As insanely busy as ever, so in lieu of a reflective meditation, here is a snapshot of books I'd love to read right now. I am understandably on a big history kick these days, as I have been teaching global history for the past four months now. Thoughts on the books? The only one I've even started to read is Decade of Nightmares, which I feel confident recommending as political junkie crack. Jenkins saturates every page with a cultural gestalt of seventies and eighties America. A total rush. I listened to a Talks@Google address by David Plouffe that piqued my interest. My interest in Kagan's book is also audio-related. He has a Greek History course from Yale (2006, I think) that I loved. The Vertigo Years is a book I've had my eye on for a while now; I think I liked the New Yorker "In Brief" write-up. I'm hopeful that Lears' book has something new to say about America's endless reinvention narrative. I only found out about The Victorian Internet a couple of days ago--an Amazon recommendation, I think. I just taught the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and feel that Friedman can deliver a page-turner on this. If 1776 is good, I'd love to start reading more McCullough; this book is also a hedge against having to read Gordon Wood's six-hundred some-odd page tome on the revolution. In teaching the Middle East to my ninth-graders these past eight weeks I also became really interested in the Ottoman Empire for the first time; Fromkin got several references in an "intro-to" style book about the region, so I hope it's a good starting point. Pathfinders: this is a book I saw on an uber-history-buff friend's Amazon Wish List; if he's interested, I'm interested. Bergen: I just heard him on NPR's Fresh Air--or was it some other talk show?--and I was impressed. As for Dostoyevsky, do you ever need a reason? I guess I single out "Demons" because I've yet to read any of these new translations, and I'd love to see how they read. If I remember, our bloggin friend III is a big fan.
Until next time, dear readers.
The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 (Phillip Blom)
From Beirut to Jerusalem (Thomas Friedman)
Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (Jackson Lears)
The Victorian Internet (Thomas Standage)
The Audacity to Win (David Plouffe)
1776 (David McCullough)
Decade of Nightmares (Philip Jenkins)
Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Donald Kagan)
A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East (David Fromkin)
Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration (Felipe Fernandez-Armesto)
The Creation of the American Republic (Gordon Wood)
Demons (Fyodor Dostoyesvsky - Pevear/Volokhonsky translation)
The Osama bin Laden I Know (Peter Bergen)
1776 - (David McCullough)
Friday, December 18, 2009
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1 comments:
I got a few of these books for Christmas and the first one I've made it through is 1776. My gosh, David McCullough is such a pleasure to read. The quotations are so narratively perfect that it's a wonder he didn't invent them. High, high drama. I remember hearing that the screenwriter for Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" told him that events unfolded in perfect time to how they would need to be filmed. McCullough has the same gift for pacing.
The next time you've got a flight, bring 1776 along with you. I've already started McCullough's Truman biography and am greatly enjoying it.
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