Not this post, necessarily.  I am soliciting book recommendations.  I had books stacked up like flights over LaGuardia but recently traffic has cleared almost back to normal.  I would love to get recommendations  non fiction or fiction.  Hope to dive back into the great crash of 2008 to read a bit about it.  But any book that you think clarified or illuminated history or current events, science,  or just plain knocked your socks off would be welcome recommendations.  Political viewpoint is not limiting factor.   Currently finishing Cloud Atlas.

I hope you listened to 'Cloud Atlas'.

The best one volume history of the 2008 debacle is 'The End of Wall Street' by Roger Lowenstein, the author of 'When Genius Fails', about the LTCM meltdown in 1998. He does an excellent job of describing how the relaxation in home mortgage rates merged seamlessly into Wall Street's demand for financial vehicles. Most other authors (I read about a dozen books on the subject) apportion blame to one factor or the other, but he is comprehensive. 

'In the Garden of the Beasts', Eric Larson's history of the experience of the first American ambassador to Nazi Germany, a midWesterner named William E. Dodd, is extraordinary.

I have enjoyed all of Alan Furst's episodic novels set in mittel-Europe in the 1930's and 40's, with heros caught between the Nazis and Stalinists. This recent history has been forgotten too quickly. 

You might not like Shakespeare, but James Shapiro's 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, discussing the genesis of the plays Julius Ceasar, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night in the context of the extraordinary political events of that year, is fascinating.

All of the above named are downloadable on Kindle.

“Big Bang” by Simon Singh.  A useful antidote to the growing anti-science movement in our country, this book by the physicist in charge of BBC science tells the stories of the people who figured out the origin of the universe. The NYT says “it is hard to imagine a grander, more thrilling story...hugely entertaining,” and it begins on page 11 with exactly how Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC measured the diameter of the earth (which he knew to be a sphere 1700 years before Columbus) to within 2% of the correct value.

“Catherine the Great” by Robert Massey.  A minor Prussian princess with no knowledge of the Russian language, culture or religion is imported sight unseen as the teenage bride of the teenage future Czar; she never sees her family again, educates herself, leads a coup to become Empress, and brings the Enlightenment to feudal 18th Century Russia.

“The Last Lion. I. Visions of Glory 1874-1932” by William Manchester.  Extensive primary sources make this a highly readable back story of this extraordinary man (Winston Churchill), who single-handedly changed the course of the Twentieth Century. (Volume II, “Alone 1932-1940,” is just as good) 

“Personal History” by Katherine Graham.  A masterful, true-to-the-bone autobiography of a mousey housewife/mother unexpectedly thrust into the role of Washington Post Publisher in an era when women never rose to this level in the business world, and whose courage and wisdom at the wheel drove the Watergate revelations and Nixon’s resignation.

BC

Boston Card wrote: “Big Bang” by Simon Singh.  A useful antidote to the growing anti-science movement in our country, this book by the physicist in charge of BBC science tells the stories of the people who figured out the origin of the universe. The NYT says “it is hard to imagine a grander, more thrilling story...hugely entertaining,” and it begins on page 11 with exactly how Eratosthenes in the 3rd century BC measured the diameter of the earth (which he knew to be a sphere 1700 years before Columbus) to within 2% of the correct value.

“Catherine the Great” by Robert Massey.  A minor Prussian princess with no knowledge of the Russian language, culture or religion is imported sight unseen as the teenage bride of the teenage future Czar; she never sees her family again, educates herself, leads a coup to become Empress, and brings the Enlightenment to feudal 18th Century Russia.

“The Last Lion. I. Visions of Glory 1874-1932” by William Manchester.  Extensive primary sources make this a highly readable back story of this extraordinary man (Winston Churchill), who single-handedly changed the course of the Twentieth Century. (Volume II, “Alone 1932-1940,” is just as good) 

“Personal History” by Katherine Graham.  A masterful, true-to-the-bone autobiography of a mousey housewife/mother unexpectedly thrust into the role of Washington Post Publisher in an era when women never rose to this level in the business world, and whose courage and wisdom at the wheel drove the Watergate revelations and Nixon’s resignation.

BC

BC, EVERYONE knew the world was round. Ptolemaic astronomy implies that. Dante in the [truly]Divine Commedia assumes that throughout.

Genuine Realist wrote:

 

BC, EVERYONE knew the world was round. Ptolemaic astronomy implies that. Dante in the [truly]Divine Commedia assumes that throughout.

Yes, but could they calculate the diameter of the earth to within 2% of its true value?

BC

Well, the point is that Columbus didn't really prove anything new.

But I would have be very surprised if geometers of the Middle Ages, particularly Arabic scholars, could not do the same thing as Eratosthenes.

The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein, is excellent, particularly for dog owners.

Bonhoeffer, by Eric Metaxas. Biography of a German pastor who conspired to kill Hitler.

- Beyond the 100th Meridian
- Cadillac Desert
- Angle of Repose
- The Endurance, Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition or Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Journey or South with Endurance
- The best way to rob a bank is to own one
- The Limit: Life and death on the 1961 Grand Prix circuit
- Rain of Gold
- Ogilvy on advertising
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- When Pride still mattered
- Rivers in the Desert or William Mullholland and the rise of LA
- Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest company
- The Amateurs
- The Wow Boys
- The Invention that changed the world
- Between Silk and Cyanide
- The Unfair Advantage
- The Art of Racing in the Rain
- Undefeated, untied and uninvited
- River of Doubt
- The Worst Hard times

82lsju wrote: - Beyond the 100th Meridian
- Cadillac Desert
- Angle of Repose
- The Endurance, Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition or Endurance, Shackleton's Incredible Journey or South with Endurance
- The best way to rob a bank is to own one
- The Limit: Life and death on the 1961 Grand Prix circuit
- Rain of Gold
- Ogilvy on advertising
- Memoirs of a Geisha
- When Pride still mattered
- Rivers in the Desert or William Mullholland and the rise of LA
- Bill & Dave: How Hewlett and Packard Built the World's Greatest company
- The Amateurs
- The Wow Boys
- The Invention that changed the world
- Between Silk and Cyanide
- The Unfair Advantage
- The Art of Racing in the Rain
- Undefeated, untied and uninvited
- River of Doubt
- The Worst Hard times

good lord, how do you find the time.?  Seriously.

the list is books read over many years....and we only have OTA TV.......

gotta read thinking fast and slow if you have not already.

thanks for the list Eric - have read maybe  20% of them. I'll add the others recommendations here, and post it for 2013 consumption

Grant, the Man Who Saved the Union
Two Americans (Ike, HST) by Miller
Brazzaville Beach by W. Boyd
And reread The Caine Mutiny every five years.

Genuine Realist wrote: Well, the point is that Columbus didn't really prove anything new.

But I would have be very surprised if geometers of the Middle Ages, particularly Arabic scholars, could not do the same thing as Eratosthenes.

Must be nice, to be able to sit in an armchair ACROSS the Atlantic and be able to say, no, Columbus did not prove anything new. 

Since it is appears not obvious, I feel compelled to say it: Columbus and other sailors of that era were those who proved in the physical world, staking their lives on it, the specific quantitative theories of scientists like Eratosthenes, and suppositions of others. Kinda like Arnold Penzias (he got a Nobel) finding the cosmic background radiation that was implied to exist because of the Big Bang, Columbus found the western seas to "India" that had to be there, and potentially reachable because of Eratosthenes size calculations. The history of science is littered with similar relationships: theory/proof.

Ditto for the statements about Eratosthenes, we can all write E=mc^2 now, but zero percent of us had such notions before Enstein. Eratosthenes was the first person to correctly make this deduction quantitatively.

Please show a little respect for those who made your lives possible. Above all, speaking about nations, the rich and powerful on earth today are so because they have systems that can generate and/or exploit science or the scientific method.

Matterhorn - A novel of the Vietnam War

The Passage of Power - The Years of Lyndon Johnson - Robt Caro

English Creek - Ivan Doig

Dancing at the Rascal Fair - Ivan Doig

(The last two, if you're a Wallace Stegner fan)

Once again, the effect of the termination of the basic Western Civ class shows its ugly face.

It takes nothing away from the actual achievement of Columbus to note that the actual shape of the earth was known to all persons of good sense for a millennium and a half before he sailed the ocean blue. Whatever he did 'prove', it wasn't that.

as a matter of logic and rhetoric:  

saying 'the actual shape of the earth was known to all persons of good sense' is remarkably irrefutable:  if known by any specific person, then that individual had good sense; if not, then not.

and the statement also begs the question:  who is the arbiter of 'all'; or of the nature of sensibility, good, bad, or otherwise?

There are numerous chapters of the Flat Earth Society around locally, if you and T. want to join one. 

You can also dispute known cultural history if you wish. There's a limit to how much time and energy one wants to spend debating the obvious.

sort of anyway, 

The Sharpest Sight by Louis Owens.  Highly recommend it.

a bookstore, you say?  what's that, you say?

Stanford bookstore had a 20% sale last night for faculty, students, and staff.  how odd, now that Borders is long-since closed in Palo Alto, to go to an actual bookstore, where a few dinosaur-souls like myself still preserve and treasure those long-ago feelings for the word written on a physical page.

I confess I am addicted to the tactile and emotional experience of 'book'.  ogling at them arrayed on shelves.  hovering/looming over their seductive titles.  caressing their bindings.  pulling an especially gorgeous one off the shelf, and fondling a few pages, scanning the words not a little lustfully. 

and I'm not talking about Playboy or Penthouse or Maxim.  I'm talking about Wallace Stegner (82lsju's list was great).  John McPhee.  David McCullough.  Neal Stephenson.  Marge Piercy and Connie Willis.  Victor Hugo.  Jane Austin.  Edgar Allen Poe.  science fiction.  histories and biographies.  poetry.  physics and math and engineering and business and psychology and philosophy.  texts and nonfictions and fictions.... 

<gasp> all right then.  back to the moment.  and, leaving aside the question of whether bookstores can, should, or will exist....

I have enjoyed particularly Stephenson's 'Anathem' during the past year or so:  the work is tremendously ambitious, and IMO he realizes his ambition, although at least one reviewer from the WAPO disagrees vehemently.  his 'Reamde' was interesting, but not up to the par he has established with other works.  if you can stomach 3000+ pages (with at least one breathtaking metaphor on each and every page), his Baroque Cycle is worth the arduous expedition.