scenarios ultimately reduces the world to simplistic models. Finding an upside to a downside is one such model, but not the only one. Previously wrote The Ingenuity Gap: Facing the Economic, Environmental, and Other Challenges of an Increasingly Complex and Unpredictable Future, which I was impressed with but didn't manage to slog through.

Thomas Homer-Dixon, ed: Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future (2009, Random House Canada): Smart guy, likes big questions with a lot of weight on the future. This is one of those questions, but he's just editing, pulling together six Canadian experts, including William Marsden, author of a title worth repeating: Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care).

Robert D Hormats, The Price of Liberty: Paying for America's Wars (Henry Holt). Goldman Sachs vice-chairman. Henry Kissinger sez, "Robert Hormats mounts a compelling argument that America faces large-scale economic catastrophe due to lack of a long-term, fiscally sound strategy for meeting military and security needs as well as domestic obligations."

Nick Hornby: The Polysyllabic Spree (paperback, 2004, McSweeney's): A short book about reading books, done on the cheap. I have a soft spot for meta-books, but this may be a little too soft to bother with.

Alistair Horne: Kissinger: 1973, the Crucial Year (2009, Simon & Schuster): Actually, the crucial year will be the one Kissinger spends in the Hague.

Alexandra Horowitz: Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know (2009, Scribner): One of those topics you wonder about now and then. Seems like a good idea for a book, but how do we know that the author knows what dogs know? And even if someone knew all that, could it be communicated over an epistemological that is no doubt pretty broad?

Tony Horwitz: Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches From the Unfinished Civil War (paperback, 1999, Vintage Books): A journalistic survey of residual Confederate fans, sympathetic enough to be recommended by some, presumably rooted accurately enough in history to be useful.

Tony Horwitz: A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World (2008, Henry Holt): General history of the European discovery of America, possibly incorporating travelogue. First section on Discovery hits Vinland and Santo Domingo, but the rest, up through Plymouth, settles in the future continental US.

Albert Hourani: A History of the Arab Peoples (paperback, 1992, Warner Books).

Christopher Howard: The Welfare State Nobody Knows: Debunking Myths About US Social Policy (paperback, 2008, Princeton University Press): Looks like a fairly informative, non-ideological investigation. Yes, there is a welfare state, a pretty big one. No, it doesn't work very well, especially in terms of redistributing wealth. On the other hand, it works better than nothing, at least in terms of preventing the middle class from getting swamped in crises. It could work better, but most people are pretty confused about it all.

Georgina Howell, Gertrude Bell: Queen of the Desert, Shaper of Nations (2007-04, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Russ Hoyle: Going to War: How Misinformation, Disinformation, and Arrogance Led America Into Iraq (2008, Thomas Dunne): Stop me if you've heard this one before. At 544 pages may even have something you don't know already.

Douglas W. Hubbard: The Failure of Risk Management: Why It's Broken and How to Fix It (2009, Wiley): Back to the drawing board. One thing we know now is that the computer models for risk management on things like CDOs and CDSs have been wildly wrong. Presumably Hubbard, who's supposed to be an expert in such, is out to correct that.

Peter Huber/Mark P Mills: The Bottomless Well: The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run out of Energy (paperback, 2006, Basic Books).

Jack Huberman: Bushit! An A-Z Guide to the Bush Attack on Truth, Justice, Equality, and the American Way (paperback, 2006, Nation Books).

Jack Huberman: 101 People Who Are Really Screwing America (And Bernard Goldberg Is Only #73) (paperback, 2006, Nation Books).

Andrew Hudson/Paul Hudson: Red Hat Fedora Core 6 Unleashed (paperback, 2006, Sams).

Deal W Hudson: Onward, Christian Soldiers: The Growing Political Power of Catholics and Evangelicals in the United States (2008, Threshold Editions): On the political rise of the religious right.

Ariana Huffington: Right Is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe (and What You Need to Know to End the Madness) (2008, Knopf): At least she snagged a good title this time. I still find it hard to take her seriously, but the Amazon reviews are pretty evenly divided between 5 and 1 stars -- one of the latter called the book "a vile cesspool of hate."

Edward Humes: Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America's Soul (paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): On the political struggle over intelligent design vs. evolution, especially the Dover, PA case, although there's also quite a bit on Kansas here.

R Stephen Humphreys: Between Memory and Desire: The Middle East in a Troubled Age ().

Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History (WW Norton).

Zahid Hussain: Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle Within Militant Islam (2007; paperback, 2008, Columbia University Press)

Stephen SS Hyde: Cured! The Insider's Handbook for Health Care Reform (paperback, 2009, HobNob): Perfect markets can fix anything.

Raymond Ibrahim, ed: The Al Qaeda Reader (paperback, 2007, Broadway): In case your copy of Mein Kampf is lonely. Introduction is by Victor Davis Hanson, who's certain to muddy the waters.

Icon Group International: Health Care Reform: Webster's Timeline History, 1945-2007 (paperback, 2009, Icon Group)

Gwen Ifill: The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama (2009, Doubleday): Seemed like an obvious subject for the most prominent black reporter on television -- she can claim a breakthrough or two on her own. Also seems likely to be slight: I haven't seen any evidence of her getting sharper in the last few years, even with subjects as easy as Bush and Cheney let alone as subtle and discerning as Obama.

George Irvin: Super Rich: The Rise of Inequality in Britain and the United States (paperback, 2008, Polity): Presumably an English writer, otherwise why bother with them. On the other hand, may be good that he does, because the trend isn't limited to the US, and it produces similar problems elsewhere.

Robert Irwin, Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents (Overlook): A counterattack on Edward W. Said's famous book Orientalism, which itself discredited several generations of Western scholarship on the Middle East for their support of western imperialism. Seems likely to me that both views are true, in large part because texts inevitably reveal more than they intend.

Tetsuya Ishikawa: How I Caused the Credit Crunch (paperback, 2009, Icon Books): Banker, Japanese by birth, grew up in London, attended Eton and Oxford; worked for Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, ABN AMRO, securitizing toxic assets, so maybe it was his fault. Just not quite his alone.

Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (Crown).

Sasha Issenberg, The Sushi Economy: Globalization and the Making of a Modern Delicacy (Gotham): Food business, culture industry, etc.

Molly Ivins/Lou Dubose: Bushwhacked: Life in George W Bush's America ().

Molly Ivins/Lou Dubose: Bill of Wrongs: The Executive Branch's Assault Against America's Fundamental Rights (2007, Random House): Was tempted to buy this the moment I saw it, no doubt for sentimental reasons. The more I looked at it, the more it read like a Lou Dubose book. While I agree with all this stuff about rights, it's not something I'm all that interested in reading about.

Mark Jaccard: Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy (2006, Cambridge University Press): Tries to clean up the reputation of fossil fuels by pushing for clean, zero-emissions technology -- not really sustainable, at least beyond a few centuries, and probably not all that clean either. Cover shows a dinosaur riding a bicycle -- the sort of image you can endlessly pick apart.

Brooks Jackson/Kathleen Hall Jamieson: unSpun: Finding Facts in a World of Disinformation (paperback, 2007, Random House): Tough job for a short (208 pp) book, more likely to drown in examples than draw lessons beyond the usual don't believe most (or damn near anything) that you hear. Focuses on politics and advertising, pretty low lying fruit.

Gregg Jackson, Conservative Comebacks to Liberal Lies: Issue by Issue Responses to the Most Common Claims of the Left From A to Z (Jaj). Thumbed through this in the bookstore, stopping at Israel, where the responses were utterly fact-free.

Joe Jackson: The Thief at the End of the World: Rubber, Power, and the Seeds of Empire (2008, Penguin): The story of Henry Wickham, who stole the seeds to Brazilian rubber trees on which the British rubber industry was based.

Maggie Jackson: Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age (2008, Prometheus): There's a growing perception that people are getting dumber, and there are a lot of theories as to why -- some of which can be taken as proof that people are getting dumber. I imagine that a case can be made for distraction (as PW puts it: "our near-religious allegiance to a constant state of motion and addiction to multitasking"). Jackson previously wrote: What's Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life, and Refuge in the Information Age.

Tim Jackson: Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet (2009, Earthscan): Short book (160 pp), arguing that it is possible to have broader prosperity without economic growth, a good thing given the limits to growth posed by natural resource constraints. Most economists seem to believe that trickle down from infinite growth will satisfy everyone, but that strikes me as not just untenable but downright dumb.

Jane Jacobs: Dark Age Ahead (paperback, 2005, Vintage Books).

Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation (Hill & Wang).

Susan Jacoby: The Age of American Unreason (2008, Pantheon): Hard to tell how good or bad this is, since the old saw of dumb people getting dumber has long been a standard rant of the highbrow cultural right. On the other hand, there is something to write about. Inspired by Richard Hofstadter, which I take to be a good sign. Previously wrote Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, which is probably interesting.

Susan Jacoby: Alger Hiss and the Battle for History (2009, Yale University Press): After writing such sweeping books as Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason, here's one short and specific, part of a series, "Icons of America." Hiss is, well, iconic because people read more into him than there ever was -- something that I must say I never understood. I can, for instance, recall Nixon ranting that the real reason liberals opposed him on Vietnam was that they could never forgive him for what he did to Hiss, as if a couple million dead in Vietnam and Cambodia mattered less than the fate of an Ivy League commie. That's the sort of exaggeration Jacoby gets to work with -- if only anyone cares anymore.

Martin Jacques: When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order (2009, Penguin): Title indicates the fevered imperialist mindset. It's rather ridiculous to think that China could ever "rule the world" -- as well as presently unclear that China has any such intention. He means more like "when China corners the world's industrial capacity and stockpiles most of the world's money because China's the only country that invests in its labor." I suspect that even that will be self-correcting as other nations want to get in at the bottom, while the US is turning into a shell by getting out at the top, because the politicians here care more about profits than about workers.

Alireza Jafarzadeh, The Iran Threat: President Ahmadinejad and the Coming Nuclear Crisis (2007-01, Palgrave Macmillan): Scott Ritter identifies Jafarzadeh as front man for Israeli intelligence leaks.

Ayesha Jalal: Partisans of Allah: Jihad in South Asia (2008, Harvard University Press): Presumably South Asia means India (up through Kashmir) and Pakistan -- Jalal has previously written The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan. The Deobandis are at least one distinct fundamentalist strain in Islam in the area, and have been little written about -- the exception is Gilles Kepel's essential study: Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam.

Dahr Jamail: Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (2007, Haymarket). Covers a lot more turf than the mainstream media. Much of this is probably old news by now, but things haven't change as much as they'd have you believe.

Dahr Jamail: The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (2009, Haymarket): Another scoop for a freelance reporter who went further and dug deeper into the Iraq war than just about anyone else. Forward by Chris Hedges.

Arif Jamal: Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir (2009, Melville House): First thing to understand is that Kashmir is the bee in Pakistan's bonnet, and almost everything that Pakistan's security sector does is done with Kashmir (and India) in mind -- and it's tough to wrap your mind around that because it often makes little sense. The Kashmir conflict is little known, little understood -- well, it doesn't help that it doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense either.

Bill James: The Bill James Gold Mine 2008 (2008, ACTA): I'm far removed from the days when I knew everything there was to know about baseball, in large part because I read everything Bill James ever wrote. He hasn't written that much lately, which may be part of my problem. Spent some time with the book. Quizzed myself on how many players per team I had even heard of (Arizona: 0; Atlanta: 3; Baltimore: 0; don't recall the others, but I think Boston was 5 and the Yankees 8). A lot of bare tables and trivial comparisons; a few short essays. Not sure if it's worthwhile, even for sentimental reasons.

Harold James: The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire (2006; paperback, 2008, Princeton University Press): Short book on comparative empireology, with Rome and Britain as the obvious counterpoints. Previously wrote: The End of Globalization: Lessons From the Great Depression, another exercise in historical analogizing.

Harold James: The Creation and Destruction of Value: The Globalization Cycle (2009, Harvard University Press): One argument here is that the globalization juggernaut is a likely victim of the recession, much like globalization was undercut by the Great Depression. Previously wrote: The End of Globalization: Lessons From the Great Depression.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson/Joseph N Cappella: Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment (2008; paperback, 2010, Oxford University Press): Also focuses on Wall Street Journal opinion pages and Fox News. Has a lot of charts and stuff.

Eugene Jarecki: The American Way of War and How It Lost Its Way: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril (2008, Free Press): Director of the documentary, Why We Fight, a pretty good movie on the War on Terror. This covers a lot of ground around America's obsession with militarily engaging the world, going back as far as a discussion of who knew what about Pearl Harbor.

Elliot Jaspin: Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America (2007, Basic Books): When I was in Arkansas a couple weeks ago, I was talking about the Civil War there, and was told that there were several cases where slaveholders killed all their slaves rather than let them go free. Don't know whether those specific stories are here, but this book details 12 of the most brutal racial purges.

Derrick Jensen: Endgame, Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilization (paperback, 2006, Seven Stories Press): A fairly encyclopedic doomsday book. Intriguing inasmuch as I think a lot of the things he digs up are indeed serious problems, but it's also possible that he's a crackpot. Has a lot of books in a short time, including a Vol. 2 where he gets activist, and a graphic book called As the World Burns: 50 Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial.

Jamie Jensen: Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America's Two-Lane Highways (paperback, 2006, Avalon Travel Publishing): Looks like an attractive road book, the main problem being that it is organized around no more than 11 cross-country treks, whereas I'd think that shorter stretches of 2-lane roads would be more select. For example, Readers Digest has two competing books, but they're larger format, hardcover: The Most Scenic Drives in America: 120 Spectacular Road Trips and Off the Beaten Path. In the smaller format, National Geographic has: Guide to Scenic Highways & Byways: The 275 Best Drives in the US.

Fred Jerome: Einstein on Israel and Zionism: His Provocative Ideas About the Middle East (2009, St Martin's Press): I've long known that Einstein turned down an invitation to Israel, settling in New Jersey instead. This fleshes the story out further. Jerome previously wrote Einstein on Race and Racism.

Flora Jessop/Paul T Brown: Church of Lies (2009, Jossey-Bass): On the polygamist Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, by a woman who grew up there, broke away, and works against them.

Chalmers Johnson: Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2007, Metropolitan Books).

Chalmers Johnson: The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic (2004, Metropolitan Books).

Chris Johnson/Joylon Leslie: Afghanistan: The Mirage of Peace (2nd ed, paperback, 2008, Zed Books)

Haynes Johnson/David S Broder: The System: The American Way of Politics at the Breaking Point (1996, Little Brown; paperback, 1997, Back Bay Books): More/less the standard history of Clinton's health care fiasco, written shortly after the event. Worth reviewing for the details on the lobbying efforts against the bill, and for the sense of déjà vu as Obama takes on the same forces, now richer than ever.

Kaylene Johnson: Sarah: How a Small Town Girl Turned Alaska's Political Establishment on Its Ear (paperback, 2008, Epicenter Press): Well, that was quick, even for a scant 159 pages, and no doubt obsolete by the time you read this.

Simon Johnson/James Kwak: 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown (2010, Pantheon): Johnson has been on target throughout the crisis, and is likely to pull together one of the best big picture summaries of what happened and why. The six too-big-to-fail megabanks and their oligarchs are at the heart of the problem. That they start to talk abouta "next financial meltdown" suggests that they don't think Obama et al. are up to reigning these bankers in. [Mar. 30]

Steven Johnson: The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic -- and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World (2006, Penguin): The 1854 cholera epidemic, which led to a breakthrough in understanding how the disease is transmitted and what needed to be done to control it. Johnson has written a scattered range of books, including Everything Bad Is Good for You, which among other things claims that TV and video games make people smarter.

Steven Johnson: The Invention of Air: A Story of Science, Faith, Revolution, and the Birth of America (2008, Riverhead): On Joseph Priestley, focusing more on his political interests in emigrating to America and advising Thomas Jefferson than on his notable work in chemistry.

David Cay Johnston: Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill) (2007, Portfolio): Well, sure. Johnston also wrote Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich -- and Cheat Everybody Else, out in paperback. I can't get excited about these books, although they may well be eye-opening for some people. Reminds me of a short book by Dean Baker: The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

Alex S Jones: Losing the News: The Future of the News That Feeds Democracy (2009, Oxford University Press): Specifically newspaper news. Others have pointed out that there is no shortage of demand for news now; rather, there's a shortfall in supply from newspapers, which traditionally provided news as a sideline to their now-suffering business of selling advertising. I'll also add that the demise of newspapers is less of a problem than the demise of democracy, which has been increasingly evident in newspapers' lack of interest in searching out real political problems.

Ann Jones: Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (paperback, 2007, Picador): An NGO relief worker who arrived in Kabul after the US liberated the country. Describes what she saw, especially focusing on what it's meant for Aghan women: not a pretty picture.

Bart Jones: ¡Hugo!: The Hugo Chavez Story From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution (2007, Steerforth): Newsday reporter's biography, 568 pages, regarded as well written and sympathetic. I have no real interest in or feelings about Chavez, although in general I'd rather see any leftist in power vs. any rightist.

Bryan D Jones/Walter Williams: The Politics of Bad Ideas: The Great Tax Cut Delusion and the Decline of Good Government in America (paperback, 2008, Longman): Fiscal responsibility lecture centering around ill-advised tax cuts.

Ishmael Jones: The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture (2008, Encounter Books): Evidently written by a long-time spook who never got his higher-ups to understand anything he was telling them, much less stuff they never found out about.

Seth G Jones: In the Graveyard of Empires: America's War in Afghanistan (2009, WW Norton): RAND Corp. analyst looks back, second guesses, offers some more guesses. [PS: After reading this book, note seems about right.]

Don Jordan/Michael Walsh: White Cargo: The Forgotten History of Britain's White Slaves in America (paperback, 2008, New York University Press): Authors claim more than 300,000 white English were sent to America as slaves over a 170 year period. This details how they were procured and treated, not much different than African slaves. I've always heard of such people as "indentured servants" implying that the servitude is limited to a fixed term, usually incurred due to debt.

Asgeir Jonsson: Why Iceland?: How One of the World's Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown's Biggest Casualty (2009, McGraw-Hill): Interesting case study, although both the extreme boom and the bust were exaggerated by the tiny size of the economy.

Lieve Joris: The Rebel's Hour (2008, Grove Press): Belgian travel writer, in the Congo where the well-known Rwandan genocide spawned a secondary, in some ways even more horrific, war.

Paul Joseph, Are Americans Becoming More Peaceful? (2006-10, Paradigm).

ST Joshi, The Angry Right: Why Conservatives Keep Getting It Wrong (Prometheus).

Timothy Stoltzfus Jost: Health Care at Risk: A Critique of the Consumer-Driven Movement (paperback, 2007, Duke University Press): Abbreviated CDHC, not that any actual consumers are driving it.

Tim Judah: Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know (paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press): Brief history, not much liked by Serbophiles. That in itself may not be such a problem, but there should be more angles on the matter. For one thing, it looked an awful lot like a make-work project to promote NATO, a dubious proposition on the face of it. Judah also wrote Kosovo: War and Revenge. Another book on Kosovo is: Iain King/Whit Mason: Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo.

Tony Judt: Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 (2005; paperback, 2006, Penguin Press).

Tony Judt: Reappraisals: Reflections on the Forgotten Twentieth Century (2008, Penguin Press): A collection of previously published essays, most from New York Review of Books, which is to say most already read, most very sharp. I've read his huge Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945, and recommend it highly. (Lots of quotes in my Books section.)

Antonia Juhasz: The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time (paperback, 2007, Harper Perennial): Hadn't mentioned this before because it looked like a fairly standard anti-globalization rant -- maybe I was just reacting to the dollar sign, because it shouldn't be hard to make the case, and there are examples that could use some press: Iraq you probably know about, but what about Haiti? She has a new book coming out, another easy mark, even timelier: The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry -- and What We Must Do to Stop It.

Antonia Juhasz: The Tyranny of Oil: The World's Most Powerful Industry -- and What We Must Do to Stop It (2008; paperback, 2009, Harper): Easy enough to paint the oil industry as evil, especially if you go back to Rockefeller and cram it all into 480 pages. Author previously wrote The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time.

Robert Kagan: Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (paperback, 2007, Vintage): Right-wing historian, scion of a family of public menaces, but his title is true enough. Argues that even at the time of the American Revolution we were headed for empire, a tack we've never strayed much from. While this is consistent with neoconservative ambitions, it also seems like a warning to the rest of the world. Ends in 1898 with the Spanish-American War, just when most studies of American imperialism are getting warmed up. A second volums is in the works, bound to be massive. Meanwhile, Kagan has also written: The Return of History and the End of Dreams. First three names to offer "advance praise": John McCain, Joseph Lieberman, Richard Holbrooke.

Charles Kaiser: 1968 in America: Music, Politics, Chaos, Counterculture, and the Shaping of a Generation (paperback, 1997, Grove Press): Amazon reader: "this book gives great insight to the days of rage and the background leading up to the reign of terror in America." What? Mixed reports on the music part. Mark Kurlansky's 1968: The Year That Rocked the World covers the same ground plus more international.

Robert G Kaiser: So Damn Much Money: The Triumph of Lobbying and the Corrosion of American Government (2009, Knopf): Washington Post reporter, been around long enough he could write this book many times over. This take evidently focuses on one lobbyist, Gerald Cassidy, who started out in 1969 and got bigger and richer over the decades.

Peter Kaminsky: Pig Perfect: Encounters with Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them (2005, Hyperion): Essential reading for porkalicious fans.

William Kamkwamba/Bryan Mealer: The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope (2009, Morrow): Story of a 14-year-old boy in Malawi who built his own windmill, bringing electricity, power, and freedom to a small patch of the third world.

David Kamp: The United States of Arugula: The Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution (paperback, 2007, Random House).

Dave Kansas: The Wall Street Journal Guide to the End of Wall Street as We Know It: What You Need to Know About the Greatest Financial Crisis of Our Time -- and How to Survive It (paperback, 2009, Harper): Financial writer, depends on brand name for authority, writes down to his presumed audience, which might include Rip Van Winkle.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter: America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again (2007, Crown): Harvard Business School professor, wrote a famous management book I read back in the 1980s when I was into that sort of thing: The Change Masters: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the American Corporation. New book tries to apply some common business sense to rebranding America -- successful enough to lure blurb praise from Bill Clinton, David Gergen, Warren Bennis, Arianna Huffington, Donna Shalala, Alan Dershowitz. Gag if you want (#6: citizens should cooperate with government to do more for our communities; #3: companies should be more honest and transparent). Actually, all of the points are true, even if they fall far short of what's needed.

Seth Kantner: Shopping for Porcupine: A Life in Arctic Alaska (2008, Milkweed Editions): Born in an igloo, grew up on the tundra, wrote a previous book, Ordinary Wolves. Lots of photographs.

Martin Kantor: Uncle Sam's Shame: Inside Our Broken Veterans Administration (2008, Greenwood): Don't know how this squares with other reports that the VA system is actually pretty good.

Fred Kaplan: Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power (2008, Wiley).

Fred Kaplan: 1959: The Year That Changed Everything (2009, Wiley): Evidently takes the view that the 1960s started a year earlier and hinged on crucial events in 1959, specifically citing birth control pills, microchips, and the first US soldiers killed in Vietnam, but also noting "Kind of Blue" -- Kaplan is something of a jazz critic on the side, his main beat being the military-industrial complex.

Robert D Kaplan: Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan (1990; paperback, 2001, Vintage).

Robert D Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History ().

Robert D Kaplan: Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucusus ().

Robert D Kaplan: The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, From Iran to Cambodia, a Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy ().

Robert D Kaplan: An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future (paperback, 1999, Vintage Books).

Robert D Kaplan: The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War ().

Robert D Kaplan: Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Requires a Pagan Ethos (paperback, 2003, Vintage Books).

Robert D Kaplan, Imperial Grunts: On the Ground With the American Military, From Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq (Random House): I've read everything else by him, and regard him as a useful reporter-historian and a dangerous ideologue. I gather he's gone off the deep end this time. Thought I'd wait until the paperback came out, which happened recently. Still waiting.

Robert D Kaplan: Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground (2007, Random House): Sequel to Imperial Grunts, where the militarism became de trop for me, even though I've read virtually everything else he's written. Good writer, useful historian and observer (although I've seen Tom Bissell shred him on specifics), dangerously defective thinker.

Zachary Karabell, Peace Be Upon You: Fourteen Centuries of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish Coexistence in the Middle East (Knopf): A view worth shedding some light on.

Zachary Karabell: Superfusion: How China and America Became One Economy and Why the World's Prosperity Depends on It (2009, Simon & Schuster): Historian, last two books focused on the Middle East, but before that he did books on Chester Arthur and Harry Truman, so he jumps around. The idea of looking at China and America as one co-dependent economy is interesting, and a good history would be useful.

Charles H Karelis: The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor (2007, Yale University Press): These things bear repeating, especially since the contrary positions are repeated so often, even when they have little or no empirical support. Recently read Ha-Joon Chang's book on the same basic subject: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism.

Neal Karlen: The Story of Yiddish: How a Mish-Mosh of Languages Saved the Jews (2008, Morrow): Another book on Yiddish as language and culture -- Paul Kriwaczek: Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation; Michael Wex: Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods (and others); David Katz: Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish; Miriam Weinstein: Yiddish: A Nation of Words; as well as things like Yetta Emmes: Drek! The Real Yiddish Your Bubbe Never Taught You and Lita Epstein: If You Can't Say Anything Nice, Say It in Yiddish: The Book of Yiddish Insults and Curses.

Walter Karp: The Politics of War: The Story of Two Wars Which Altered the Political Life of the American Republic (1890-1920) (paperback, 2003, Moyer Bell).

Anne Karpf/Brian Klug/Jacqueline Rose/Barbara Rosenbaum, eds.: A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel, Zionism and Jewish Identity (paperback, 2008, Verso): Pieces from a British group called Independent Jewish Voices.

Tim Kasser: The High Price of Materialism (paperback, 2003, MIT Press).

Jerome P Kassirer: On the Take: How Medicine's Complicity with Big Business Can Endanger Your Health (paperback, 2005, Oxford University Press): Focuses on bribes of various sorts health care companies (especially drug companies) make to physicians. Author is an MD who's been around and no doubt has seen a lot.

Ira Katznelson: When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold Story of Racial Injustice in Twentieth-Century America (paperback, 2006, WW Norton).

Bill Kauffman: Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (2008, Metropolitan Books): Has an elephant with peace signs on the cover, possibly a tribute to Ron Paul, who likes the book. I think it's about time someone wrote up this history.

Joel M Kauffman: Malignant Medical Myths: Why Medical Treatment Causes 200,000 Deaths in the USA Each Year, and How to Protect Yourself (paperback, 2006, Infinity)

Henry Kaufman: The Road to Financial Reformation: Warnings, Consequences, Reforms (2009, Wiley): Notoriously bearish financial analyst gets to write an I-told-you-so book, and lay out some ideas for fixing things. Niall Ferguson wrote the intro, which doesn't strike me as a plus.

Robert G Kaufman: In Defense of the Bush Doctrine (paperback, 2008, University of Kentucky Press): As Jacob Weisberg noted, there are at least five Bush Doctrines, made up on the spot to rationalize whatever insanity or inanity the Decider fell for at any given moment, not counting the last year-plus when it's not been clear that he's had any clue at all, so this book starts with its author's jackboot buried in a tub of cement. The only possible interest might be in finding out what he thinks he's defending. Given that all five-plus "doctrines" are indefensible, this is bound to be an uphill slog.

Sharon R Kaufman: And a Time to Die: How American Hospitals Shape the End of Life (2005, Scribner)

Ichiro Kawachi/Bruce P Kennedy: The Health of Nations: Why Inequality is Harmful to Your Health (paperback, 2006, New Press): Linked from Richard Wilkinson's The Impact of Inequality: How to Make Sick Societies Healthier, this seems to be even more specifically focused on health care. As you know, the US has worse health outcomes than any other rich country despite spending twice or more as much per capita. Lots of reasons are possible, including that overtreatment isn't necessarily a good thing, but inequality seems to have far more to do with it: both in the denial of essential services and in the jealous protectionism of those who think they're better off for it.

Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture (Currency): This looks like an annoying elitist screed -- indeed, looking at the Publishers Weekly review it may be worse than that. I listed it because I find amateurism on the web not a cult but a sad effect of lack of cooperation and hope for anything better. But for me Wikipedia is the exception, not (as Keen seems to think) the rule. Maybe someone who doesn't moonlight for the Weekly Standard should rewrite this.

Nikki R Keddie: Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (1981; revised paperback, 2006, Yale University Press).

Robin DG Kelley: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009, Free Press): Likely to be the essential book on Monk, never a very straightforward subject.

John Kelly: The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time (paperback, 2006, Harper Perennial): Specifically focuses on the plagues that swept Europe in the 1340s, killing a third or more of the total population. A number of books available on this.

Kate Kelly: Street Fighters: The Last 72 Hours of Bear Stearns, the Thoughest Firm on Wall Street (2009; paperback, 2010, Portfolio Trade): An hour-by-hour account of the last tree days that terminated the venerable investment bank -- short on context or analysis, which no doubt heightens the blindsided by reality shock.

Alan Kennedy-Shaffer, Denial and Deception: A Study of the Bush Administration's Rhetorical Case for Invading Iraq (Universal, paperback).

Michelle Kennedy: Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless (with Kids) in America (paperback, 2006, Penguin Books): Memoir, one case study, fortunate enough to be able to write about it.

Robert F Kennedy Jr: Crimes Against Nature: How George W Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy (paperback, 2005, Harper Perennial).

Gilles Kepel: Jihad: The Trail of Political Islam (2000, Belknap Press).

Gilles Kepel: The War for Muslim Minds: Islam and the West (2004, Belknap Press).

Gilles Kepel/Jean-Pierre Milelli, eds: Al Qaeda in Its Own Words (2008; paperback, 2009, Belknap Press): It's a dirty job, but Kepel has proven to be the most broadly learned and sensible of experts. Several competing editions, not worth mentioning.

Ian Kershaw: Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941 (2007, Penguin Press): In particular, they changed the world by starting WWII including the Holocaust. This presumably goes into the strategizing that made those decisions appear rational at the time. I suspect much of this is groupthink, the conventional racism and militarism of the period. Nicholson Baker's Human Smoke looks like it clarifies the context within which these details were debated.

David Keys: Catastrophe: An Investigation Into the Origins of Modern Civilization ().

Rashid Khalidi: Resurrecting Empire: Western Footprints and America's Perilous Path in the Middle East (2004, Beacon Press).

Rashid Khalidi, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood (2006, Beacon Press).

Rashid Khalidi: Sowing Crisis: The Cold War and American Hegemony in the Middle East (2009, Beacon Press): It almost goes without saying that the US approached the Middle East as much or more through the prism of its Cold War obsession with the Soviet threat as for any other reason -- oil and empathy for Israel two more obvious concerns. One reason the Cold War is worth reviewing at this time is that it was the policy concern least connected to reality, and most distorting of reality. Not sure how far Khalidi goes with this -- his specialty is Israel/Palestine and their Arab neighbours but Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan are big pieces of the picture, and there are more little pieces.

M Ashgar Khan: We've Learnt Nothing from History: Pakistan: Politics and Military Power (2006, Oxford University Press)

Yasmin Khan: The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan (paperback, 2008, Yale University Press): Relatively short (288 pp) history of one of the most traumatic events of the post-WWII era: responsible for a million deaths, 10-15 million exiles or displaced, three subsequent wars and countless lesser acts of violence, posing two nuclear-armed nations at each other's throats. Not to mention the stunning indifference of Britain to all the misery they caused. I'm tempted to pick this up, or Alex von Tunzelman's Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire, or maybe Narendra Singh Sarila's The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition. Stanley Wolpert's Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire might also add something, but strikes me as far too sympathetic to the British.

Parag Khanna: The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order (2008, Random House): One of those books about which nations/regions are growing, which are likely to be global powers, pushing which others around, etc. Its value (if any) is in the details.

Tarun Khanna: Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures -- and Yours (2008, Harvard Business School Press): There are several books along this line, celebrating ubiquitous capitalism and taunting the west for slipping behind, not being pro-business enough. The reality is that China and India have a few entrepreneurs and a whole lot of cheap labor, and the latter are less likely to be suckered into dreams of becoming rich than Americans have been.

Muhammad Khudayyir: Basrayatha: The Story of a City (paperback, 2008, Verso): A short tribute to the Iraqi city of Basra, originally published in 1997.

Tracy Kidder: Strength in What Remains (2009, Random House): I've read two of Kidder's books: The Soul of a New Machine and House, both of which showed great skill at explaining technical challenges. His other work is more scattered, hard to characterize. This is the story of a student from Burundi who fled the mid-1990s war there (and more famously in neighboring Rwanda) for New York. Most likely a powerfully human story.

Ben Kiernan: Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (paperback, 2009, Yale University Press): Big comparative history (756 pp), filling in a lot of prehistorical slaughter to the 20th century concept of genocide.

David Kilcullen: The Accidental Guerrilla: Fighting Small Wars in the Midst of a Big One (2009, Oxford University Press): Australian military theoretician, has some experience as a counterinsurgency advisor to Petraeus. Accidental guerrillas are locals who wouldn't be fighting but pick up guns when they see outsiders like the US military trampling their country. Iraq and Afghanistan offer plenty of examples. The sort of new thinking that gives politicians hope to keep embarrassing wars going on indefinitely, postponing defeat by prolonging tragedy.

Richard Kim/Betsy Reed, eds: Going Rouge: An American Nightmare (paperback, 2009, Health Communications): A rip-off, of course, the most obvious difference from the bestseller it mimics is the gloomy sky behind Palin's crazed gaze into space. Note that at least two other books hit on the same title: Bob Silber's Going Rouge: A Candid Look Inside the Mind of Political Conservative Sarah Palin and Julie Sigwart's Going Rouge: The Sarah Palin Rogue Coloring & Activity Book. Still, when I googled the book title, the search engine served up "going rogue" instead. I've seen it suggest more common alternatives, but never substitute one before.

Baruch Kimmerling/Joel S Migdal: The Palestinian People: A History ().

Baruch Kimmerling: The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military (2001; paperback, 2005, University of California Press): Argues that Israeli identity has broken down into seven major cultures, which fits in with Richard Ben Cramer's argument that post-2000 Israeli hawkishness has been fueled by the disunity of the Israeli polity -- the repression of the Palestinians is the only thing all those Israeli factions can agree on. Like Tom Segev's Elvis in Jerusalem, written at a point when the events of the last 8 years didn't seem inevitable.

Baruch Kimmerling: Politicide: Ariel Sharon's War Against the Palestinians (2003, Verso).

Baruch Kimmerling: Clash of Identities: Explorations in Israeli and Palestinian Societies (2008, Columbia University Press): Looks like a collection assembled over 20 years, updating arguments from Kimmerling's earlier The Invention and Decline of Israeliness: State, Society, and the Military.

Barbara J King, Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (2007-01, Doubleday).

R. Alan King, Twice Armed: An American Soldier's Battle for Hearts and Minds in Iraq (MBI). "As unconventional as any soldier this side of T.E. Lawrence, . . . Armed with a Palm Pilot, a Koran, and a nuanced respect for Middle Eastern culture, King arranged the capture or surrender of almost a dozen of the most wanted villains from Saddam's regime."

Barbara Kingsolver: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (2007; paperback, 2008, Harper Perennial): Can't vouch for her well-regarded novels, but I've dabbled in her essay collections -- barely, evidently: I missed Small Wonder: Essays and High Tide in Tucscon: Essays From Now or Never, probably others. Another tantalizing food book from a year full of them. Some people (and I'm one of them) eat when faced with stress. Reading food books is almost as comforting.

Michael Kinsley: Please Don't Remain Calm: Provocations and Commentaries (2008, WW Norton): Recycled columns, some of possible interest, although I don't see why such recycled goods don't go straight to paperback.

Michael Kinsley, ed: Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Other Economic Leaders (2008, Simon & Schuster): Famous liberal buckraker picks now to edit a schmoozy collection extolling the genius and philanthropic virtues of a pretty recent crop of robber barons. Mixes in some suck-up economists too, like Gary Becker and Lawrence Summers. In a similar vein, there's Michael Bishop's Philanthropocapitalism: How the Rich Can Save the World.

Stephen Kinzer: Crescent and Star: Turkey Between Two Worlds ().

Stephen Kinzer: All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror (2003, John Wiley).

Stephen Kinzer, Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books). I've read Kinzer's All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror, a good history of Iran focusing on the anti-Mossadegh coup.

Stephen Kinzer: A Thousand Hills: Rwanda's Rebirth and the Man Who Dreamed It (2008, Wiley): I've read Kinzer's good books on Iran and Turkey, as well as his valuable Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change From Hawaii to Iraq. This one on Rwanda is a change of pace, a trusting (if not necessarily a puff piece) account of Paul Kagame's post-genocide Rwandan rule and its putative economic progress, following Asian Tigers like Singapore rather than the IMF.

Bakari Kitwana: Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (paperback, 2006, Basic Civitas Books): Strikes me as true, at least to a significant extent, even if not majority true.

Michael Klare: Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum (paperback, 2005, Owl Books).

Michael T Klare: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Politics of Energy (2008, Metropolitan Books): For better or worse, Klare is the guy who's been following the problems of shrinking resources (especially oil) and mapping them to geopolitics. TomDispatch has published an excerpt from this, which had nothing new but also nothing terribly wrong.

Michael T Klare: Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (2008; paperback, 2009, Holt): Much trouble and turmoil over which power gets what, especially oil.

Joe Klein, Politics Lost: How American Democracy Was Trivialized by People Who Think You're Stupid (Doubleday). Did read a bit of this, but didn't get far, realizing that Klein is part of his subject problem.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007, Metropolitan Books): Seems to be a major effort at summing up what globalized capitalism is doing. Something turns me away from her: haven't read any of her books, not sure I've even managed to finish one of her Nation columns. Strong activism, weak economics. Probably a lot of research here worth knowing. The notion that capitalism depends on disaster doesn't make any sense to me, although there are plenty of examples of capitalism leading to disaster.

JD Kleinke: Oxymorons: The Myth of a US Health Care System (2001, Wiley): Another CDHC scheme, based on eliminating employer groups.

Eric Klinenberg, Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media (2007-01, Henry Holt).

William Kleinknecht: The Man Who Sold the World: Ronald Reagan and the Betrayal of Main Street America (2009, Nation Books): Another attempt to put Reagan back into focus, this time focusing on the Middle America Reagan was supposed to champion, and what his political legacy has done to them.

Arnold Kling: Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care (paperback, 2006, Cato Institute)

Elizabeth Kolbert, Field Notes From a Catastophe (paperback, 2006, Bloomsbury). Read most/all of this in New Yorker.

Sonali Kolhatkar/James Ingalls: Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (paperback, 2006, Seven Stories Press): Co-directors of Afghan Women's Mission, a US-based NGO working with RAWA (Revolutionary Association of Women of Afghanistan). They look to be ahead of the learning curve, but Amazon reviews are very polarized.

Gabriel Kolko/Joyce Kolko: The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1954 (paperback, 1972, Harper & Row).

Richard C Koo: The Holy Grail of Macroeconomics: Lessons from Japan's Great Recession (2009, Wiley): Back in the 1980s wags were writing books about how Japan was taking over the world. That ended with the recession in Japan that started in 1992 and ended when? -- says 2007 here, but isn't that about when the worldwide depression started to overwhelm local recessions? Krugman's been pushing the line that the US is likely to wind up recovering as meagerly as Japan did. Cause of Japan's recession? As I recall, it was the real estate bubble.

Josh Kosman: The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Will Cause the Next Great Credit Crisis (2009, Portfolio): I guess this makes sense. Private equity companies use their leverage to buy up real companies and suck them dry, leaving them with huge piles of debt, which means that creditors can get screwed on both ends of the deal, while the banks at least reap huge fees for their complicity.

Laurence J Kotlikoff: Healthcare Fix: Universal Insurance for All Americans (2007, MIT Press): Mandatory private insurance with vouchers.

Lawrence J Kotlikoff: Jimmy Stewart Is Dead: Ending the World's Ongoing Financial Plague with Limited Purpose Banking (2010, Wiley): Stewart played the earnest small town banker in Frank Capra's film, It's a Wonderful Life, whose depression was cured by a chance to look decades ahead at all the good he would do with his bank. Such banks don't exist any more, but Kotlikoff has some sort of scheme to bring them back. The fact is that we need some small subset of banking services, and almost everything else that modern banks do is predatory -- scams that suck money out of the real economy and into the bankers' pockets.

Markos Kounalakis/Peter Laufer: Hope Is a Tattered Flag: Voices of Reason and Change for the Post-Bush Era (2008, Polipoint Press): Two radio anchors associated with Washington Monthly interview various people -- don't have the list, other than: Ahmed Ahmed, Chris Anderson, Pat Buchanan, Joe Klein, Bill McKibben, Drew Westin. Title from a Sandburg poem. Hope springs eternal.

Nikolas Kozloff: Revolution!: South America and the Rise of the New Left (2008, Palgrave Macmillan): Author of a previous book on Venezuela: Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics, and the Challenge to the US. Here he broadens the picture to include more challenges to the US -- nearly a continent's worth.

Jonathan Kozol, Letters to a Young Teacher (Crown): I haven't read anything by Kozol since Death at an Early Age, when I was still a teenager. The recent spate of "letters to a young [whatever]" books have become a cliché, but one thing they reveal is a sense that we're losing our grip on the handing down of knowledge. In any case, this one looks to be earnest and heartfelt. Kozol ranked high on Bernard Goldberg's list of 101 people screwing up America. I could see the logic of some picks and take others as back-handed compliments, singling Kozol out struck me as plain proof of Goldberg's moral rot.

Joel Kovel: Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine (paperback, 2007, Pluto Press).

Heidi Squier Kraft: Rule Number Two: Lessons I Learned in a Combat Hospital (2007, Little Brown): A clinical psychologist goes to Iraq. There are hundreds of war memoirs by now, but this is likely to be a little different.

Jon Krakauer: Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2003, Doubleday).

Jon Krakauer: Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman (2009, Doubleday): I've probably read all of Krakauer's books -- mountain climbing is one of my odder side interests, and Mormonism is another -- still this doesn't seem like a very promising combination. The only lesson I draw from Tillman is the utter waste of America's war in Afghanistan, and more generally America's passion for war. People are tempted to think that Tillman did something remarkable leaving the NFL for Afghanistan, but the two are so foolishly intertwined that it was merely pathetic.

Paul Kriwaczek, Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation (paperback, 2006, Vintage Books).

Paul Krugman: The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century (2003, WW Norton).

Paul Krugman: The Conscience of a Liberal (2007; paperback, 2009, WW Norton): Part political manifesto, but cooly delivered because he wants to work a macro view of US history in, from the Long Gilded Age through the New Deal-inspired levelling and back to a return of Gilded Age inequality.

Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008, WW Norton): New edition, updated, maybe even a rewrite, of Krugman's 1999 The Return of Depression Economics: a book that must seem more prescient now than when it originally appeared at the top of the high tech boom.

Paul Krugman: The Return of Depression Economics and the Crisis of 2008 (2008; paperback, 2009, WW Norton): Revised a year ago from the 1999 original, written then in response to the East Asian collapse of 1997, which bears many of the same traits as the current boom/bust.

David Kuo: Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction (2006; paperback, 2007, Free Press): Somewhere well down on my pending list of questions about the Bush regime is whether their "faith-based" initiatives were ever meant to be anything more than patronage favors for evangelical supporters (in other words, everyday graft). Of course, it helped to con a few believers, and Kuo was one of them.

Mark Kurlansky: The Basque History of the World ().

Mark Kurlansky: 1968: The Year That Rocked the World (2003; paperback, 2005, Vintage Books).

Mark Kurlansky: Nonviolence: Twenty-Five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea (2006, Modern Library).

Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell (2007-01, Random House, paperback).

Mark Kurlansky: The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic and Survival in Gloucester, America's Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town (2008, Random House): Another fish tale from a historian who's recently been extremely prolific lately -- Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World; Salt: A World History; The Basque History of the World: The Story of a Nation; 1968: The Year That Rocked the World; The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell; and my off-topic fave, Nonviolence: Twenty Five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea.

Daniel C Kurtzer/Scott B Lasensky: Negotiating Arab-Israeli Peace: American Leadership in the Middle East (paperback, 2008, United States Institute of Peace Press): Kurtzer was rumored to be a prime Obama appointment for sorting out the Israel/Palestine mess, and seemed at least to be a better candidate than Martin Indyk or Dennis Ross.

Robert Kuttner: The Squandering of America: How the Failure of Our Politics Undermines Our Prosperity (2007, Knopf).

Robert Kuttner: Obama's Challenge: America's Economic Crisis and the Power of a Transformative Presidency (paperback, 2009, Chelsea Green): Quickie book dressing up Obama as a future Lincoln or Roosevelt (or Johnson, except for that mess in Vietnam, or do I mean Afghanistan?), based on crudely applying Doris Kearns Goodwin to his otherwise solid economic critique.

Robert Lacey: Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia (2009, Viking): Broad-ranging survey of Saudi Arabia these days. Lacey previously wrote The Kingdom: Arabia and the House of Sa'ud back in 1981, which had the good fortune of being banned by the Saudis.

Tony Lagouranis/Allen Mikaelian: Fear Up Harsh: An Army Interrogator's Dark Journey Through Iraq (2007, NAL): Abu Ghraib interrogator's memoir. There seem to be several of these floating around; in no particular order: Tara McKelvey: Monstering: Inside America's Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War; Chris Mackey: The Interrogators: Task Force 500 and America's Secret War Against Al Qaeda; Paul Holton: Saving Babylon: The Heart of an Army Interrogator in Iraq; Matthew Alexander/John Bruning: How to Break a Terrorist: The U.S. Interrogators Who Used Brains, Not Brutality, to Take Down the Deadliest Man in Iraq; Michael Otterman: American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond.

Steve Lake/Paul Griffiths, eds.: Horizons Touched: The Music of ECM (2007, Granta): Big coffee table book, with cover illustrations and miscellaneous info for some/most/all[?] of ECM's 2000 or so releases -- jazz with a pastoral or chamber bent/classical music for new agers. Important label, possibly the most important of the last 40 years.

George Lakoff: Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think (paperback, 2002, University of Chicago Press).

George Lakoff: Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (paperback, 2004, Chelsea Green).

George Lakoff: The Political Mind: Why You Can't Understand 21st-Century American Politics With an 18th-Century Brain (2008, Viking): Linguistics professor, has written a number of books on how the right frames its issues to sell them, and how progressives should do the same -- Don't Think of an Elephant!: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate is the short version; Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think and Whose Freedom? The Battle Over America's Most Important Idea are the long ones. The new book continues in that vein, although why he thinks we have 18th-century brains isn't obvious -- I'd say they're a good deal more ancient, which is why we're willing to follow frauds who look tough even in cases where tough isn't what we need (much less fraud).

Christina Lamb: The Sewing Circles of Herat: A Personal Voyage Through Afghanistan (2003; paperback, 2004, Harper Perennial): A memoir of time spent in Afghanistan in late 1980s as a foreign correspondent, plus interviews following the rout of the Taliban in late 2001.

Richard D Lamm: The Brave New World of Health Care (paperback, 2003, Fulcrum): Former Colorado governor, from before rationing and death panels became scare words.

Richard D Lamm/Robert H Blank: Condition Critical: A New Moral Vision for Health Care (paperback, 2007, Fulcrum)

John Lanchester: IOU: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay (2010, Simon & Schuster): I don't see the word in any of the review notes, but my impression is that this is about leverage. Politically convenient cheap credit has led to a mountain of highly leveraged investments that don't seem to be based on much of anything. Getting that money back is going to be difficult. Author started researching this for a novel, then decided truth is stranger, or maybe just more powerful, than fiction.

Barry M Lando, Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, From Churchill to Kennedy to George W Bush (2007-01, Other Press).

Steven E Landsburg, More Sex Is Safer Sex: The Unconventional Wisdom of Economics (Free Press): Presumably inspired by the chart success of Freakonomics, but Landsburg has been perverse longer. I started reading his previous Armchair Economist but got disgusted. Still, his description of "the principle of indifference" has haunted me ever since, perhaps the most dismal idea the Dismal Science ever concocted.

Charles Lane: The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre, the Supreme Court, and the Betrayal of Reconstruction (2008, Henry Holt): Easter Sunday, 1873, in Colfax, LA, white vigilantes murdered at least 80 blacks. The Supreme Court decided that the states should handle such cases, effectively condoning lynching. Another new book covers the same story, more briefly: Lee Anna Keith: The Colfax Massacre: The Untold Story of Black Power, White Terror, and the Death of Reconstruction.

Yitzhak Laor: Myths of Liberal Zionism (2010, Verso): On the self-proclaimed "peace camp" Zionists, such as Amos Oz and AB Yehoshua, a group that invariably rallies for each new Israeli military offensive, only to bemoan it once things go awry. Short (128 pp), probably scathing. The core problem is that the Liberal Zionists are more concerned with proving their Zionism than their commitment to peace or justice -- concepts that are disallowed by the very nature of Zionism.

Lewis Lapham: Theater of War (2002, New Press).

Lewis Lapham, Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration (2006; paperback, 2007, New Press).

Eric Larsen, A Nation Gone Blind: America in the Age of Simplification and Deceit (Avalon, paperback).

Edward J Larson: A Magnificent Catastrophe: The Tumultuous Election of 1800, America's First Presidential Campaign (2007, Free Press): Not only the first properly partisan campaign, the first serious emergence of treachery in high stakes political activity. Checked this out to answer some questions raised by the HBO John Adams series, poked around, wound up reading most of it.

Marie L Lassey/William R Lassey/Martin J Jinks: Health Care Systems Around the World: Characteristics, Issues, Reforms (paperback, 1996, Prentice Hall)

Jacky Law: Big Pharma: Exposing the Global Healthcare Agenda (paperback, 2006, Basic Books)

Quil Lawrence: Invisible Nation: How the Kurds' Quest for Statehood Is Shaping Iraq and the Middle East (2008, Walker & Co): A history of the Kurds, or at least their nationalist political struggle, semi-successful in Iraq as of late.

Ervin Laszlo: The Chaos Point: The World at the Crossroads (new edition, paperback, 2006, Hampton Roads): Entire editorial review in Amazon: "We are at a critical juncture in history where we face global collapse or creation of a new world." The readers' reviews are wordier but basically say the same thing, emphasizing that Laszlo would prefer to create that new world. Laszlo has a bunch of fuzzy science books -- The Consciousness Revolution is a relatively straightforward title.

Adam LeBor, "Complicity With Evil": The United Nations in the Age of Modern Genocide (2006-11, Yale University Press).Adam LeBor: The Believers: How America Fell for Bernard Madoff's $65 Billion Investment Scam (2010, Orion): This looks to be better tied to the real issues than the quickie bios that dwell on Madoff's personal extravagance. His "too good to be true" scam depended on those gullible enough to buy in, which is the underlying condition (part stupid, part greedy, part just sunny optimism) that allowed the entire investment world to lose their moorings.

Robert H LeBow: Health Care Meltdown: Confronting the Myths and Fixing Our Failing System (2003, Alan C. Hood).

Charlie Leduff, US Guys: The True and Twisted Mind of the American Man (2007-02, Penguin).

Derek Leebaert: The Fifty-Year Wound: How America's Cold War Victory Has Shaped Our World (paperback, 2003, Back Bay Books): Finally, an examination of what it cost America to wage the cold war. I doubt that the accounting includes many factors that I would add in, such as how it undermined labor unions, shifting US politics to the right, exacerbating inequality, and so forth.

Philippe Legrain: Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them (2007, Princeton University Press): English economist, makes the case for free labor markets, clearly out of step with the US right although not necessarily with the GOP money people. Previously wrote Open World: The Truth About Globalization, about as trustworthy as any other book with "truth" in the title.

Nicholas Lemann: Redemption: The Last Battle of the Civil War (2006, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Short history of a key turning point in the white South's reconquest of Mississippi and rejection of Union reconstruction.

Ray Lemoine/Donovan Webster, Babylon by Bus: Or, the True Story of Two Friends Who Gave Up Their Valuable Franchise Selling "Yankees Suck" T-shirts at Fenway to Find Meaning and Adventure in Iraq (Penguin).

Miguel Leon-Portillo, Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico (2007-04, Beacon Press, paperback).

Les Leopold: The Looting of America: How Wall Street's Game of Fantasy Finance Destroyed Our Jobs, Pensions, and Prosperity--and What We Can Do About It (paperback, Chelsea Green): The Wall Street debacle told by a labor economist. I dislike "and what we can do about it" titles, but this is most likely a good primer on the problem, the place to start.

Lawrence Lessig, Code: Version 2.0 (2006-12, Basic Books, paperback).

Lawrence Lessig: Remix: Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy (2008, Oxford University Press): Interesting guy. First appeared on my radar during the Microsoft antitrust case, where he was thrashed for being a Mac user. Didn't seem all that promising then, but he's gone on a tear on copyright law, one of the few people who maintains a sensitivity to common interests in a world dominated by private interests. Remix is not only a point where interests conflict -- it's a point where rights holders can strangle creativity, not to mention free speech.

Gregory Levey: Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned From the Israeli Government -- A Memoir (2008, Free Press): Former speechwriter, first for the Israeli UN delegation, then for Ariel Sharon. Nice work if you can get it, but ultimately a little weird.

Mark R Levin: Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto (2009, Threshold Editions): Yet another right-wing radio talk show blowhard, currently on top of the bestseller lists. I suppose someone could write a cogent and logical "conservative manifesto" but I doubt that the same person would spend much time railing against someone named Barack Milhouse Nobama.

Evan S Levine: What Your Doctor Won't (or Can't) Tell You: The Failures of American Medicine -- and How to Avoid Becoming a Statistic (paperback, 2005, Berkley Trade)

Mark LeVine: Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (2005, Oneworld).

Mark LeVine: Heavy Metal Islam: Rock, Resistance, and the Struggle for the Soul of Islam (paperback, 2008, Three Rivers Press): Historian, rock guitarist, political activist, sometimes gets his careers confused, although few Middle East scholars are more insightful, or interesting.

Mark LeVine: Impossible Peace: Israel/Palestine Since 1989 (2009, Zed): The years in question start with the Intifada, follow through the Oslo accords and the revival of Israel's rejectionist right under Ariel Sharon. The Intifada marked a shift in how Israel saw its Palestinian problem: before it was external, led by the PLO, characterized by terrorism; after, it was homegrown, an indictment of Israeli occupation. Short book has a lot of ground to cover.

Robert Arthur Levine: Shock Therapy for the American Health Care System: Why Comprehensive Reform Is Needed (2009, Praeger)

Steve LeVine: The Oil and the Glory: The Pursuit of Empire and Fortune on the Caspian Sea (2007, Random House): One of largest oil bonanzas in play today -- probably the largest, but also problematical politically (check the map and see if you can figure out how to get all that oil to Houston) and also technically. For me, how good this book is depends on how technically savvy it is. The politics, after all, is open and shut stupid, at least for the forseeable future.

Daniel J Levitin: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (2008, Dutton): Follow-up to the author's This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, which I bought but haven't read. Six song classes: friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, love.

Steven D Levitt/Stephen J Dubner: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005, William Morrow).

Steven D Levitt/Stephen J Dubner: Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything (2005; paperback, 2009, Harper Perennial): Not sure what the new material for the long-awaited paperback is: maybe why it takes four years to turn a much-in-demand hardcover bestseller into a paperback. But probably doesn't have much new, unless they explain why they saved the good stuff for the hardcover sequel coming out October 20: SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. Most likely I'll wait for the paperback again; may even get so used to waiting I wait a little longer.

Steven D Levitt/Stephen J Dubner: SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance (2009, William Morrow): With a huge bestseller setting expectations, they've gone back to the well for more profitable contrariness, but seem to have come up with a load of crap -- their efforts to go against the grain of climate research have drawn a lot of fire for their sloppy scholarship. Makes you wonder about the whole bag, even if the previous book was actually based on some of their own research.

Bernard-Henri Levy: Left in Dark Times: A Stand Against the New Barbarism (2008, Random House): Not sure what to make of him, but the notion that he's a leftist, or is in any way concerned about the left, isn't credible. One of those guys who pretends to be your friend to lend cred to the gossip and lies he likes to tell about you, as if that stance somehow puts him above the fray.

Frank Levy/Richard J Murnane: The New Division of Labor: How Computers Are Creating the Next Job Market (paperback, 2005, Princeton University Press): On the shifting shape of the job market, driven largely by the increased use of computers, and what this means for a generally ill-prepared workforce.

Paul Levy: The Madness of George W Bush: A Reflection of Our Collective Psychosis (2006, AuthorHouse): May just be more psychobabble, but the intriguing word here is "collective" with its suggestion that we are participants in Bush's madness. Book cover is unnervingly schizo.

Bernard Lewis: What Went Wrong? The Clash Between Islam and Modernity in the Middle East (paperback, 2002, Harper Perennial).

David Levering Lewis: God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215 (2008, WW Norton): History focuses on 8th century Muslim Spain in a somewhat broader context -- seems to have gotten very mixed notices.

George E Lewis: A Power Stronger Than Itself: The AACM and American Experimental Music (2008, University of Chicago Press): Big book (672 pages), an essential slice of jazz history that has rarely been written about before. Lewis is a brilliant avant-garde trombonist who's worked with most of these people. Should be a fine historian as well. [May 1]

Michael Lewis: Next: The Future Just Happened ().

Michael Lewis, ed: Panic: The Story of Modern Financial Insanity (2008, WW Norton): A quickie collection of old and not-so-old pieces, just in time to slap some product on the latest financial disaster, and to be obsolete almost instantly.

Minqi Li: The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World (paperback, 2009, Monthly Review Press): Interesting contrast here, as if the two major events were related, as if China's Communists figured out the way to really destroy the capitalist system was to join and master it.

Eric Lichtblau: Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice (2008, Pantheon): Probably good as far as it goes -- author received a Pulitzer for his reporting on NSA's wiretap program -- but an even bigger subtitle would be The Remaking of American Injustice (of course, then the title should be Bush's Crimes -- good idea for a sequel).

Allan J Lichtman: White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement (2008, Atlantic Monthly Press): Big history of the conservative movement, with two idiosyncrasies: goes back to WWI rather than WWII or later, and characterizes the movement as protestant.

David Lida: First Stop in the New World: Mexico City, the Capital of the 21st Century (2008, Riverhead): Described as a "literary portrait," a panorama of Mexico City. Subtitle reminds me of Walter Benjamin, who wrote of Paris as the capital of the 19th century.

Anatol Lieven: America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (2004, Oxford University Press).

Anatol Lieven and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World (2006, Knopf; paperback, 2007, Vintage Books).

Andrew Lih: The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia (2009, Hyperion): One of the major developments in world civilization in the last ten years of so. Not quite the "greatest story ever told," but along those lines.

Elvin T Lim: The Anti-Intellectual Presidency: The Decline of Presidential Rhetoric from George Washington to George W Bush (2008, Oxford University Press): Lots of things have declined, not least intellectual integrity. Rhetoric, however, still seems to be very much with us -- it's just grown emptier and more clichéd.

Michael Lind: The Next American Nation: The New Nationalism and the Fourth American Revolution (1995; paperback, 1996, Free Press): I only know Lind from his 2004 book, Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics -- as sharp as any book published on Bush around that time. I gather he started as a rabid anti-communist conservative, then started to distance himself from conservatism in the 1990s. This book seems to be transitional, his embrace of liberal nationalism itself a conservative impulse.

Michael Lind: Up From Conservatism: Why the Right Is Wrong for America (1996; paperback, 1997, Free Press): Offhand, this one looks prescient. The target is big enough, but at the time it hadn't really sunk in how extreme the Gingrich upheaval was, let alone where it might go once someone like Bush got into the White House. Ariana Huffington's Right Is Wrong had it easy.

Michael Lind: Vietnam: The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict (1999; paperback, 2002, Free Press): Lind argues that it was necessary for the US to intervene in Vietnam -- something about global communist conspiracy -- but that the tactics chosen were all wrong, leading to the disaster. I believe that the Cold War itself was wrong, and Vietnam was just a particularly egregious case of why. Lind may have moved up from his conservatism; he still needs to grow out of liberal interventionism.

Michael Lind: Made in Texas: George W Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics (paperback, 2004, Basic Books).

Michael Lind: The American Way of Strategy: US Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life (2006, Oxford University Press): Bad as Lind was on the Cold War, he was one of the first to identify the perils the neoconservatives posed in its aftermath. Argues that US policy abroad shouldn't undermine the American way of life at home. Seems obvious, but I can show you 60 years of presidents who didn't get it. (Doubt that Lind agrees on the whole list, but GW Bush is certainly one he has in mind.)

Eugene Linden: The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations (paperback, 2007, Simon & Schuster): Global warming book, with historical examples similar to Jared Diamond's Collapse -- Greenland, Mayan, etc.

Dave Lindorff: This Can't Be Happening: Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy (paperback, 2004, Common Courage Press).

David Lindorff/Barbara Olshansky, The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush From Office (2006, St. Martin's; paperback, 2007, Thomas Dunne Books).

Sven Lindqvist: "Exterminate All the Brutes": One Man's Odyssey Into the Heart or Darkness and the Origins of European Genocide (1992; paperback, 1996, The New Press).

Brink Lindsey, The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America's Politics and Culture (Collins): Cato Institute VP, for figure on the predictable policy arguments, but it probably true that prosperity makes people more libertarian. To argue that libertarianism makes people more prosperous is harder to back up.

William A Link: Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (2008, St Martin's Press): Helms was the most extreme of the Republian Dixiecrats, the most unapologetic, the one guy who never tried to hide his racism or his viciousness. He rose with the right, and was lucky to do so, an embarrassment to his associates as well as his constituents.

William A Link: Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism (2008, St Martin's Press): Obviously way too sympathetic, which in this case makes you question the whole project. A better title would have been Blustering Bigot.

Jen Lin-Liu: Serve the People: A Stir-Fried Journey Through China (paperback, 2009, Mariner Books): Chinese-American journalist tramps around China, attending cooking schools and checking in on the food industry. Includes some recipes.

Kimberly Lisagor/Heather Hansen: Disappearing Destinations: 37 Places in Peril and What Can Be Done to Help Save Them (paperback, 2008, Vintage): Travel guide to fascinating spots around the world, considered in peril for one reason or another. Similar, with more spots and more pictures but fewer words, is Alonzo C Addison: Disappearing World: 101 of the Earth's Most Extraordinary and Endangered Places.

Amanda Little: Power Trip: From Oil Wells to Solar Cells -- Our Ride to the Renewable Future (2009, Harper): A travelogue of sorts through how we produce and consume energy, realistic enough to recognize the big problems, optimistic enough to think we can handle them. I wouldn't want to say she's wrong.

Alexander Litvinenko/Yuri Felshtinsky, Blowing Up Russia: The Secret Plot to Bring Back KGB Terror (Encounter Books): Covers the apartment bombings and Ryazan "training exercise" that helped start the Second Chechen War and bring KGB veteran Vladimir Putin to power. Has an air of paranoia to it, but Litvinenko was the Russian murdered in 2006 by polonium poisoning. Also available: Alex Goldfarb/Marina Litvinenko, Death of a Dissident: The Poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and the Return of the KGB, written with his widow. The latter also discusses the murder of Anna Politikovskaya, another murdered Russian journalist.

Leon F Litwack: How Free Is Free?: The Long Death of Jim Crow (2009, Harvard University Press): Short lecture by a historian who's been tracking this beat his whole career. The sad thing is that America keeps giving Litwack new things to write about.

William Lobdell: Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America -- and Found Unexpected Peace (2009, Harper Collins): Memoir, following the writer through the maze of American religion, first as someone seeking help, then as a journalist covering the beat, then finally as someone seeking help. Seems like honest confusion, and modest enlightenment.

James W Loewen: Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism (2006, Touchstone): These are towns, mostly outside the South, that used various legal formalities (as well as extralegal acts) to remain all-white. Loewen also wrote Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong and Lies Across America: What American Historic Sites Get Wrong -- both useful pieces of remedial education.

James W Loewen: Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks & Get Students Excited About Doing History (paperback, 2009, Teachers College Press): Author of Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong, and Sunset Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism -- books that have got quite a few people to rethink what they thought they knew.

Bjorn Lomborg: Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming (2007, Knopf): Lomborg's pushed his skeptical line on environmental issues long and hard, with this just the latest of a series of books. Admits global warming is real, but plays down its probable effects, while arguing that what effects that do exist can be compensated for more cheaply than it would cost to fix the root carbon problem. While I tend to be skeptical myself, I've never found his arguments all that convincing. Indeed, while it's fairly easy to cast doubts on the global warming climate models, most critics overshoot, winding up with arguments that are less credible still. One critic that looks somewhat plausible is Roy Spencer: Climate Confusion: How Global Warming Hysteria Leads to Bad Science, Pandering Politicians and Misguided Policies that Hurt the Poor. A pro-Lomborg book is Nigel Lawson: An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming.

Mark London/Brian Kelly: The Last Forest: The Amazon in the Age of Globalization (2007, Random House): Dispatches from the world's largest tropical forest, fast disappearing as it's chewed up to support the local and world economy.

Phillip Longman: Best Care Anywhere: Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours (paperback, 2007, PoliPoint Press): The basic reason is that it's not a private sector institution with a lot of interests at cross purposes with its prime goal of providing quality health care to veterans. It helps that the vets are in the system for the long haul. Probably also helps that the VA is not part of the DOD, where graft is a way of life. That the VA fares so well in comparisons with private systems should put a quick end to all those anti-socialized medicine arguments.

Richard C Longworth: Caught in the Middle: America's Heartland in the Age of Globalism (2007, Bloomsbury): Looks at how free trade and capital flows effect the midwest. Not pretty, and doesn't seem to be very sympathetic.

Allen Lowe: That Devilin' Tune: A Jazz History, 1900-1950 (paperback, 1999, Music and Arts Program of America).

Roger Lowenstein: While America Aged: How Pension Debts Ruined General Motors, Stopped the NYC Subways, Bankrupted San Diego, and Loom as the Next Financial Crisis (2008, Penguin): Former WSJ journalist looks into the pension mess. I'm reluctant to blame this either on too many people getting too old or on excessively liberal benefits, but it does show how changing economic dynamics catch up with people. One of Lowenstein's previous books is When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management.

Roger Lowenstein: The End of Wall Street (2010, Penguin): Bloomberg columnist, has several big finance books to his credit; tries to pull the big picture together. His experience with financial disasters includes a book on LTCM: When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management [Apr. 6]

Adam B Lowther: Americans and Asymmetric Conflict: Lebanon, Somalia, and Afghanistan (2007, ABC-CLIO): Air Force Institute analyst.

David Loyn: In Afghanistan: Two Hundred Years of British, Russian and American Occupation (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Short book (288 pp) for the range, but occupations often look alike. Nice company.

Harold S Luft: Total Cure: The Antidote to the Health Care Crisis (2008, Harvard University Press): Pushes something called "SecureChoice," which looks like single-payer for big ticket items (e.g., hospital stays) with CDHC for small change and a small cut thrown to the insurance companies as PIs (payment intermediaries).

Meizhu Lui/Barbara Robles/Betsy Leondar-Wright/Rose Brewer/Rebecca Adamson [United for a Fair Economy]: The Color of Wealth: The Story Behind the U.S. Racial Wealth Divide (paperback, 2006, New Press): Well, the color is white, especially compared to black, with the wealth split far more extreme than the income split. Also looks at Asians, Latinos, and Natives in the US. Also important here is Thomas M Shapiro: The Hidden Cost of Being African American: Now Wealth Perpetuates Inequality, which among other things points out the disadvantage blacks have in building home equity.

Cody Lundin: When All Hell Breaks Loose (paperback, 2007, Gibbs Smith): A survival guide of some sort, predicated on the notion that our world is going to hell. Not sure whether it helps, but most survival guides give you plenty of reason to try to never have to use them.

Frank Luntz, Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear (Hyperion). Legendary GOP wordsmith, which may make this into something of a primary source.

Frank I Luntz: What Americans Really Want . . . Really: The Truth About Our Hopes, Dreams, and Fears (2009, Hyperion): Republican pollster, strategist, weasel worder -- previous book: Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear. Could be a useful book if he manages to explain what really drives people to the right as opposed to the mostly idiotic ideologies they find once they get there.

Loren D Lybarger, Identity and Religion in Palestine: The Struggle Between Islamism and Secularism in the Occupied Territories (2007-03, Princeton University Press).

Mark Lynas: Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet (2008, National Geographic): Celsius, so 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Book plots changes projected with global warming one degree per chapter. Author has been around this block before, with High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis.

Marc Lynch: Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today (paperback, 2007, Columbia University Press): Author does a good job of covering Arabic media, blogging as Abu Aardvark.

Timothy J Lynch/Robert S Singh: After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy (2008, Cambridge University Press): Hard to believe this isn't a joke.

Barry C Lynn: Cornered: The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Economics of Destruction (2010, Wiley): Argues that the most dangerous trend in American business is the persistent move towards greater monopoly power. I think he's basically right here, and that this may be an important book. Author previously wrote End of the Line: The Rise and Coming Fall of the Global Corporation, which I have on my shelf but unfortunately haven't gotten to.

Barry W Lynn: Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom (paperback, 2007, Three Rivers Press): Author is a minister in the United Church of Christ, concerned both about the politics and theology of the right-wing rush to make this a Christian Nation whether we like it or not.

Joanne Lynn: Sick To Death and Not Going to Take It Anymore!: Reforming Health Care for the Last Years of Life (2004, University of California Press)

Peter Maass: Crude World: The Violent Twilight of Oil (2009, Knopf): There is no doubt but that the world is going to run out of oil sooner or later. The world economy grew almost linearly with the extraction of oil, so its decline seems inevitable as well. This can happen more or less violently, but if the oil industry itself is any indication, the future looks pretty bleak.

Giles MacDonogh: After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (2007, Basic Books): 656 pages. A deeper look into the final weeks of WWII and the subsequent occupation of Germany, including the forced transfers of Germans from Eastern Europe. This stuff rarely gets looked at, probably because no one wants to offer sympathy that might be seen as balancing or lightening Germany's own crimes. However, the tendency to sweep such issues from memory allowed Americans to remember their occupation of Germany (and Japan) as more enlightened, setting a precedent for Iraq. Tony Judt covered this ground briefly in Postwar.

Neil MacFarquhar: The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East (2009, Public Affairs): Around the Middle East, talking to plain folks, humoring the self-important powers, looking for change, thankful for whatever he finds.

G Calvin Mackenzie/Robert Weisbrot: The Liberal Hour: Washington and the Politics of Change in the 1960s (2008, Penguin Press): An overview history of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the 1960s. I think this fills in a slot in Penguin's multi-volume US history.

Sandra Mackey: Mirror of the Arab World: Lebanon in Conflict (2008, WW Norton): Journalist, author of quite a few books on the modern Middle East, including at least one previous one Lebanon. They've never quite struck me as all that promising, but I suppose they're better than nothing. At this point I can't point to a single really good general history of Lebanon -- Robert Fisk's Pity the Nation: The Abduction of Lebanon sets a high standard for 1982-89.

Mark MacKinnon: The New Cold War: Revolutions, Rigged Elections, and Pipeline Politics in the Former Soviet Union (2007, Carroll & Graf): This covers the upheavals and conflicts on Russia's periphery (especially Georgia and the Ukraine), with various degrees of influence and interference by both the US and Russia. Unlike the continuing stream of hysterical books promoting renewed cold war conflicts with Russia and China, this is about something already started.

Margaret Macmillan: Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World (paperback, 2003, Random House): History of the post-WWI negotiations, six months that didn't change the world nearly enough. Interesting subject, although I've always felt Arno J Mayer was the historian to read on it. Macmillan also wrote Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World (originally Nixon in China with same subtitle). The consistency in subtitles is striking.

Margaret MacMillan: Dangerous Games: The Uses and Abuses of History (2009, Modern Library): A short (208 pp.) book on how to lie with history, or how others have lied. A perennial favorite topic.

Myra MacPherson: All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist IF Stone (paperbck, 2008, Scribner): I grew up on Stone, subscribing to his weekly after devouring his collection, In a Time of Torment.

Charles M Madigan: Destiny Calling: How the People Elected Barack Obama (2009, Ivan R Dee): Looks like this tries to move the election dynamics back to the grass roots, which would be a lot more refreshing and hopeful than, e.g., David Plouffe's The Audacity to Win.

Maggie Mahar: Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (2006, Collins): Well, that's my theory too, good for 480 pages here. Mahar is a financial journalist, author of Bull: A History of the Boom and Bust, 1982-2004.

Maggie Mahar: Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much (2006, Harper Business): Finance journalist, previously wrote a book about the stock market called Bull!, follows the money trail in health care, reportedly sparing no one.

Norman Mailer: On God: An Uncommon Conversation (2007, Random House): With Michael Lennon, presumably asking the questions Mailer responds to. Poked through this a bit and found it idiosyncratic and interesting. I read quite a bit of his stuff long ago -- mostly but not quite all nonfiction -- but it's been a long while.

Hooman Majd: The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran (2008, Doubleday): Another report on daily life in modern Iran. Probably useful if you're trying to follow the elections. Less so if you're just looking for places to bomb.

Geert Mak: In Europe: Travels Through the Twentieth Century (2007, Pantheon): Big (896 pages) survey of European cities, filling in historical background.

Saree Makdisi: Palestine Inside Out: An Everyday Occupation (2008, WW Norton): Focuses on the little things of the occupation, the things that affect Palestinians every day.

William Maley: The Afghanistan Wars (2002; second ed, paperback, Palgrave Macmillan 2009)

Michelle Malkin: Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (2009, Regnery Press): Chart-topping bestseller, which raises the question: why didn't anyone use this title when Bush was president? I mean, other than that it would have been impossible to squeeze it all into 256 pages. I especially love the bit about Michelle Obama and Joe Biden being "nepotism beneficiaries."

Sean L Malloy: Atomic Tragedy: Henry L. Stimson and the Decision to Use the Bomb Against Japan (2008, Cornell University Press): Secretary of War during WWII, Stimson was one of the more thoughtful people deeply involved in the whole affair, so should make an interesting prism for examining what did and did not happen.

Mahmood Mamdani: Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror (2004, Pantheon Books).

Mahmood Mamdani: Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (2009, Pantheon): This will likely move to the forefront of our understanding of the Darfur crisis -- both what it is and what interests various groups have in making it out to be. Mamdani has written both about Rwanda (When Victims Become Killers: Colonialism, Nativism, and the Genocide in Rwanda) and one of the better books on political Islam (Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror).

Howard Mandel: Miles, Ornette, Cecil: Jazz Beyond Jazz (2008. Routledge): Davis, Coleman, Taylor; important musicians, an interesting sequence in that they substantially overlap but peeled off on different tangents. More interested in Taylor, personally, although he's the odd player out in one regard: the only one of the three not to experiment in fusion.

Benoit Mandelbrot/Richard L Hudson: The (Mis)Behavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin & Reward (2004; paperback, 2006, Basic Books): Mandelbrot wrote the book on fractals in 1983, The Fractal Geometry of Nature. This is his second book on applying fractal theory to finance, after 1997's Fractals and Scaling in Finance. Predates the recent crisis, but has various past crises to work with -- the main effect a critique of conventional models of risk.

Farhad Manjoo: True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society (2008, Wiley): Explores the question of what passes for truth these days -- "truthiness" is the oft-cited Stephen Colbert term for it. Philosophers have long had a critique of the subjective construction of truth; now it looks like even sociologists and journalists can measure its subjectivity.

Charles C Mann: 1491: New Relevations of the Americas Before Columbus (2006; paperback, 2007, Vintage Books).

James Mann: Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet (paperback, 2004, Penguin).

James Mann, The China Fantasy: How Our Leaders Explain Away Chinese Repression (Viking): There is a lot of nonsense written on China these days, and this is probably some, but Mann's The Rise of the Vulcans is a useful, albeit far from adequately critical, book.

James Mann: The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the End of the Cold War (2009, Viking): Author of Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet, a useful, not especially partisan collective biography of Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, and a few others who did so much damage. This one strikes me as kind of creepy, although I doubt that it strays very far from the history James Carroll recounted in House of War: The Pentagon and the Disastrous Rise of American Power. Reagan's "rebellion" was more of a cognitive lapse -- his anticommunism was more viscerally personal and less militaristic than that of the neoconservatives who gained so much political traction under him. I don't see his role in "ending" the cold war as much credit given how hard he worked to exacerbate it.

Richard Manning: Against the Grain: How Agriculture Has Hijacked Civilization (paperback, 2005, North Point Press).

Zeev Maoz, Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy (2006-04, University of Michigan Press).

Peter Marber: Seeing the Elephant: Understanding Globalization from Trunk to Tail (2009, Wiley): Pro-globalization tome, replete with "bold suggestions on how America reassert its historic leadership in the new global arena."

Jules Marchal: Lord Leverhulme's Ghosts: Colonial Exploitation in the Congo (2008, Verso): Relatively short (256 pages) book on King Leopold's murderous program, set up by British entrepreneur Lord Leverhulme, of forced labor to extract rubber wealth from the Congo. Introduction by Adam Hochschild, whose King Leopold's Ghost covers at least some of this story. It seems to me that one could expand this to cover the whole era of Belgian control, and expand it further backwards into the slave trade and forwards through Mobuto to start to get a sense of how severely the Congo has been wracked by its encounter with Europe. [June 9]

Amy Dockser Marcus, Jerusalem 1913: The Origins of the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2007-04, Penguin).

Greil Marcus, The Shape of Things to Come: Prophecy and the American Voice (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Stephen A Marglin: The Dismal Science: How Thinking Like an Economist Undermines Community (2008, Harvard University Press): The core idea makes sense, and can be plumbed for further insights (not sure about 376 pages worth). Clearly, economics has its place and its limits, and framing that is something that needs to be done. What I'm less clear about is community, which, being a creature of my locale and time, I don't take to be an unalloyed good.

Eric S Margolis: War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet (revised ed, paperback, 2002, Routledge)

Eric S Margolis: American Raj: America and the Muslim World (2008; paperback, 2009, Key Porter): The implication is not only that the US has superseded Britain not only in its imperial function but in its structure. Author previously wrote War at the Top of the World: The Struggle for Afghanistan, Kashmir and Tibet, which has been through a couple of editions.

Lisa Margonelli: Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank (2007; paperback, 2008, Random House).

Joseph Marguilies, Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power (Simon & Schuster).

Harry Markopolos: No One Would Listen: A True Financial Thriller (2010, Wiley): The Bernie Madoff story, as told by the whistleblower who brought the case before a somnambulant SEC.

John Marks: Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind (2008, Ecco): Journalist account, went searching for evangelicals and found some, toyed with joining but ultimately didn't. Sounds sympathetic but skeptical, a reasonable stance.

Stephen Marks: Confessions of a Political Hitman: My Secret Life of Scandal, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Dirty Attacks That Decide Who Gets Elected (and Who Doesn't) (2008, Sourcebooks): Republican operative, worked for the likes of Jesse Helms and Jeb Bush. Sounds like a sleaze bag, which no doubt helps his credibility.

Theodore R Marmor: The Politics Of Medicare (2nd edition, paperback, 2000, Transaction)

TR Marmor: Fads, Fallacies and Foolishness in Medical Care Management and Policy (2007, World Scientific)

Mike Marqusee: If I Am Not for Myself: Journey of an Anti-Zionist Jew (2008, Verso): American-born journalist, based in UK, has previously written on Bob Dylan, Muhammad Ali, and cricket. Traces his family history leading to his leftist turn against Zionism. This follows other notable anti-Zionist books: Michel Warschawski: Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society; Joel Kovel: Overcoming Zionism: Creating a Single Democratic State in Israel/Palestine.

Wynton Marsalis/Geoffrey Ward: Moving to Higher Ground: How Jazz Can Change Your Life (2008, Random House): Sounds like a self-help book, which doesn't sound like a very good idea. Marsalis certainly knows much about jazz history, and is a capable and entertaining educator, but he also has some blind spots and limitations -- there is a lot more to jazz than he admits, and his art suffers accordingly. Ward is a "with" credit here. He wrote the Ken Burns books, so he's dealt with Marsalis before.

William Marsden: Stupid to the Last Drop: How Alberta Is Bringing Environmental Armageddon to Canada (And Doesn't Seem to Care) (2007, Knopf Canada): This is about oil shale, which Canada has an awful lot of, which looks really yummy in a world that is otherwise starving for oil, but which is hell to extract, and not likely to get much better, like, ever. [Paperback September 30]

William Martin, ed: What Liberals Believe: Thousands of Quotes on Why America Needs to Be Rescued from Greedy Corporations, Homophobes, Racists, Imperialists, Xenophobes, and Religious Extremists (paperback, 2008, Skyhorse): Comes to 768 pages. Possibly useful as a reference, but sampling Amazon's page scans isn't all that inspirational. Only really good quote on abortion was by Barbara Ehrenreich, not what you'd call an MOR liberal. On the other hand, a look at the index shows that Ehrenreich is quoted on 35 pages -- more than Martin Luther King Jr (30), more than John F Kennedy (27); second only to Bill Moyers (52). Karl Marx got one quote, same as Groucho -- but then so did Trent Lott and Rush Limbaugh.

Jamie Maslin: Iranian Rappers and Persian Porn: A Hitchhiker's Adventures in the New Iran (2009, Skyhorse): Sounds like a good idea to me, but I'd bet that Iranians don't hold a candle to good ole American porn, much less American rap. Still, good to see that Iran isn't as monolithic as caricatured. On the other hand, I can't say that porn and rap have ever had much political impact, even here.

Matt Mason: The Pirate's Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism (2008, Free Press): Business manifesto, finding opportunities for innovation on the fringes of intellectual property law.

Paul Mason: Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed (paperback, 2009, Verso): Economics editor at BBC Newsnight, good for a view outside of the usual US self-focus.

Tom Mast: Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage (2005, Hayden): Short (128 page) primer, probably too basic at this point, unless you're not up on the subject.

Robert Matheu/Brian J Bowe, eds: Creem: America's Only Rock 'N' Roll Magazine (2007, Collins): Coffee-table book culled from the 1969-88 Detroit-based rock rag. My impression is that it's long on trashy features but short on criticism. I read it for the reviews, and would have written for it if Lester Bangs hadn't quit too soon. Afterwards it wasn't the same.

Mark Matthews: Lost Years: Bush, Sharon and Failure in the Middle East (2007, Nation Books): Covers much the same ground as Charles Enderlin's The Lost Years. (Looks like the book got cut out. Amazon has it for $5.99.)

Kevin Mattson: Rebels All!: A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America (2008, Rutgers University Press): Argues that the new right picked up and ran with the bad manners of the 1960s new left. Not sure what that proves, or even suggets. Mattson has a bunch of books: Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century; Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970; When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism. The latter appears to be the one closest to his heart.

Arno Mayer: Ploughshares into Swords: From Zionism to Israel (2008, Verso): One of the great historians of our times. His Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in History showed his ability to freshly contextualize things you thought you already knew all too well -- just one example is his characterization of the two World Wars as "the 30 Years War of the 20th Century." That's what I expect here -- the title itself is a powerful start.

Jane Mayer: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals (2008, Doubleday): Another book on the chic torture clique in and near the White House. I recoil a bit at the contrast to "American ideals" given the shoddy record self-appointed Real Americans have established. This has gotten some press -- Mayer writes for New Yorker, and this promises to be one of the more definitive books on the subject. She previously wrote Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas. < p('mayer-dark'); ?>

Rick Mayes: Universal Coverage: The Elusive Quest for National Health Insurance (paperback, 2005, University of Michigan Press)

Laton McCartney: Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought the Harding White House and Tried to Steal the Country (2008, Random House): One of the all-time big scandals, perhaps relevant today for what it says about the oil industry's deep roots in politics and for the Republicans' laissez-faire take on greed, or maybe just because it's a juicy story. The early days of a boom cycle that went bust big time -- perhaps another lesson.

Jennifer Hooper McCarty/Tim Foecke: What Really Sank the Titanic: New Forensic Discoveries (2008; paperback, 2009, Citadel): A technical mystery revisited.

Robert W McChesney: The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (paperback, 2008, Monthly Review Press): Author of many more books on political control of media -- e.g., Communication Revolution: Critical Junctures and the Future of Media; The Problem of the Media: US Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century; Rich Media, Poor Democracy: Communication Politics in Dubious Times; Corporate Media and the Threat to Democracy; with John Nichols, Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media d Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Also related: Eric Klinenberg: Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media.

Robert W McChesney/John Nichols: The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution That Will Begin the World Again (2010, Nation Books): An Amazon ranter: "They insist that intelligent journalism will soon come to an end when the NYTimes goes belly-up." Looks to me like the NYTimes has become an example of the death of intelligent journalism. On the other hand, depending on corporations for basic info necessary for democracy has never worked very well. The authors have some ideas to move on, which probably don't involve the ranter's charge that they want a government-run Pravda.

Scott McClellan: What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and What's Wrong With Washington (2008, Public Affairs): Former Bush mouthpiece opens up a little wider than anyone expected. I've seen this described as "scathing" -- find that hard to believe, but it's hit a nerve, as shown by this 1-star Amazon reader review: "McClellan and Rumsfeld are the primary reasons why Bush's approval rating is as low as it is. They were awful communicators." So Bush's only problem is that he's misunderstood, undone by his own inept PR flacks. Strange thing is they were so highly regarded for so long.

Gavan McCormack: Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (paperback, 2004, Nation Books).

Alfred W McCoy: Policing America's Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State (2009, University of Wisconsin Press): Big book (672 pp) on the US experience in the Philippines, starting with 1898 and the counterinsurgency from then to 1913 then returning periodically as the Philippines required further imperial policing, with side glances at what all that meant for democracy at home. Author has also written: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade; A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, From the Cold War to the War on Terror.

Alfred W McCoy/Francisco A Scarano, eds: Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State (paperback, 2009, University of Wisconsin Press): Scattered papers, many on the Philippines and Cuba, where the US first got used to the idea and perils of empire, with occasional nods toward Iraq.

Duff McDonald: Last Man Standing: The Ascent of Jamie Dimon and JPMorgan Chase (2009, Simon & Schuster): Suck this up: Dimon is "a dedicated family man whose uncanny facility with numbers and tireless work ethic are complemented by fierce loyalty and an unrelenting aversion to office politics [ . . . ] the only man in finance today who can be called an American hero." Dimon's been in the news much lately. Few things soured me on Obama more than the day Obama talked about what a "savvy businessman" Dimon is.

Lawrence G McDonald/Patrick Robinson: A Colossal Failure of Common Sense: The Inside Story of the Collapse of Lehman Brothers (2009, Crown): Significant because the Lehman bankruptcy was the single most traumatic event of the financial collapse of 2008. Insiders might know something about that, but most of what happened lies elsewhere, including the political decision to let Lehman collapse. A lot of inside stories are coming out, including: Joseph Tibman: The Murder of Lehman Brothers: An Insider's Look at the Global Meltdown, and Andrew Ross Sorkin: Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System---and Themselves.

William McDonough/Michael Braungart: Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (paperback, 2002, North Point Press): Book on design, aiming at "eco-effectiveness" -- whatever that is. There are a bunch of innovative high-tech save-the-world design books floating around, hard to gauge.

Paul McGeough: Kill Khalid: The Failed Mossad Assassination of Khalid Mishal and the Rise of Hamas (2009, New Press): Starts with an event in 1997 seen as backfiring against Israel and promoting Hamas to prominence. Not sure why this vs. the 1996 assassination of "The Engineer" which led to Hamas retaliation that is generally regarded as tipping Israel's elections from Peres to Netanyahu, with disastrous results for the Oslo Peace Process.

Michael McGerr: A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (paperback, 2005, Oxford University Press): A broad history of progressive movements during the first gilded age.

Lisa McGirr: Suburban Warriors: The Origins of the New American Right (new edition, paperback, 2002, Princeton University Press): Orange County, CA, is the prototypical case, not just Republican or conservative but downright militant about it. One thing that clearly emerges from such places is the sense that each atomic household is on its own, distinct from and not responsible for any other. That's the intuition that the politics of responsibility thread is drawn from. Similarly, the isolation allows such thoughts to be developed with little risk of reality checking -- another trademark of the new American right.

George McGovern and William R. Polk, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, paperback). Read the Harpers excerpt. Better than I expected.

Chris McGowan/Ricardo Pessanha: The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova, and the Popular Music of Brazil (revised edition, paperback, 2008, Temple University Press): New edition of one of the more highly regarded surveys of Brazilian music. The sort of thing I ought to be reading to improve my spotty knowledge of one of the most important music scenes in the world.

Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (Times Books): Possibly an important book, but not one I'm looking forward to. His The End of Nature did manage to convince me about global warming even though I had been pretty skeptical before, but it also annoyed me much in the process. The subject here is an important one: sustainable economy. He has some grasp of the problem, which itself is a rare accomplishment. But his solutions are likely to be annoying -- e.g., from an Amazon review: "Wow, makes me want to move to Vermont and become an organic farmer."

Bill McKibben: The Bill McKibben Reader: Pieces From an Active Life (paperback, 2008, Holt): A grabbag of 44 essays written over 25 years. The only McKibben I've read, at least in book form, is The End of Nature, which made some headway toward convincing me about global warming if not necessarily the title concept, but I have a couple more waiting for me on the shelf, like the recent Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, but not the activist Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community. McKibben has also recently edited the lengthy American Earth: Environmetal Writing Since Thoreau. He's turning into a reputable brand name.

Larry McMurtry: Books: A Memoir (2008, Simon & Schuster): Memoirs of a small-town Texas bookseller, who writes novels and movies on the side.

JR McNeill: Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World (paperback, 2001, WW Norton): Fairly systematic overview of what we've done to the environment since 1900. I picked up a copy of this a couple of years back. Still haven't gotten to it; still want to.

John McWhorter: All About the Beat: Why Hip-Hop Can't Save Black America (2008, Gotham): Of course it can't, but with plaudits from Shelby Steele and Stanley Crouch one might easily be tempted to believe the opposite. McWhorter has written several books on language which look interesting (e.g., Word on the Street: Debunking the Myth of "Pure" Standard English), and several books on black culture and politics which don't (e.g., Doing Our Own Thing: The Degeneration of Language and Music and Why We Should, Like, Care).

James E McWilliams: Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly (2009, Little Brown): Some backlash against the local foods movement, basically arguing that industrial agriculture isn't that bad -- at least that it has some useful economies of scale, and that there's some upside to genetic engineering.

Donella H Meadows/Jorgen Randers/Dennis L Meadows: Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (paperback, 2004, Chelsea Green): 30th anniversary update of the 1972 Club of Rome report. Where the original report was a warning of finite limits ahead which would derail growth, this one argues that we've already overshot those limits. An important piece of model-building in trying to get a grasp on what we are doing to ourselves, never mind the planet or its nature.

Bryan Mealer: All Things Must Fight to Live: Stories of War and Deliverance in Congo (2008, Bloomsbury): Reporting from the Congo, a war nobody hears about, that quietly towers over just about every conflict of the last several decades, not nearly as recognized as Rwanda or Darfur. Other books (more or less): Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja: The Congo: From Leopold to Kabila: A People's History; Thomas Turner: The Congo Wars: Conflict, Myth and Reality; John F Clark, ed.: The African Stakes of the Congo War; Michela Wrong: In the Footsteps of Mr. Kurtz: Living on the Brink of Disaster in Mobutu's Congo; Jeffrey Tayler: Facing the Congo: A Modern-Day Journey Into the Heart of Darkness; Robert B Edgerton: The Troubled Heart of Africa: A History of the Congo.

John J Mearsheimer/Stephen M Walt: The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy (2007, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Stirred up a storm of controversy when it came out, mostly from the Israel lobby. Shouldn't have been much of a surprise. It's hard to reconcile anything resembling a realist foreign policy with Israel off in some sort of weird fantasyland. [Paperback September 2]

David Mechanic, ed: Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care (paperback, 2005, Rutgers University Press)

David Mechanic: The Truth About Health Care: Why Reform Is Not Working in America (2006, Rutgers University Press).

Steven G Medema: The Hesitant Hand: Taming Self-Interest in the History of Economic Ideas (2009, Princeton University Press): Adam Smith has been so subsumed under his "invisible hand" concept that the idea has taken a life of its own. Not really sure what Medema does with it, but it should be clear that while markets produce efficient results under ideal conditions, their real world leaves much to be desired. Medema has a bunch of books on history of economic thought, including a couple specifically on Ronald Coase, who I associate with blind faith in markets.

Andrew Meier: Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall (paperback, 2005, WW Norton).

Stephen L Melton: The Clausewitz Delusion: How the American Army Screwed Up the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (A Way Forward) (2009, MBI): On the faculty at Leavenworth's Command and General Staff College, which is why he sees his job as finding "a way forward." Otherwise, he's pretty effective at showing how nothing the Army is doing these days in Iraq and Afghanistan or pretty much anywhere else has a chance of working. Phrasing this as an argument with Clausewitz is rather obscure, perhaps to obfuscate the core point that the US Army has no worthwhile role in the modern world.

Stephanie Mencimer, Blocking the Courthouse Door: How the Republican Party and Its Corporate Allies Are Taking Away Your Right to Sue (2006-12, Simon & Schuster).

Peter Menzel: Hungry Planet: What the World Eats (paperback, 2007, Ten Speed Press): A photojournalist -- Faith D'Aliuso looks to be the writer, although her credit gets buried -- romping around the planet, checking out what different people eat. Co-author of Material World: A Global Family Portrait, a picture book of households around the world, and Man Eating Bugs: The Art and Science of Eating Insects.

Martin Meredith: Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe's Future (paperback, 2007, Public Affairs): Basic political biography, from the author of the near-encyclopedic The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. Another book on Zimbabwe: Peter Godwin: When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa.

Martin Meredith: Diamonds, Gold, and War: The British, the Boers, and the Making of South Africa (2007, Public Affairs): Big (608 pages) book on the makings of colonial South Africa, with the discovery of diamonds in 1871 playing a particularly large role, followed by the Boer War and independence. Meredith has also written Mugabe: Power, Plunder, and the Struggle for Zimbabwe's Future, recently in paperback; also: The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence.

Davis Merritt: Knightfall: Knight Ridder and How the Erosion of Newspaper Journalism Is Putting Democracy at Risk (2005, AMACOM).

Dick Meyer: Why We Hate Us: American Discontent in the New Millennium (2008, Crown): Not a bad idea for a book, but easy to go wrong with. Is he going for how some Americans hate other Americans? Or is he trying to make a case that Americans (in general) hate themselves? The former is relatively trivial; the latter is a stretch into psychologizing. Reviewer praise, ranging from Thomas Oliphant to Thomas Edsall, isn't reassuring.

Karl E Meyer: The Dust of Empire: The Race for Mastery in the Asian Heartland (paperback, 2004, Public Affairs).

Karl E Meyer/Shareen Blair Brysac: Kingmakers: The Invention of the Modern Middle East (2008, WW Norton): Authors of Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia, a 1999 book I bought back when it was still an intellectual curiosity and never got around to reading. Another sweeping history of (mostly English) imperial adventures in the Middle East.

Walter Benn Michaels: The Trouble With Diversity: How We Learned to Love Identity and Ignore Inequality (paperback, 2007, Holt Paperbacks): I gather that the argument here is that efforts to promote tolerance of diversity box everyone up into identity groups, dulling and distracting our sense of cross-group commonalities, especially class. Don't know where he goes with this -- reviews suggest nowhere -- but it strikes me as a critique of how aimless liberalism wound up trivializing itself even as fundamental problems, like inequality, were growing. One could also delve deeper into the whole focus on identity and what psychological needs it satisfies.

Adam Michaelson: The Foreclosure of America: The Inside Story of the Rise and Fall of Countrywide Home Loans, the Mortgage Crisis, and the Default of the American Dream (2009, Berkley): The subprime mortage meltdown, as told by a Senior VP of Marketing at Countrywide, the nation's largest subprime racketeer. Many reviewers claim that it's shallow and self-serving.

John Micklethwait/Adrian Wooldridge: God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (2009, Penguin Press): Authors write for The Economist, where they celebrate the capitalist world with just enough British distance to be palatable. Best known for The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America, one of those books about how the right has become the "party of ideas" in America. (The book is currently available at a remainder discount at Amazon.) Other tomes include: The Witch Doctors: What Management Gurus Are Saying, Why It Matters, and How to Make Sense of It (1997); A Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization (2001); and i>The Company: A Short History of a Revolutionary Idea. They're about the only writers around gullible enough to see the spread of fanatical religion as progress.

J William Middendorf II: A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement (2006; paperback, 2008, Basic Books): A memoir by an insider.

Steven H Miles, MD, Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror (Random House).

Murray Milgate/Shannon C Stimson: After Adam Smith: A Century of Transformation in Politics and Political Economy (2009, Princeton University Press): Intellectual history on the evolution of economic thought in the hundred years following Adam Smith -- i.e., the 19th century.

Aaron David Miller: The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (2008, Bantam): Miller has some sort of insider status allowing him to focus on America's role, which may or may not be useful in trying to sort out the many things that have gone wrong.

Aaron David Miller: The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace (2008; paperback, 2008, Bantam): Peace Process insider dirt/recrimination/regrets.

Ivan J Miller: Balanced Choice: A Common Sense Cure for the US Health Care Systems (paperback, 2006, Author House): sort of a single-payer base with wildly diverging copays depending on provider choices.

Kenneth R Miller: Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul (2008, Viking): I suppose he's right, but the anti-Darwin stance strikes me as so silly it's hard to take it seriously. (Even though I just saw a bit on Steve Colbert where he complimented the Kansas Board of Education as the only one seeing eye-to-eye with him on some variant of this.) Author previously wrote Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution.

Mark Crispin Miller, ed: Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 2000-2008 (paperback, 2008, Ig): I haven't paid much attention to the various stolen election arguments, which Miller has contributed much to, but this at least is short and convenient and covers a bunch of ground.

Matthew Miller: The 2% Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love (paperback, 2005, Perseus)

Matt Miller: The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity (2009, Times Books): As Matthew Miller wrote a book called The Two Percent Solution: Fixing America's Problems in Ways Liberals and Conservatives Can Love, one of those big idea books that looks too good to be true. It's not so much that one can't come up with simple, sensible fixes -- schools and health care could easily be better and cheaper at the same time, as indeed almost everyone else in the world manages to do. It's just that these relatively technical issues get wrapped up in the real things conservatives and their opponents fight over -- like equality.

Steven P Miller: Billy Graham and the Rise of the Republican South (2009, University of Pennsylvania Press): Graham emerged during my childhood as America's most prominent spokesman for generic christianity and parlayed that into a career of hobnobbing with presidents -- Nixon was his triumph, but the Bushes both have Billy Graham stories in their press kits. Graham managed to get throught he civil rights era without being associated with either side -- a slick move that helped Republicans suck up the white south without getting tarred by segregationist violence -- and he was always useful promoting American wars abroad. I grew up thinking him a fraud from the beginning, and found more reasons to despise him over the years. No one has done more to muddy the separation of church and state. No one has done more to turn christianity into a venal career strategy -- useful and never inconvenient for politicians.

T Christian Miller, Blood Money: A Story of Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq (Little, Brown).

Nick B Mills: Karzai: The Failing American Intervention and the Struggle for Afghanistan (2007, John Wiley & Sons)

David Milne: America's Rasputin: Walt Rostow and the Vietnam War (2008, Hill & Wang): Title's a low blow, but that's where you have to swing to connect. The more I read about the Vietnam War, the deeper it sinks in just how pervasive a force Rostow was. He was lurking everywhere. Any time anyone had a brief glance of sanity, he was there to rub it out.

Giles Milton: Paradise Lost: Smyrna, 1922 (2008, Basic Books): The end of the war between Greece and Turkey, where the British egged Greece into invading Turkey, and the debacle resulted in the triumph of Mustafa Kemal's nationalist forces and the forced expulsion of virtually all Greeks from Turkey. Reading Taner Akçam's book (A Shameful Act: The Armenian Genocide and the Question of Turkish Responsibility) has left me wanting to know more about the Turkish-Greek population transfer in and after the war. This is a part of the story, but looks like it's been juiced up to focus on one side. Curious choice of title, too. One more general book on the transfer is Renée Hirschon, ed: Crossing the Aegean: An Appraisal of the 1923 Compulsory Population Exchange Between Greece and Turkey. Of course, there were plenty of atrocities before 1923, and not just by the Turks. (Hirschon also wrote Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus.)

Craig Miner: Kansas: The History of the Sunflower State, 1854-2000 (paperback, 2005, University Press of Kansas): Wichita State history professor, taught there in my day and still around, has a pile of books on Kansas history, this the most general one. Should probably pick it up for reference some time. But I do recall that we had to spend Fifth Grade doing state history. Fifth grade sucked.

Hyman P Minsky: Stabilizing an Unstable Economy (2008, McGraw-Hill).

Lawrence Mishel/Jared Bernstein/Sylvia Allegretto: The State of Working America, 2006/2007 (10th edition, paperback, 2006, ILR Press): From Economic Policy Institute, updated every other year since 1988. Basic data. Bernstein is an economist I have read.

Lawrence Mishel/Jared Bernstein/Heidi Shierholz: The State of Working America, 2008-2009 (paperback, 2009, Cornell University Press): From the Economic Policy Institute, 440 pages of sobering data, revised (most likely downward) from their previous The State of Working America, 2006-2007.

Pankaj Mishra: Temptations of the West: How to Be Modern in India, Pakistan, Tibet, and Beyond (paperback, 2007, Picador): Travel reporting on the influence of the west on south and central Asia.

Andrea Mitchell, Talking Back . . . to Presidents, Dictators, and Assorted Scoundrels (2006-12, Penguin, paperback). Too bad Sleeping With the Devil has already been used.

Brian Patrick Mitchell, 8 Ways to Run the Country: A New and Revealing Look at Left and Right (2006-11, Greenwood).

Greg Mitchell: So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits -- and the President -- Failed in Iraq (paperback, 2008, Union Square Press): Editor of Editor & Publisher, writes a good blog called Pressing Issues. You know the basic story. This just sorts the details out in good form for reference.

Steven Mithen: After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000-5,000 BC (paperback, 2006, Harvard University Press): Looks to be a fairly definitive book on archaeological sites from the period. Mithen has a number of books scratching out clues from scant archaeological evidence, most recently The Singing Neandethals: The Origins of Music, Language, Mind and Body.

Sharon Moalem, Survival of the Sickest: A Medical Maverick Discovers Why We Need Disease (2007-02, Harper Collins).

David Model: State of Darkness: US Complicity in Genocides Since 1945 (paperback, 2008, AuthorHouse): Author counts and documents eight genocides since 1945 that the US has been involved in, or perhaps largely responsible for. Less "a problem from hell" (as Samantha Power put it) than a policy for hell. Model has been down this road before; e.g., his previous book, Lying for Empire: How to Commit War Crimes With a Straight Face.

Paul Molyneaux, Swimming in Circles: Aquaculture and the End of Wild Oceans (Thunder's Mouth Press): General survey of aquaculture business, a major recent/future frontier in the domination of nature and the artificialization of everything else.

Tom Moon: 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die (paperback, 2008, Workman): Big list book, part of a series like 1,000 Places to See Before You Die that that I haven't paid any attention to, figuring I'm so short on time the effort would be hopeless, and not particularly enjoying the reminder. Actually, 1,000 recordings is relatively doable: I'd be surprised if I'm not already more than halfway there, unless the classical shit gets totally out of hand. There's also a rival 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die, edited by Robert Dimery, which is older but only in hard cover, assembled by a committee of critics I've never heard of, and is much more rock-centric.

Mark Monmonier: Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change (2008, University of Chicago Press): Geography book, explores facets of mapping coast lines, from history to present concerns such as environmental factors. Author previously wrote: From Squaw Tit to Whorehouse Meadow: How Maps Name and Inflame; Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy; Bushmanders and Bullwinkles: How Politicians Manipulate Electronic Maps and Census Data to Win Elections; Air Apparent: How Meteorologists Learned to Map, Predict, and Dramatize Weather; Cartographies of Danger: Mapping Hazards in America; Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences; and the ever popular How to Lie With Maps.

Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (Basic Books, paperback).

Chris Mooney/Sheril Kirshenbaum: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (2009, Basic Books): Mooney previously wrote The Republican War on Science, experience that gives him a leg up here. I'm not so much worried about scientific illiteracy per sé as the loss of any sort of scientific bent on the part of vast segments of the populace.

Nan Mooney: (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class (2008, Beacon Press): Probably the most normal thing in the world, at least if you're American, is to think that each generation makes progress moving up the proverbial Dream ladder. Still, I know a lot of people who are old enough to take retirement seriously but are still dependent on their parents for support -- especially true with middle class professionals, who did well for themselves before many conspired to kick the ladders out that might have allowed other people to advance.

Lisa Jean Moore: Sperm Counts: Overcome by Man's Most Precious Fluid (2007, NYU Press): Everything you ever (or never) wanted to know.

Michael Moore: Dude, Where's My Country? ().

Michael Moore: Mike's Election Guide 2008 (paperback, 2008, Grand Central Publishing): A straightforward book, but still feels weird. Moore is a mainstream celebrity, but still is regarded as fringe political, so you never quite know whether his endorsements of relatively mild-mannered Democrats helps or hurts.

Bethany Moreton: To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise (2009, Harvard University Press): Places Wal-Mart in the framework of right-wing Christian movement -- don't know how far it does into other businesses, but there is room to explore how Wal-Mart can get away with its business practices.

Benny Morris: Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999 (paperback, 2001, Vintage Books).

Benny Morris: 1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War (2008, Yale University Press): Morris did much of the first pass of serious research on the Palestinian refugee crisis coming out of Israel's 1948 War for Independence, and wrote a good general history, Righteous Victims: A History of the Zionist-Arab Conflict, 1881-1999. He's also turned into a rabid racist, applauding the expulsions that tactful Israeli politicians have long tried to sweep under the rug.

Benny Morris: One State, Two States: Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (2009, Yale University Press): A history of various speculations and proposals to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict. Morris was a respectable historian who did much to document the expulsions and massacres during Israeli's 1948 War of Independence, but he later turned into an extreme apologist for Ehud Barak and an advocate of further transfers. This comes through quickly in the first few pages of the book.

Charles R Morris: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (2008, Public Affairs): It's the economy, stupid.

Charles R Morris: The Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (2008, Public Affairs): This looks like the basic background brief on the current and coming economic crisis. I ordered Kevin Phillips' Bad Money instead, but this book is getting a lot of attention.

Charles R Morris: The Two Trillion Dollar Meltdown: Easy Money, High Rollers, and the Great Credit Crash (2008; revised, paperback, 2009, Public Affairs): One of the first really useful books out on the subprime mortgage crisis and how the contagion was likely to spread. And as such, instantly out of date. Hence the revision, which includes bumping the title up -- originally The Trillion Dollar Meltdown.

Charles R Morris: The Sages: Warren Buffett, George Soros, Paul Volcker, and the Maelstrom of Markets (2009, Public Affairs): Author of one of the better books on the crash, The Trillion Dollar Meltdown (doubling the tab for the paperback edition). I'm rather tired of putting finance people on pedestals, although these three are a bit off the beaten path. Still, two of them are primarily known for the basest of reasons: obscene riches.

Dick Morris/Eileen McGann: Catastrophe: How Obama, Congress, and the Special Interests Are Transforming . . . a Slump Into a Crash, Freedom Into Socialism, and a Disaster Into a Catastrophe . . . and How to Fight Back (2009, Harper): Hysterical nonsense, but it's already shot to the top of the bestseller list, as have the last couple of eruptions from these two (Fleeced is newly out in paperback, and Outrage is somewhere on the shelves -- the subtitles are equally long-winded and ridiculous).

Greg Mortensen: Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time (paperback, 2007, Penguin Books)

Greg Mortensen: Stones Into Schools: Promoting Peace With Books, Not Bombs, in Afghanistan and Pakistan (2009, Viking): One-time mountaineer, saw a need and starting building schools in rural Pakistan, leading to the book, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time. This updates the story, including a massive earthquake and the political upheaval of the Taliban. I've always been leery about charitable efforts inside US war zones because they inevitably mix up the messages, although I don't doubt that what he's doing there is more appreciated than Richard Holbrooke's contribution.

Walter Mosley: What Next: A Memoir Toward World Peace (2003, Black Classic Press).

Bill Moyers: Moyers on Democracy (2008, Doubleday): One of the few prominent White House aides to have gone on to a more notable and more useful post-political career -- Scott McClellan should take note, especially given that Moyers had to disseminate plenty of official lies in his time.

Ray Moynihan/Alan Cassels: Selling Sickness: How the World's Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies Are Turning Us All Into Patients (paperback, 2006, Nation Books): Focuses on drugs in search of patients, advertising to sell people on sicknesses they didn't realize they had. Like most overtreating treatises, the truth is hard to determine with so much money on the table.

Marwan Muasher: The Arab Center: The Promise of Moderation (2008, Yale University Press): Author is a Jordanian diplomat, long practiced at walking the straight and narrow line. By their very nature, moderates have a weak hand to argue. By readily going half way, they comfort the extremes without satisfying them -- the US, in particular, insists on moderation without giving moderates any heed.

John Mueller, Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them (Free Press): Certainly the threat of terrorism is overblown, at least compared to many other threats. Why is a more complicated question, and it's not clear how insightful this is on that score. I'm also disinclined to ignore the threat of terrorism because I regard it as symptomatic of deeper problems, like the arrogance and injustice of US foreign policy.

John Mueller: Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism from Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda (2009, Oxford University Press): No doubt there's been some hysteria worth debunking, especially along the lines of Condoleezza Rice's mushroom cloud quip, but there's also plenty of room for serious concern about atomic weapons. The bit I most worry about is the effort to preserve the practice of conventional warfare in an age when such war should be as unthinkable as nuclear holocaust. Author previously wrote Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them.

Rudolph Mueller: As Sick As It Gets: The Shocking Reality of America's Healthcare, A Diagnosis and Treatment Plan (2001, Olin Frederick)

Richard A Muller: Physics for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines (2008, WW Norton): Probably even more useful for citizens wanting to sanity check those future presidents. I think it's obvious that some basic understanding of science is essential for getting any sort of grasp on contemporary issues.

Paul Muolo/Mathew Padilla: Chain of Blame: How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis (2008, Wiley): Two journalists track down the chain of responsibility for the subprime mortgage meltdown. Looks like the leader in the race to cash in, already joined by: Edward M Gramlich: Subprime Mortgages: America's Latest Boom and Bust; Robert J Shiller: The Subprime Solution: How Today's Global Financial Crisis Happened, and What to Do About It; Mark Zandi: Financial Shock: A 360° Look at the Subprime Mortgage Implosion, and How to Avoid the Next Financial Crisis; Richard Bitner: Confessions of a Subprime Lender: An Insider's Tale of Greed, Fraud, and Ignorance. I don't think Dean Baker has a book out yet, but he's been on top of the crisis from before anyone else knew it was happening.

Cullen Murphy, Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (Houghton Mifflin): I figure this to be a forced analogy, but could be an amusing parlor game, and I have a lot of room (but not a lot of motivation) to learn more about Rome.

Cullen Murphy: Are We Rome? The Fall of an Empire and the Fate of America (2007, Houghton Mifflin): Comparisons, seems like a stretch to me, but I could stand to learn more about Rome.

Pat Murphy: Plan C: Community Survival Strategies for Peak Oil and Climate Change (paperback, 2008, New Society).

Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire (Free Press). Politicians' books normally sink to the bottom list, but politicians don't normally hawk their books on the Daily Show, where he didn't come off as an American lackey.

David N Myers: Between Jew and Arab: The Lost Voice of Simon Rawidowicz (2008, Brandeis): Rawidowicz died in 1957, having established himself as a notable scholar and written some essays critical of the Zionists' failure to protect Arabs during the 1947-49 war, a source not only of future conflict but of the deep-seated moral crisis within Zionism.

Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma (2006; paperback, 2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Azhar Hassan Nadeem: Pakistan: The Political Economy of Lawlessness (2002, Oxford University Press)

Ralph Nader: "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" (2009, Seven Stories Press): Fiction, probably not compelling as literature, more like a disguised political tract, and for that matter one fluffed up to 736 pp. Wouldn't mention it but I'm not sure he's wrong. Moreover, I don't like the odds.

VS Naipaul: Among the Believers: An Islamic Journey (1982; 2001, Peter Smith).

Loretta Napoleoni: Rogue Economics: Capitalism's New Reality (2008, Seven Stories Press): Economist/journalist, previously wrote Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks, and seems to specialize in clandestine finance, money laundering, etc.

David B Nash/Neil L Goldfarb, eds: Quality Solution: The Stakeholder's Guide to Improving Health Care (paperback, 2006, Jones & Bartlett)

Gary B Nash: The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America (2005; paperback, 2006, Penguin Books): More of a bottom-up take on the American Revolution, covering Indians, slaves, anonymous mobs, and bystanders.

Gary B Nash/Graham Russell Geo Hodges: Friends of Liberty: A Tale of Three Patriots, Two Revolutions, and the Betrayal that Divided a Nation: Thomas Jefferson, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and Agrippa Hull (2008, Basic Books): Freedom and slavery, seen from three views of the American revolution -- the betrayal, of course, was Jefferson's.

Omar Nasiri: Inside the Global Jihad: My Life With Al Qaeda: A Spy's Story (2006; paperback, 2008, Perseus): European subtitle: How I Infiltrated Al Qaeda and Was Abandoned by Western Intelligence. Reportedly offers a good sense of Al Qaeda's culture and politics during the 1990s.

Vali Nasr, The Shia Revival: How Conflicts Within Islam Will Shape the Future (WW Norton).

Vicente Navarro: The Politics of Health Policy: The US Reforms, 1980-1994 (1994, Wiley)

Shuja Nawaz: Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army, and the Wars Within (2008, Oxford University Press): Looking back at the Musharraf years, it seems pretty obvious now that the Bush administration understood virtually nothing about Pakistan's army and its view of the state and the world. This big (600 pp) book comes late but might help, especially since it's not clear that Obama gets it either.

Susan Neiman: Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-Up Idealists (2008, Harcourt): Heavy philosophical tome, meant for the left (or just plain decency) despite the right's rhetoric. I sort of recall a Michael Walzer quote on the cover, which at this point would be a troubling sign. Author previously wrote Evil in Modern Thought: An Alternative History of Philosophy.

David Neiwert: The Eliminationists: How Hate Talk Radicalized the American Right (paperback, 2009, Polipoint Press): Takes on the tendency in the right to seek the elimination of their enemies, as opposed to any of the wussier approaches favored by liberals, like trying to argue a case on points. Covers the obvious suspects, with Lou Dobbs mixed in with the neo-fascists.

Neil Weinstock Netanel: Copyright's Paradox (2008, Oxford University Press): Another take on the troubled relationship of copyright law and free speech. Lawrence Lessig recommends this.

Richard John Neuhaus: American Babylon: Notes of a Christian Exile (2009, Basic Books): Catholic theologian, died earlier this year. Had a strong hand in moving at least part of the Catholic church into alignment with the Republican right. In particular, he was often cited by Bush for his guidance on issues like stem-cell research. Given that sort of insider connection, it seems a little precious to describe himself as an exile.

Michael Neumann: The Case Against Israel (paperback, 2005, Counterpunch).

Ronald E Neumann: The Other War: Winning and Losing in Afghanistan (2009, Potomac Books): Career diplomat, US ambassador to Afghanistan 2005-07.

John Newhouse, Boeing Versus Airbus: The Inside Story of the Greatest International Competition in Business (2007-01, Knopf).

Katherine S Newman, Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market (Harvard University Press): Another book on "not making it in America" (Barbara Ehrenreich's subtitle), along with David Shipler's The Working Poor and others.

Katherine S Newman/Victor Tan Chen: The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America (2007, Beacon Press): Drawn on interviews from 1995-2002, a short stretch in precarious times. Basically, what others call the working poor. Newman also wrote Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market.

Mae M Ngai: Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (new edition, paperback, 2005, Princeton University Press): Background for the current debate, a broad study limited to the 1924-65 period when US immigration was limited by a national quota system, which created America's first class of illegal immigrants.

Reinhold Niebuhr: The Irony of American History (paperback, 2008, University of Chicago Press): New reprint of a 1952 book, with an introduction by Andrew Bacevich, who quoted Niebuhr extensively in his recent The Limits of Power. I've always dismissed Niebuhr as a cold war ideologue, but the quotes I've read via Bacevich are very sharp.

Nandan Nilekani: Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation (2009, Penguin Press): A portrait of India as a capitalist paradise, written by the head of a company called Infosys, with a foreword by Thomas Friedman.

Richard E Nisbett: Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count (2009, WW Norton): A nature/nurture rehash, leaning strongly to the notion that good schools make all the difference when it comes to IQ.

Darrin Nordahl: My Kind of Transit: Rethinking Public Transportation in America (2009, Center for American Places): Proposes "that the experience of public transit and the quality of the ride are pivotal to the success of public transit." As opposed, say, to the desperate lack of any alternative.

Grover G Norquist: Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government's Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives (2008, William Morrow): Normally I wouldn't bother with a book by a right-wing ideologue, much less a political power broker, but rumor has it he's the guy who pulls all the vast right-wing conspiracy strings.

Richard North: Ministry of Defeat: The British in Iraq 2003-2009 (2009, Continuum): "This has become one of the most humiliating chapters in British Military History . . . the only real success of the British Government has been to hide from view." Still sounds smarter than the Americans.

Augustus Richard Norton, Hezbollah: A Short History (2007-03, Princeton University Press).

Ronald L Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (2006-11, Harvard University Press, paperback).

Geoffrey Nunberg, Talking Right: The Politics of Language -- How the Right Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show (2006; paperback, 2007, Public Affairs).

Sari Nusseibeh, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life (Farrar Straus & Giroux): An interesting character, his life a prism for evaluating the reluctance of both sides to be reasonable.

Barack Obama: The Plan: Barack Obama's Promise to America and His Plan for the Economy, Iraq, Healthcare, and More (paperback, 2009, Pacific)

Lawrence J O'Brien: Bad Medicine: How the American Medical Establishment Is Ruining Our Healthcare System (1999, Prometheus): Focuses on physician mindsets.

Mary O'Brien/Martha Livingston, eds: 10 Excellent Reasons for National Health Care (paperback, 2008, New Press): Short (176 pp), but how complicated do the reasons have to be? It's the horror story books that run long.

James J O'Donnell: The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History (2008, Ecco): An old story, presumably with some new twists.

Avner Offer: The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950 (2007, Oxford University Press).

Shari B Olefson: Foreclosure Nation: Mortgaging the American Dream (paperback, 2009, Prometheus): Florida real estate attorney, probably much more here on nuts and bolts of dealing with a problem mortgage than overall analysis of how the market got to be so messed up.

William O'Neill: American High: The Years of Confidence 1945-1960 (1986, Free Press)

William O'Neill: A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home & Abroad in World War II (paperback, 1998, Harvard University Press)

William O'Neill: Coming Apart: An Informal History of the 1960s (paperback, 2005, Ivan R Dee)

William L O'Neill: A Bubble in Time: America During the Interwar Years, 1989-2001 (2009, Ivan R Dee): A history of the 1990s, a rare period of peace and prosperity bracketed by the two forever wars. O'Neill has tended to write kaleidoscopic period histories: A Democracy at War: America's Fight at Home & Abroad in World War II; American High: The Years of Confidence 1945-1960; Coming Apart: An Informal History of the 1960s.

Jerry Oppenheimer: Madoff with the Money (2009, Wiley): Cute title, one of many on the subject. Author previously wrote an unauthorized bio of Martha Stewart. [paperback Aug. 10]

Paul Ormerod: Why Most Things Fail: Evolution, Extinction and Economics (2006, Pantheon): Economist, author of The Death of Economics and Butterfly Economics: A New General Theory of Social and Economic Behavior. Seems like an subject of some interest, but got a lot of negative reviews at Amazon.

David Orrell: The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction (2007, Basic Books): A fairly critical review and analysis of the methods and practice of scientific prediction. A similar, more specific book is Orrin H Pilkey/Linda Pilkey-Jarvis: Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future. Of course, even if you pile appropriate caveats onto scientific predictions, that goes nowhere toward establishing that any other event may happen.

Nicholas Ostler: Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin (paperback, 2008, Walker): Tempting to see what (if anything) I can recall from that 9th grade Latin course, but rather long (400 pp) for such a marginal interest. I still haven't gotten into Ostler's Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World, which I bought a while back and probably has plenty on Latin for my purposes.

Fintan O'Toole: Ship of Fools: How Stupidity and Corruption Sank the Celtic Tiger (2010, Public Affairs): Ireland's economy got a big rise on the front side of a capitalist-friendly boom from 1995-2007, including a big chunk of the housing bubble. Then when the world banking crashed, Ireland was hit harder than most.

Randal O'Toole: The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook and Your Future (2007, Cato Institute): No doubt one could write a book on how government planning goes awry, producing inadequate solutions with unintended consequences that in turn create new problems, and of course there's always corruption and stupidity and the like. Don't know if this book does any of that, but its solution -- "repeat of federal planning laws and closure of government planning offices" -- is no solution, just blind faith in the market's ability to heal every problem.

Michael B Oren, Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present (WW Norton).

David Owen: Sheetrock & Shellac: A Thinking Person's Guide to the Art and Science of Home Improvement (2006, Simon & Schuster).

David Owen: Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability (2009, Riverhead): New Yorker writer, Connecticut suburb dweller, has written a bunch of books on housebuilding (marvelous) and golf (who cares?). Seems to argue that the bigger the city the better. Conversely, he points out that green-tinged pastoralism doesn't really make much difference.

Oliver S Owen: Doctors, Dollars and Death: Bad Medicine in America (1994, Warren H Green)

Amos Oz: Israel, Palestine and Peace: Essays (paperback, 1995, Harvest Books).

Robert Paarlberg: Starved for Science: How Biotechnology Is Being Kept Out of Africa (2008, Harvard University Press): Actually, a book promoting GMO -- genetically modified organisms, especially plants, which are held to be the solution to Africa's food crises. I don't really buy that argument on several levels, but it presents an interesting problem.

George Packer: The Assassins Gate: America in Iraq (2005, Farrar Straus Giroux).

George Packer: Interesting Times: Writings from a Turbulent Decade (2009, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Wonder how interesting they'd be if he actually understood them?

Benjamin L Page with Marshall W Bouton, The Foreign Policy Disconnect: What Americans Want From Our Leaders but Don't Get (University of Chicago Press).

Karen Page/Andrew Dornenburg: The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide to Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs (2008, Little Brown): The idea here is to build up a map of what ingredients enhance what flavors. Many, of course, are things that we already know about from past experience, but one might learn something.

Scott E Page, The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies (2007-01, Princeton University Press).

Trevor Paglen: Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geography of the Pentagon's Secret World (2009, Dutton): Author is described as "a scholar in geography, an artist, and a provocateur." Book attempts to expose a number of DOD and CIA "black ops" sites, helping you to get some notion of the bizarre things the security state is up to. Previously wrote: Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights. A similar book is Harry Helms: Top Secret Tourism: Your Travel Guide to Germ Warfare Laboratories, Clandestine Aircraft Bases and Other Places in the United States You're Not Supposed to Know About.

Robert Palmer: Blues & Chaos: The Music Writing of Robert Palmer (2009, Scribner): Posthumous anthology, edited by Anthony DeCurtis. Not sure what all is in here, but Palmer is one of the more important historian/critics of early rock and roll and its precursors -- Palmer's Deep Blues is one of the best known books on the subject.

Michael J Panzner: When Giants Fall: An Economic Roadmap for the End of the American Era (2009, Wiley): Tries to sum up the big and small factors eroding American power in the near and not-so-near future. Some part of this is certainly true, but people who think about things like this tend to exaggerate the value of US superpowerdom. In fact, we waste a lot of energy trying to prop up that façade and get very little from it -- at least very little trickles down to Main Street. Daily life in Great Britain was little different after losing their empire.

Ilan Pappe: A History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples (paperback, 2006, Cambridge University Press).

Ilan Pappe: The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine (paperback, 2007, One World): Looks like this concentrates on the 1948-49 expulsions, which are still at the root of the whole conflict. Mazim Qumsiyeh suggested doing reading groups using either this or Sandy Tolan's The Lemon Tree. We're doing one on the Tolan book, which is uniquely poignant. Should get a copy of this as well.

Ilan Pappe: The Bureaucracy of Evil (2008, One World): New book, not much info on it, seems to be about the Israeli occupation machinery: the laws and bureaucracies that govern the Palestinian occupied territories. There's much more to this than just the obvious "security" layer -- the checkpoints, jails, house demolitions, barrier building, etc. It's a story that's not nearly as well known as the expulsions. [May 25]

Jay Parini: Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America (2008, Doubleday): List-based book, running from The Federalist Papers to On the Road, with Dale Carnegie and Benjamin Spock among the eminently sensible choices. Appendix offers a longer list.

Roland Paris, At War's End: Building Peace After Civil Conflict (Cambridge University Press, paperback).

Trita Parsi: Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States (2007, Yale University Press).

Russ Parsons: How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table (paperback, 2008, Houghton-Mifflin): Author previously wrote a pretty good science-in-the-kitchen book: How to Read a French Fry: And Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science. Here he delves into the search for flavor in produce, complicated and often frustrated by agribusiness.

Frank Partnoy: The Match King: Ivar Krueger, the Financial Genius Behind a Century of Wall Street Scandals (2009, Public Affairs): The grandfather of all Ponzi schemes, not least Bernie Madoff's. Relevant today, natch, but the big scandals these days have more to do with Alan Greenspan, Richard Rubin, and Jamie Dimon. Partnoy has a couple of pre-crisis books that seem at least as relevant: FIASCO: Guns, Gooze, and Bllodlust -- The Truth About High Finance (1998), and Infectious Greed: How Deceit and Risk Corrupted the Financial Markets (2004).

Kant Patel/Mark Rushefsky: Health Care Politics and Policy in America (3rd edition, paperback, 2006, ME Sharpe)

Kant Patel/Mark E Rushefsky: Health Care in America: Separate and Unequal (paperback, 2008, ME Sharpe)

Raj Patel: Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System (paperback, 2008, Melville House): Looks like the place to start in investigating the global food crisis. Has an interesting blog and an activist stance -- claims to have been tear-gassed on four continents.

Raj Patel: The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy (paperback, 2010, Picador): Starts with Oscar Wilde quote: "nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing." This distinction between price and value leads to many ideas that could upset the conventional apple cart of economics. Previously wrote on food, Stuffed and Starved. Naomi Klein raves about him.

Ian Patterson: Guernica and Total War (2007, Harvard University Press): The Spanish Civil War, specifically the 1937 German air attack on the Basque town of Guernica, immortalized in Picasso's painting. A case study in the expansion of war to indiscriminate civilian slaughter -- a powerful sign of what was to come.

Scott Patterson: The Quants: How a New Breed of Math Whizzes Conquered Wall Street and Nearly Destroyed It (2010, Crown Business): Presumably newer than the old math whizzes that soared and crashed LTCM back in the more innocent 1990s. Warren Buffett: "Beware of geeks bearing formulas."

Bill Henry Paul, Future Energy: How the New Oil Industry Will Change People, Politics and Portfolios (2007-02, John Wiley).

Ron Paul: The Revolution: A Manifesto (2008, Grand Central): Unlike most politicians' books, this one came out at the end of the campaign, like the campaign was advance publicity for the book rather than the other way around. He represents the return of the pre-Goldwater libertarians, the ones who (unlike Goldwater) had no hankering for apocalypse.

Ron Paul: End the Fed (2009, Grand Central): In the great debate between freshwater and saltwater economists, Paul sides with the Austrians, who'd gladly forego any kind of water in favor of heavy metals. I like Paul on some issues, and I'm not a fan of the Fed, but I find it really hard to take this seriously.

Ron Paul: End the Fed (2009, Grand Central): In the great debate between freshwater and saltwater economists, Paul sides with the Austrians, who'd gladly forego any kind of water in favor of heavy metals. I like Paul on some issues, and I'm not a fan of the Fed. I don't doubt that he can score lots of points over secrecy and lack of accountability, which has often let the Fed follow dangerous political interests. I find it really hard to take this seriously, but it turns out that fighting the Fed is an old libertarian theme: Murray Rothbard had a similar book, The Case Against the Fed.

Henry M Paulson Jr: On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System (2010, Business Plus): Bush's Treasury Secretary, one of the key actors in the bailout; before that head of Goldman Sachs, one of the key actors in causing the problem in the first place. Ever wonder why he switched jobs when he did? In every nook and cranny of the federal government, Bush gladly turned chicken coops over to foxes, but only Paulson had the gall to demand a $700 billion slush fund with no oversight. This is no doubt an important book on the crisis, but with equal certainty will not be an honest or critical one. The question is what seeps through -- most likely, hubris.

Robert O Paxton: The Anatomy of Fascism (paperback, 2005, Vintage): Author previously wrote a book about Vichy France, as well as a more general book on 20th century Europe. This one tries to extract common traits and variations of fascism, making it useful for the question of whether contemporary movements are effectively fascist -- of course, I'm thinking of the Republican fringe.

Fred Pearce: When the Rivers Run Dry: Water -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century (paperback, 2007, Beacon Press).

Fred Pearce: With Speed and Violence: Why Scientists Fear Tipping Points in Climate Change (2007; paperback, 2008, Beacon Press): Science writer, has a number of books on climate change, including: When the Rivers Run Dry: Water -- The Defining Crisis of the Twenty-First Century; Keepers of the Spring: Reclaiming Out Water in an Age of Globalization; The Last Generation: How Nature Will Take Her Revenge for Climate Change; and, forthcoming, Confessions of an Eco-Sinner: Tracking Down the Sources of My Stuff. Climate change writing veers wildly between complacency and catastrophe, and Pearce seems to be stuck on the latter. Hard to say whether he's wrong or right.

Ami Pedahzur/Arie Perliger: Jewish Terrorism in Israel (2009, Columbia University Press): They backtrack to zealots in Roman times, and look at the Zionist use of terror in Israel's 1948 war, but there are contemporary examples as well -- efforts to solidify Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories, and to derail any peaceful accommodation with Palestinians.

Harvey Pekar: Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History (2008, Hill and Wang): Illustrated by Gary Dumm. Paul Buhle is listed as editor. Evidently Pekar's text is mixed with other first-person stories, and presumably Buhle has something to with that. Most likely you had to be there to care, but young people have been so misinformed on the whole era that they might learn something.

Robert Young Pelton, Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror (Crown; paperback, 2007, Three Rivers Press).

Michael Perelman: The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation (paperback, 2000, Duke University Press).

Michael Perelman: The Pathology of the US Economy Revisited: The Intractable Contradictions of Economic Policy (paperback, 2002, Palgrave Macmillan).

Michael Perelman: Steal This Idea: Intellectual Property Rights and the Corporate Confiscation of Creativity (2002; paperback, 2004, Palgrave Macmillan).

Michael Perelman: The Perverse Economy: The Impact of Markets on People and the Environment (paperback, 2005, Palgrave Macmillan).

Michael Perelman: Manufacturing Discontent: The Trap of Individualism in Corporate Society (paperback, 2004, Pluto Press).

Michael Perelman: Railroading Economics: The Creation of the Fre Market Mythology (paperback, 2006, Monthly Review Press).

Michael Perelman: The Confiscation of American Prosperity: From Right Wing Extremism and Economic Ideology to the Next Great Depression (2007, Palgrave Macmillan).

John Perkins, The Secret History of the American Empire: Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth About Global Corruption (Dutton Adult): Haven't read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, which seemed like it could very well be true but also self-serving and glib. This is more general, with a region-by-region, country-by-country organization that covers a lot of ground briefly.

Rick Perlstein: Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (2008, Scribner).

Rick Perlstein: Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (paperback, 2009, Nation Books): The prequel to Perlstein's Nixonland -- actually, an earlier book, from 2001, providing a similarly encyclopedic history of the nascent conservative movement and the Goldwater campaign.

Geoffrey Perret, Commander in Chief: How Truman, Johnson, and Bush Turned a Presidential Power Into a Threat to America's Future (2007-02, Farrar Straus and Giroux).

Dennis Perrin: Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War (paperback, 2008, Verso): Short (160 pages) book on trigger-happy Democrats, perhaps unfairly starting with Andrew Jackson and no doubt mentioning Henry Jackson with Iraq and Afghanistan of most recent interest. Don't know if this gets into Israel -- that would take a much larger book.

Charles Perrow: The Next Catastrophe: Reducing Our Vulnerabilities to Natural, Industrial, & Terrorist Disasters (2007, Princeton University Press): Thinking about disaster preparedness, including a history of FEMA and why they're not thinking about such things. Argues for reducing risk by deconcentrating population and critical infrastructures. Previously wrote: Normal Accidents: Living With High-Risk Technologies.

Alex Perry: Falling off the Edge: Travels Through the Dark Heart of Globalization (2008, Bloomsbury Press): Probably a hint that the front cover depicts swarthy soldiers in camouflage uniforms: globalization here seems to be only tangentially economic. Perry works for Time magazine, based in Africa, but ranges far and wide.

Gretchen Peters: Seeds of Terror: How Heroin Is Bankrolling the Taliban and al Qaeda (2009, Thomas Dunne): Bumps up against a pet peeve of mine: if heroin is bankrolling the Taliban, why not just legalize poppy growing and let legitimate sources drive the excess profits out of the market?

Melody Petersen: Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): Whether so many drugs are good for us or not (and which ones, when, and for whom) is less the issue than how the whole picture has been clouded by the singleminded pursuit of business. The effect is to poison the issue by making it turn on interest.

Melody Petersen: Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (2008; paperback, 2009, Picador): The latest dope on the drug industry, which all in all is probably a bigger villain than the insurance industry in the whole health care mess. Cf. John Abramson above for a list; this one looks to me like the best of the batch. I'm waiting for someone to write the right book on how to fix it: end patents, open up research so that it is publicly funded and totally transparent, limit drug companies to manufacturing generic drugs and competing on costs/integrity.

James Petras: Zionism, Militarism and the Decline of US Power (paperback, 2008, Clarity Press): Short (188 pp), basically a digest of other books by the author -- e.g., The Power of Israel in the United States, Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, and Militants -- a name I recognize but never read much. (Seems to me he mostly wrote about US impact in/on Latin America.)

Ann Pettifor, The Coming First World Debt Crisis (2006-11, Palgrave Macmillan).

Kevin Phillips: American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush (2004, Viking).

Kevin Phillips: American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century (2006, Viking): This is where the one-time Republican strategist develops his "we are doomed" theory. His equation is based on three deep insights: the willful ignorance imposed by the political ascent of fundamentalist Christianity; the argument that American power was always based on a natural resource that is now in permanent decline: oil; and the turn to finance as America's main way of making money, in stark contrast to simply making things. He traces other empires through the same eclipse -- the wind-powered Dutch and the coal-fired British. That a financial debacle would mark the end is certainly implied. He wrote a told-you-so sequel just two years later.

Kevin Phillips: Bad Money: Reckless Finance, Failed Politics, and the Global Crisis of American Capitalism (2008, Penguin Books): Not much info, but money played a key role in his American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, and the world of finance isn't getting any firmer.

Rufus Phillips: Why Vietnam Matters: An Eyewitness Account of Lessons Not Learned (2008, Naval Institute Press): A protege of Edward Lansdale, Phillips was involved in US actions in South Vietnam from the beginning, and recognized its imminent failure. For proof that the lessons were not learned, Phillips draws analogies to Iraq and Afghanistan.

Kim Phillips-Fein: Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan (2009, WW Norton): History of the rightward movement, focusing, as it should, on the folks with the money. I read a few pages at the beginning, where he starts off with the DuPont brothers.

Charles P Pierce: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free (2009, Doubleday): Inspired by the Terry Schiavo case and the Creation Museum, which are as good as anywhere to start, but pretty low-lying fruit. I'm still ambivalent about the Dark Ages scenario -- there seems to be a lot of pull in both directions -- and would like to go beyond the mere cataloguing of contemporary stupidity. So the key question here is "how" this happened. Part of it is certainly that stupidity has been in the political interests of the right, but it's also been accommodated by politicians of the not-so-right. Businesses too. Where does that leave us?

Tim Pilcher: Erotic Comics: A Graphic History from Tijuana Bibles to Undergound Comix (2008, Abrams): With help from Gene Kannenberg Jr and foreword by Aline Kominsky-Crumb. Basic coffee-table art book. Pilcher seems to be a prolific sex and drugs kind of guy, but I can't say he's graduated to rock 'n' roll yet, co-author of A Hedonist's Guide to Life.

Orrin H Pilkey/Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, Useless Arithmetic: Why Environmental Scientists Can't Predict the Future (2006-12, Columbia University Press). It's probably easy enough to shoot holes in mathematical models, but where does that leave us?

Gregory Alonso Pirio: The African Jihad: Bin Laden's Quest for the Horn of Africa (paperback, 2007, Red Sea Press): An attempt to sort out the complex political machinations in and near Somalia, especially the inevitable Jihad card, and the shadowy connections with former-Sudan resident Bin Laden.

Gabriel Piterberg: The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics and Scholarship in Israel (paperback, 2008, Verso): History of early Zionist thought, placing it within the context of European nationalism and colonialism predominant at the time. Looking forward to Arno Mayer book on this same subject: Ploughshares Into Swords: From Zionism to Israel, scheduled for June 9.

Robert Pitofsky, ed: How the Chicago School Overshot the Mark: The Effect of Conservative Economic Analysis on US Antitrust (paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press): A collection of 15 papers on how the vogue of free market fetishism undermined antitrust enforcement and ultimately the competitiveness of the markets. Or maybe that's just my position: reports claim this is more balanced, but then antitrust doctrine is easily confused in a political system that so favors special interests.

William Rivers Pitt: War on Iraq ().

Frances Fox Piven, Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America (2006-11, Rowman & Littlefield).

Norman Podhoretz: World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism (2007, Doubleday): When all the other neocons give up, Podhoretz is the one most likely to stick to the fight. Don't know whether that's because he's the purest of ideologists, or he's just stuck deepest in the rut of hatred. His conceptual coup here is to call the Cold War World War III, raising it to a level of intentionality it never enjoyed, one that can be safely indulged in now that it is over. The Cold War at least had some practical value legitimizing capital against labor in the class struggle. This new one, however, has no such side angles. Folks like Podhoretz promote it just because war is the only thing that gives their miserable lives meaning.

Paul Polak: Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail (2008, Berrett-Koehler): Attacks top-down approaches as having failed; promotes small plot farming, which the author has considerable experience with.

Anna Politkovskaya, Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy (2006-12, Henry Holt, paperback).

Anna Politkovskaya: A Russian Diary: A Journalist's Final Account of Life, Corruption, and Death in Putin's Russia (2007, Random House): Russian journalist, a fierce critic of the Chechen War and Vladimir Putin, murdered in 2006. Diary covers 2003-05. She has several other books out, including Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy.

William R Polk: The Birth of America: From Before Columbus to the Revolution (paperback, 2007, Harper Perennial): Fairly basic big picture history of colonial America, background for his American Revolution chapter in Violent Politics. Also curious about his earlier book, Polk's Folly: An American Family History, where he kicks around stories of ancestors, including a president, a general, various others.

William R Polk: Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq (2007, Harper): About ten case studies of insurgencies over more than two centuries: Spain against Napoleon, Philippines, Ireland, Yugoslavia in WWII, Greece after WWII, Kenya, Algeria, Vietnam, Afghanistan. Lessons should be obvious. Checked this out from library, but not sure if I'll have time to get to it.

William R Polk: Understanding Iraq: The Whole Sweep of Iraqi History, from Genghis Khan's Mongols to the Ottoman Turks to the British Mandate to the American Occupation (paperback, 2006, Palgrave Macmillan).

William R Polk: Understanding Iran: Everything You Need to Know, from Persia to the Islamic Republic, from Cyrus to Ahmadinejad (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Historian, longtime US diplomat, wrote a similar book primer Understanding Iraq a few years back, as well as a valuable comparative history of the pitfalls of occupation called Violent Politics: A History of Insurgency, Terrorism, and Guerrilla War, from the American Revolution to Iraq. A lot of people are sorely in need of such a book.

Kenneth Pollack: A Path Out of the Desert: A Grand Strategy for America in the Middle East (2008, Random House): As an Iraq War hawk, Pollack did much to get us into the mess he now feels so eminently qualified to get us out of. Favors a humbler, more humane, more realistic, and more cohesive set of policies. Evidently he gets paid for such profound insights.

Michael Pollan, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (paperback, 2007, Penguin Books).

Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto (2008, Penguin Press): I waited for The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals to come out in paperback, and will probably do the same thing here. It seems unlikely that he has much more to add, but it would make sense to organize what he's learned into a tighter and more coherent argument, and that's what I imagine he's done here.

Michael Pollan: Food Rules: An Eater's Manual (paperback, 2009, Penguin): After his important, and bestselling, food book The Omnivore's Dilemma, he seems determined to reduce the essential points, first in In Defense of Food and now in this 112-page "pocket guide." Also has a recent children's edition of Omnivore's Dilemma. Also has a recent reissue of an old book, A Place of My Own: The Architecture of Daydreams, that strikes my fancies much more.

Robert Pollin: Contours of Descent: US Economic Fractures and the Landscape of Global Austerity ().

Clive Ponting: A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilizations (revised/updated edition, paperback, 2007, Penguin): Update of a book originally published in 1992. Looks back at effects of environmental degradation on various ancient civilizations, as well as projecting current environmental problems into the future. Seems to parallel Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed -- e.g., by starting with the Easter Island example.

Jonas Pontusson: Inequality and Prosperity: Social Europe Vs. Liberal America (paperback, 2005, Cornell University Press): The basic contrast could use more press. Don't know anything about the author, but he's obviously thinking like a European as regards Liberal. Wait till he gets the full measure of Conservative America.

Steven Poole, Unspeak: How Words Become Weapons, How Weapons Become a Message, and How That Message Becomes Reality (Grove/Atlantic).

Bernard Porter: The Absent-Minded Imperialists: Empire, Society, and Culture in Britain (paperback, 2006, Oxford University Press): This looks at what people back in Britain thought and cared about their bloody empire, and the answer seems, interestingly enough, to be not much.

Gareth Porter: Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam (2005, University of California Press).

Michael E Porter/Elizabeth Olmsted Teisberg: Redefining Health Care: Creating Value-Based Competition on Results (2006, Harvard Business Press)

Richard A Posner: A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of '08 and the Descent into Depression (2009, Harvard University Press): The federal judge who knows and writes about everything weighs in on the economy. Reviewers are struck that someone deeply embued in Chicago School economics winds up promoting regulation as the necessary answer. Liberal economists already know that, so the main prospect here is the matter of discovery.

Jerrold M Post: The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda (paperback, 2008, Palgrave Macmillan): Dives into the murky waters of trying to build a psychological profile for terrorists, which seems like one more way to miss the political point.

Charles Postel: The Populist Vision (2007; paperback, 2009, Oxford University Press): Big new history of the late 19th century populist movement.

Neil Postman/Charles Weingartner: Teaching as a Subversive Activity (paperback, 1971, Delta).

Neil Postman/Steve Powers: How to Watch TV News: Revised Edition (paperback, 2008, Penguin): Postman was one of the most important education and culture critics of our time -- a book he co-wrote with Charles Weingartnet back around 1970, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, had a profound impact on me way back when. He died in 2003, having co-written this book with Powers 10 or so years earlier. Powers has some 45 years of broadcast news experience. He plugs in many recent examples, but I doubt that the critique has changed much.

Neil Postman/Steve Powers: How to Watch TV News: Revised Edition (paperback, 2008, Penguin): Postman died in 2003, so the revision is by Powers, who co-authored the book in 1992. Postman previously wrote another TV book: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. I never got to his later books, but a 1969 one with Charles Weingartner, Teaching as a Subversive Activity was a huge influence on me -- a key idea was that the most important thing to develop in students is a "bullshit detector." TV news is just another part of daily life where a finely tuned bullshit detector is essential.

William Poundstone: Gaming the Vote: Why Elections Aren't Fair (and What We Can Do About It) (2008, Farrar Straus and Giroux): I've read a couple of books by Poundstone, quite a while ago, about game theory if I recall correctly. He brings that expertise to bear here.

Jim Powell: Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II (2005, Crown Forum): Cato Institute hack, on a one-man crusade to recast American history to his way of thinking, as in his earlier FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Depression and his later Bully Boy: The Truth About Theodore Roosevelt's Legacy. Powell's economics is crackpot -- in the TR book he argues that the FDA was unnecessary because market incentives would have prevailed to ensure safe food. But his anti-interventionist foreign policy predilections have some merit, even though he makes the least of them. Powell greatly exaggerates Wilson's culpability for WWI -- Wilson shamefully piled onto a war he had done nothing to start, and he lied and schemed to do so. But he was notably unsuccessful at imposing his postwar order, which set up the myth that had he been able to do so the tragic aftermath ("Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II," as Powell puts it) could have been avoided. The bigger problem with Wilson isn't what he did so much as how he has been used since WWII to justify the forceful imposition of American order on the world -- a process that more resembles Wilson's actual subjugation of the Carribbean than his high-minded but deceitful rhetoric.

Samantha Power: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (2008, Penguin Press): Read the New Yorker excerpt focusing on Iraq, which had a lot of good stuff in it. Much bigger book (640 pages), probably a lot more perspective on what's good and bad about the UN. Couldn't bring myself to buy her previous book, The Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide -- mostly because I suspect she thought the US should have intervened in Rwanda. I don't think the US is sane enough to intervene anywhere. In fact, I think the US is so insane with guns it's reckless to suggest otherwise.

John Powers: Sore Winners: American Idols, Patriotic Shoppers, and Other Strange Species in George Bush's America (2004; paperback, 2005, Anchor Books).

Robert Pozen: Too Big to Save? How to Fix the US Financial System (2009, Wiley): A nuts and bolts guide to reforming the financial system. Not sure where he's coming from or going, because things like "a way to revive the securitization of loans" aren't intrinsically clear.

Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (2007-01, New Press).

R Lee Prescott: Barack Obama's Plan to Socialize America and Destroy Capitalism (paperback, 2009, Madrona Books)

Guido Giacomo Preparata: Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich (paperback, 2005, Pluto Press): I figure this argument is skewed and more than a little paranoid, but wouldn't mind seeing some exposure of US and UK business interests backing their German colleagues' support of Hitler. Multinational business interests go back a long ways -- shared class interests all the more so. Didn't work out so well in this case, which is why it's illustrative even if not typical.

Bill Press: Trainwreck: The End of the Conservative Revolution (and Not a Moment Too Soon) (2008, Wiley): Author of How the Republicans Stole Religion: Why the Religious Right is Wrong about Faith & Politics and What We Can Do to Make it Right, with its "Last Supper" tableau on the cover; also Bush Must Go: The Top Ten Reasons Why George Bush Doesn't Deserve a Second Term, and Spin This!: All the Ways We Don't Tell the Truth. People who write books like that rarely have anything new to say, but the Republicans' painful collision with reality, and with their own mortality, is a subject worth digging deeper into. Otherwise we risk getting wrapped up in premature gloating.

Jules Pretty: The Earth Only Endures: On Reconnecting With Nature and Our Place in It (2007, Earthscan): Author is an expert in sustainable agriculture, which he has written several books on. Collection of essays, ranges wider.

Naomi Prins: Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America (2004; paperback, 2006, New Press).

Nomi Prins: Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not) (paperback, 2006, Polipoint Press).

Nomi Prins: It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street (2009, Wiley): Former Goldman Sachs managing director turned muckraking journalist, argues that the pillage had less to do with subprime mortgages than "a financial system that rewards people who move money instead of people who make things, operates outside of the media's gaze, is sheltered from governmental supervision, and uses leverage to turn risky deals into insanely risky deals." Seems about right. Previously wrote Other People's Money: The Corporate Mugging of America and Jacked: How "Conservatives" Are Picking Your Pocket (Whether You Voted for Them or Not) .

Gerard Prunier: Darfur: The Ambiguous Genocide (revised and updated edition, 2007, Cornell University Press): Helena Cobban recommended this as the most useful book on Darfur. I've read some stuff by Prunier on Darfur -- he's also written on Rwanda -- and found him to be persuasive, unlike a lot on Sudan that's highly politicized. Other books on Darfur: Alex de Waal/Julie Flint: Darfur: A Short History of a Long War; many authors: War in Darfur and the Search for Peace.

Gérard Prunier: Darfur: A 21st Century Genocide (2005; 2007; third edition, paperback, 2008, Cornell University Press): Useful book on Darfur: while it doesn't deny charges of genocide, it doesn't overhype them either. Basically a story of a weak but nasty central government, troublesome neighbors, and risky revolutionaries against a rather bleak backdrop.

Gerard Prunier: Africa's World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide, and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (2008, Oxford University Press): Author has previous books on Rwanda and Darfur that are generally regarded as balanced and nuanced. Neither of those well-publicized massacres add up to the numbers killed in Congo, often with the Rwandan Tutsi-Hutu roles reversed. This looks like the first major attempt to put this conflict into context.

Jedediah Purdy: Being America: Liberty, Commerce, and Violence in an American World (2003, Alfred A Knopf).

Jedediah Purdy: A Tolerable Anarchy: Rebels, Reactionaries, and the Making of American Freedom (2009, Knopf): Iconoclastic social/political thinker, made a splash in 1999 when he published For Common Things, a book which blamed all of our social and political problems on irony -- this was pre-Bush, and arguably was the only problem Bush actually solved (assuming, of course, you regarded it as a problem). After 9/11, traveled to Egypt and wrote Being America, as if he were. He's moved on now, got a job teaching law, learned how to construct a title that isn't ridiculous at first glance.

Jill Quadagno, One Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance (2006-10, Oxford University Press, paperback).

Mazin Qumsiyeh: Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle (paperback, 2004, Pluto Press).

Joachim Radkau: Nature and Power: A Global History of the Environment (2008, Cambridge University Press): Wide ranging survey, mostly organized by topic although many topics are historically specific -- e.g., the effects of colonialism. Epilogue on "How to Argue with Environmental History in Politics."

Ronald Radosh/Allis Radosh: A Safe Haven: Harry S Truman and the Founding of Israel (2009, Harper): An attempt to whitewash Truman as a founding Zionist hero of the Jewish State, similar to Martin Gilbert's Churchill and the Jews: A Lifelong Friendship. A more balanced and nuanced view would be much more interesting.

Tariq Ramadan, In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons From the Life of Muhammad (2006-12, Oxford University Press).

Sheldon Rampton/John Stauber: Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq ().

Sheldon Rampton/John Stauber, The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq (paperback). I've read their previous Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War in Iraq.

David Ransom/Vanessa Baird, eds: People-First Economics: Making a Clean Start for Jobs, Justice and Climate (paperback, 2009, World Changing): Contributions by Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Susan George, Walden Bello, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Evo Morales.

Donald Rapp: Bubbles, Booms, and Busts: The Rise and Fall of Financial Assets (2009, Springer): Some on the subprime fiasco, more on older instances going back to the 1720s -- what, no tulips? Seems to have a political agenda, ranting against "tax and spend" Democrats and "spend and borrow" Republicans, citing Cheney's "Deficits don't matter" as "the theme of American finance." But if deficits didn't matter to the banks, why bail them out?

Mike Rapport: 1848: Year of Revolution (2009, Basic Books): Several major European revolts that turbulent year, now best remembered for the publication of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Seems like a good subject for a broad comparative history.

Ahmed Rashid: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia ().

Ahmed Rashid: Descent Into Chaos: The US and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008, Viking): Pakistani journalist, previously wrote two essential books: Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. With the chaos he covers so well slopping over and threatening to envelop Pakistan, his reporting stands to be more crucial than ever.

Ahmed Rashid: Descent into Chaos: The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008; paperback, 2009, Penguin): An important book on what has happened since 2001 in Afghanistan and Pakistan (and to a far lesser extent the former SSRs in central Asia), especially due to the US War on Terrorism, occupying Afghanistan and meddling in Pakistan. Recommended.

Ahmed Rashid: Descent Into Chaos: The US and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia (2008; paperback, 2009, Penguin): Probably the single best book out on America's post-2001 Af-Pak fiasco, although it still leaves plenty of questions unanswered and even unraised.

Jack Rasmus: Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression (paperback, 2010, Pluto Press): Argues that massive job creation programs and wealth redistribution are needed to prevent the recession from getting worse and/or dragging on indefinitely. Clearly doesn't understand that the bankers that move and shake the world can get along fine without workers. [May 11]

Dina Rasor/Robert Bauman: Betraying Our Troops: The Destructive Results of Privatizing War (2007, Palgrave Macmillan): Second order dirt -- all this graft wouldn't exist if it weren't for the war in the first place. I doubt that any of it has a real effect on the outcome, which would be dismal even if Bush could manage it honestly and competently. Of course, he can't, for the same reasons that got him into the war in the first place. [Paperback April 29]

Eric Rauchway: Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America (paperback, 2007, Hill and Wang).

Eric Rauchway: The Great Depression & the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction (paperback, 2008, Oxford University Press): A lot to cover in 160 pages (maybe only 130), but this may be a useful review or primer. Rauchway also wrote the intriguing Blessed Among Nations: How the World Made America.

Ben Ratliff: The Jazz Ear: Conversations Over Music (2008, Times Books): New York Times jazz critic. I pretty much never read him, but not because I have a real opinion about his criticism. (His Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings has a lot of obvious picks, a few inspired ones, and none more dubious than Wynton Marsalis.) Not sure if these are verbatim interviews or just distillations. Ratliff's Coltrane: The Story of a Sound is also now out in paperback.

Allen Raymond: How to Rig an Election: Confessions of a Republican Operative (2008, Simon & Schuster): Like Stephen Marks, another slimeball hawking a memoir as an exposé. Or maybe he's just bragging.

Colin Read: Global Financial Meltdown: How We Can Avoid the Next Economic Crisis (2009, Palgrave Macmillan): Another big picture book, tries to be forward looking. No idea what all it covers, but Dean Baker approves.

John Reader: Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent (2009, Yale University Press): Domesticated in Peru some 8,000 years ago, imported to Europe in the 1500s where it had a huge demographic impact -- especially in Ireland and in Eastern Europe, which are by now inconceivable without it.

Gary L Reback: Free the Market!: Why Only Government Can Keep the Marketplace Competitive (2009, Portfolio): Author is an antitrust lawyer, a key person pushing the Clinton DOJ to file its lawsuit against Microsoft. Antitrust is an idea that has been fretted away for decades, and pretty much totally abandoned by Bush, but if you're going to have a market economy, you need some way to keep it open and honest, and that's generally not in the specific interests of the big players. You need some sense of a public interest, and for that you need an active government agency. It's all pretty simple, and about time someone reminded us.

Andrew Redleaf/Richard Vigilante: Panic: The Betrayal of Capitalism by Wall Street and Washington (2010, Richard Vigilante Books): Redleaf is a hedge fund manager who predicted the banking crisis in a letter to his clients in Dec. 2006. Looks like this could be a right-wing rant, but Robert Shiller approved, and here's one quote: "Bush's initial policy on the crisis was similar to his Iraq policy: create a Green Zone and a Red Zone. Both policies were failures."

Erik Reece, Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness: Radical Strip Mining and the Devastation of Appalachia (2007-02, Penguin, paperback).

Thomas C Reed/Danny B Stillman: The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and Its Proliferation (2009, Zenith Press): Ambitious subject scope, probably a bit skimpy at 393 pages (cf. Richard Rhodes' three volumes, which still don't cover a lot of the smaller proliferation cases). Authors are nuke designers, which should add some technical interest.

Marcus Reeves: Somebody Scream!: Rap Music's Rise to Prominence in the Aftershock of Black Power (paperback, 2009, Faber & Faber): Historian, tries to link put draw out the context rap artists work out of, from Grandmaster Flash to Jay-Z and Eminem.

Alfred S Regnery: Upstream: The Ascendance of American Conservatism<