Books for Today, Tonight & Tomorrow
Looking for a good book to read and perhaps share? Here are few “keepers” about which we have never heard said: “I want that day back.”
Books to Help You Sleep
Numerous books for many evenings of enjoyable bedtime reading if you can wait for the solution of a sometimes perplexing collection of events in a good story even if you have to read the last two or three pages the next night.
| Sherlock Holmes mysteries | by A. Conan Doyle |
| Mysteries from the Navajo reservation | by Tony Hillerman |
| Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot mysteries | by Agatha Christie |
| Guido Brunetti, Commisario in Venice, mysteries | by Donna Leon |
| The Thursday Murder Club series featuring a savvy group of retirees | by Richard Osman |
Books to Keep You Awake
These books can be illuminating of our politics. 1984 and Lord of the Flies are still current and chillingly insightful if you didn’t read them in high school or need a reminder. “Eurasia” is contemporary in the book The Road to Unfreedom published in 2018. How the World Really Works and The Road to Unfreedom are academic and scholarly; it is hard to get comfortable with them. Killers of the Flower Moon is hard to put down. It is a vibrant and compelling investigation revealing the changes our attitudes have undergone in the past 100 years.
| 1984 | by George Orwell |
| How the World Really Works | by Vaclav Smil |
| Lord of the Flies | by William Golding |
| The Road to Unfreedom | by Timothy Snyder |
| Killers of the Flower Moon | by David Grann |
Biographies for Our Time
Brian Williams (remember him?) touted Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George the III as a different perspective on the American Revolution. Lord North, Pitt the Elder and Pitt the Younger along with a much maligned king were given context and so provide background for understanding the great efforts of the Adams cousins in creating and solidifying the framework of our country with more than names and dates. The Grant biography, the Churchill trilogy and the FDR at War trilogy are similarly illuminating of the great changes that these men were essential to in the United States during and after the Civil War, the waning days of the British Empire, and the Western World during and after World War II.
| The Last King of America: The Misunderstood Reign of George III | by Andrew Roberts |
| The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams | by Stacey Schiff |
| John Adams | by David McCullough |
| Ulysses S. Grant | by Ron Chernow |
| The Last Lion (This is a three volume biography of Winston Churchill) | by William Manchester |
| FDR at War | by Nigel Hamilton |
Adventure
| Master & Commander and many other tales of Capt. Jack Aubrey | by Patrick O’Brien |
| Endurance | by Alfred Lansing (Even though you know the ending.) |
| Freedom of the Hills | by Seattle Mountaineers (Do it now while there are still glaciers.) |
Just Good Books
These books are just good. Their timeless insights are beautifully expressed without being overbearing.
| A River Runs Through It | by Norman Maclean |
| A Gentleman in Moscow | by Amor Towles |
| The Boys in the Boat | by Daniel James Brown |
| Essays of E.B. White | by E.B. White |
Science
These books open the reader‘s mind to wonders of the natural world’s complexity and intricacy that despite modern technology is beyond our human capacity to appreciate. Ed Yong explores the senses of many animals that are vastly different from ours, e.g., owls use hearing rather than sight to locate prey and they’re very good at it (unfortunately for mice) and seals sense ocean currents to locate fish. The work of Daniel Kahneman shows a lot about decision making that we do all the time. Some of the discussion of data from experiments is comforting; some is unsettling. All of it can open our minds to uncertainty and ambiguity. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer integrates a knowledge and understanding of the natural world and our place in it as a mother, professor of Environmental Biology and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. All of these works demonstrate the value of science in different contexts for understanding and appreciating our world.
| An Immense World | by Ed Yong |
| Thinking, Fast & Slow | by Daniel Kahneman |
| Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment | by Daniel Kahneman, Oliver Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein |
| Braiding Sweetgrass | by Robin Wall Kimmerer |
A Book to Make You Think
| Review of The Political Brain by Drew Westen | by Elizabeth Cosgriff |
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