| Ken Shirriff -> Books -> Book reviews |
1. The Education of Henry Adams: Henry Adams 2. The Varieties of Religious Experience: William James 3. Up from Slavery: Booker T. Washington 4. A Room of One's Own: Virginia Woolf 5. Silent Spring: Rachel Carson. One of the books that started the environmental movement and led to the ban on DDT, but probably of more historical interest now. 6. Selected Essays, 1917-1932: T.S. Eliot 7. The Double Helix: James Watson 8. Speak, Memory: Vladimir Nabokov 9. American Language: H. L. Mencken. I'm in the process of reading this one. It's an exhaustive look at how American English differs from British English. 10. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money: John Keynes 11. The Lives of a Cell: Lewis Thomas. An amazing collection of essays on biology, cells, and life. 12. The Frontier in American History: Frederick Jackson Turner 13. Black Boy: Richard Wright 14. Aspects of the Novel: E. M. Forster 15. Civil War: Shelby Foote 16. The Guns of August: Barbara Tuchman. A fascinating book on the start of World War I, and an illustration of how fixed ideas can lead to disaster. 17. The Proper Study of Mankind: Isaih Berlin 18. The Nature and Destiny of Man: Reinhold Niebuhr 19. Notes of a Native Son: James Baldwin 20. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas: Gertrude Stein 21. Elements of Style: William Strunk and E. B. White. The guide to writing. 22. An American Dilemma: Gunnar Myrdal 23. Principia Mathematica: Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell 24. The Mismeasure of Man: Stephen Jay Gould 25. The Mirror and the Lamp: Meyer Howard Abrams 26. The Art of the Soluble: Peter B. Medawar 27. The Ants: Bert Hoelldobler and Edward O. Wilson 28. A Theory of Justice: John Rawls 29. Art and Illusion: Ernest H. Gombrich 30. The Making of the English Working Class: E. P. Thompson 31. The Souls of Black Folk: W.E.B. Du Bois 32. Principia Ethica: G. E. Moore 33. Philosophy and Civilization: John Dewey 34. On Growth and Form: D'Arcy Thompson 35. Ideas and Opinions: Albert Einstein 36. The Age of Jackson: Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. 37. The Making of the Atomic Bomb: Richard Rhodes. While this book gets off to a slow start describing the lives of many physicists, it's a surprising look at how academic research and the needs of World War II came together in the atomic bomb. 38. Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: Rebecca West 39. Autobiographies: W. B. Yeats 40. Science and Civilization in China: Joseph Needham 41. Goodbye to All That: Robert Graves 42. Homage to Catalonia: George Orwell 43. The Autobiography of Mark Twain: Mark Twain 44. Children of Crisis: Robert Coles 45. A Study of History Arnold J. Toynbee 46. The Affluent Society: John Kenneth Galbraith 47. Present at the Creation: Dean Acheson 48. The Great Bridge: David McCullough 49. Patriotic Gore: Edmund Wilson 50. Samuel Johnson: Walter Jackson Bate 51. The Autobiography of Malcolm X: Alex Haley and Malcolm X 52. The Right Stuff: Tom Wolfe 53. Eminent Victorians: Lytton Strachey 54. Working: Studs Terkel 55. Darkness Visible: William Styron 56. The liberal imagination: Lionel Trilling 57. Second World War: Winston Churchill 58. Out of Africa: Isak Dinesen 59. Jefferson and His Time: Dumas Malone 60. In the American Grain: William Carlos Williams 61. Cadillac Desert: Marc Reisner. If you live in California, you need to read this book, as it explains how the need for water shaped the history and politics of the West, especially Los Angeles. A surprising tale of corruption. 62. The House of Morgan: Ron Chernow 63. The Sweet Science: A. J. Liebling 64. The Open Society and Its Enemies: Karl Popper 65. The Art of Memory: Frances A. Yates 66. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: R. H. Tawney 67. A Preface to Morals: Walter Lippmann 68. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: Jonathan D. Spence 69. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: Thomas S. Kuhn. If you're a scientist, read this book - not just because it's constantly cited, but because also because it makes scientific history much clearer. 70. The Strange Career of Jim Crow: C. Vann Woodward 71. The Rise of the West: William H. McNeill 72. The Gnostic Gospels: Elaine Pagels 73. James Joyce: Richard Ellmann 74. Florence Nightingale: Cecil Woodham-Smith 75. The Great War and Modern Memory: Paul Fussell 76. The City in History: Lewis Mumford 77. Battle Cry of Freedom: James M. McPherson 78. Why We Can't Wait: Martin Luthur King, Jr. 79. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt: Edmund Morris 80. Studies in Iconology: Erwin Panofsky 81. The Face of Battle: John Keegan 82. The Strange Death of Liberal England: George Dangerfield 83. Vermeer: Lawrence Gowing 84. A Bright Shining Lie: Neil Sheehan. A controversial but fascinating look at the Vietnam war. 85. West With the Night: Beryl Markham 86. This Boy's Life: Tobias Wolff 87. A Mathematician's Apology: G. H. Hardy 88. Six Easy Pieces: Richard P. Feynman. Feynman, probably the most famous physicist after Einstein, has a remarkable gift for writing. 89. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek: Annie Dillard 90. Golden Bough: James George Frazer 91. Shadow and Act: Ralph Ellison 92. The Power Broker: Robert A. Caro. How did New York City end up the way it did? How can one man attain vast power? This book about Robert Moses answers both questions. 93. The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It: Richard Hofstadter 94. Contours of American History: William Appleman Williams 95. The Promise of American Life: Herbert Croly 96. In Cold Blood: Truman Capote. The first real "true-crime" book; Capote knows how to write a gripping and chilling story. 97. The Journalist and the Murderer: Janet Malcolm 98. The Taming of Chance: Ian Hacking 99. Operating Instructions: Anne Lamott 100. Melbourne: Lord David Cecil Reviews: Fiction - Nonfiction - Reference - Cryptography - Fractals - Urban Planning - Wallstreet - Economics of Wealth
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