July 5th, 2010 § § permalink
Empire of Silver by Conn Iggulden
Genghis Khan is dead, but his legend and his legacy live on. His son Ogedai has built a white city on a great plain and made a capital for the new nation. Now the armies have gathered to see which of Genghis′ sons has the strength to be khan. The Mongol empire has been at peace for two years, but whoever survives will face the formidable might of their enemies, China′s Song dynasty.
In Empire of Silver, the great leader Tsubodai sweeps into the west: through Russia, over the Carpathian mountains and into Hungary. The Templar knights have been broken and there is no king or army to stop him reaching France. But at the moment of Tsubodai′s greatest triumph, as his furthest scouts reach the northern mountains of Italy, Tsubodai must make a decision that will change the course of history forever.
July 1st, 2010 § § permalink
Novels
1. Everything by Kevin Canty
In taut, exquisite prose, Kevin Canty explores the largest themes of life—work, love, death, destruction, rebirth—in the middle of the everyday. On the fifth of July, RL and June go down to the river with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red to commemorate Taylor’s fiftieth and last birthday. Taylor was RL’s boyhood friend and June’s husband, but after eleven years, June, a childless hospice worker, finally declares she’s “nobody’s widow anymore.” Anxious for a new beginning, June considers selling her beloved house. RL, a divorced empty-nester, faces a major change, too, when he agrees to lodge his college girlfriend, Betsy, while she undergoes chemotherapy. Caught between Betsy’s anguish and June’s hope, the cynical RL is brought face-to-face with his own sense of futility, and the longing to experience the kind of love that “knocks you down.” Set in Montana, reflecting the beauty of its landscape and the independence of its people, Everything is a shimmering novel about unexpected redemption by a writer of deep empathy and prodigious talents.
2. A Different Sky by Meira Chand
A dazzling novel telling the history of Singapore through the moving stories of three families whose lives become intertwined. Riding a trolley bus through Singapore’s crowded Chinatown, ten-year-old Howard and his mother find themselves in the midst of a communist riot. As Howard watches, a British policeman is wounded by the mob. But Howard finds that, instead of horror he feels satisfaction. It is 1927 and in a Singapore still under British colonial rule, opportunities open to local people are few. On the bus with Howard is a young Chinese girl whose fears and frustrations are of a different kind. Born into a wealthy Chinese dynasty, with a grandmother still suffering from bound feet, Mei Lan faces a life of feminine submission if she is unable to break free. In the years to come, the pair will be drawn together, but when war arrives, followed by the brutal Japanese occupation, their sense of self will be thrown into question, and their relationship tested to breaking point. In a novel of breathtaking scope, Meira Chand tells the story of three families caught up in the tumultuous history of Singapore, as it journeys along the long, hard path to independence. From the opportunist Raj Sherma, an Indian immigrant made good, to the young Communist Greta, fighting the imperialists in the 1950s, and from the mixed loyalties of the Eurasian and Chinese communities to the sufferings of British prisoners of war, A Different Sky paints a vivid panorama of Singapore society through the personal struggles and victories of characters the reader will find it hard to forget.
3. Kings of the Earth by Jon Clinch
Following up Finn, his much-heralded and prize-winning debut whose voice evoked “the mythic styles of his literary predecessors . . . William Faulkner, Toni Morrison, Cormac McCarthy and Edward P. Jones” (San Francisco Chronicle), Jon Clinch returns with Kings of the Earth, a powerful and haunting story of life, death, and family in rural America. The edge of civilization is closer than we think. It’s as close as a primitive farm on the margins of an upstate New York town, where the three Proctor brothers live together in a kind of crumbling stasis. They linger like creatures from an older, wilder, and far less forgiving world—until one of them dies in his sleep and the other two are suspected of murder. Told in a chorus of voices that span a generation, Kings of the Earth examines the bonds of family and blood, faith and suspicion, that link not just the brothers but their entire community. Vernon, the oldest of the Proctors, is reduced by work and illness to a shambling shadow of himself. Feebleminded Audie lingers by his side, needy and unknowable. And Creed, the youngest of the three and the only one to have seen anything of the world (courtesy of the U.S. Army), struggles with impulses and accusations beyond his understanding. We also meet Del Graham, a state trooper torn between his urge to understand the brothers and his desire for justice; Preston Hatch, a kindhearted and resourceful neighbor who’s spent his life protecting the three men from themselves; the brothers’ only sister, Donna, who managed to cut herself loose from the family but is then drawn back; and a host of other living, breathing characters whose voices emerge to shape this deeply intimate saga of the human condition at its limits.
4. Work Song by Ivan Doig
An award-winning and beloved novelist of the American West spins the further adventures of a favorite character, in one of his richest historical settings yet. “If America was a melting pot, Butte would be its boiling point,” observes Morrie Morgan, the itinerant teacher, walking encyclopedia, and inveterate charmer last seen leaving a one-room schoolhouse in Marias Coulee, the stage he stole in Ivan Doig’s 2006 The Whistling Season. A decade later, Morrie is back in Montana, as the beguiling narrator of Work Song. Lured like so many others by “the richest hill on earth,” Morrie steps off the train in Butte, copper-mining capital of the world, in its jittery heyday of 1919. But while riches elude Morrie, once again a colorful cast of local characters-and their dramas-seek him out: a look-alike, sound-alike pair of retired Welsh miners; a streak-of-lightning waif so skinny that he is dubbed Russian Famine; a pair of mining company goons; a comely landlady propitiously named Grace; and an eccentric boss at the public library, his whispered nickname a source of inexplicable terror. When Morrie crosses paths with a lively former student, now engaged to a fiery young union leader, he is caught up in the mounting clash between the iron-fisted mining company, radical “outside agitators,” and the beleaguered miners. And as tensions above ground and below reach the explosion point, Morrie finds a unique way to give a voice to those who truly need one.
5. Faithful Place by Tana French
The course of Frank Mackey’s life was set by one defining moment when he was nineteen. The moment his girlfriend, Rosie Daly, failed to turn up for their rendezvous in Faithful Place, failed to run away with him to London as they had planned. Frank never heard from her again. Twenty years on, Frank is still in Dublin, working as an undercover cop. He’s cut all ties with his dysfunctional family. Until his sister calls to say that Rosie’s suitcase has been found. Frank embarks on a journey into his past that demands he reevaluate everything he believes to be true.
6. The Cookbook Collector by Allegra Goodman
Heralded as “a modern day Jane Austen” by USA Today, National Book Award finalist and New York Times bestselling author Allegra Goodman has compelled and delighted hundreds of thousands of readers. Now, in her most ambitious work yet, Goodman weaves together the worlds of Silicon Valley and rare book collecting in a delicious novel about appetite, temptation, and fulfillment. Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way. Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.
7. The Radleys by Matt Haig
Meet the Radleys – Peter, Helen and their teenage children, Clara and Rowan, live in a typical suburban English town. They are an everyday family, averagely dysfunctional, averagely content. But, as their children have yet to find out, the Radleys have a devastating secret. In this moving, thrilling and extraordinary portrait of one unusual family, The Radleys asks what we grow into when we grow up, and explores what we gain – and lose – when we deny our appetites.
8. The Thieves of Manhattan by Adam Langer
Adam Langer, the wickedly funny author of the novels Crossing California, The Washington Story, and Ellington Boulevard, has written a book that is at once a comical literary caper, an exploration of authenticity and fakery, and a tribute to books. The Thieves of Manhattan is a novel that examines the lengths some writers will go to succeed. Aspiring writer, penniless barista, and self-described sullen mope, Ian Minot is perturbed by the literary success of his Romanian girlfriend. His annoyance turns to rage as he sees what he believes to be a fabricated memoir by two-bit thug and music business hanger-on, Blade Markham, shoot to the top of the bestseller list. Ian proves to be an easy mark for Jed Roth, a suave book editor with an ingenious and nefarious plan: if Ian revises a thriller Jed wrote years ago and gets it published as his own memoir, they’ll both have a platform from which to humiliate Blade Markham’s agent and publisher and Ian will finally be able to find a publisher for his own short fiction. As Ian rewrites and shops around his “memoir,” he finds himself facing a myriad of challenges, adversaries, and curiosities (on the page and off), including a hooligan librarian, a foul-mouthed manuscript appraiser, a members-only library and a priceless copy of the world’s first novel. As his elaborate hoax progresses, Ian finds himself wrapped up in the hypocrisies of a culture that values success above all and realizes the ways in which fact and fiction are inexorably intertwined. With cameos by real-life denizens of the publishing world and dozens of entertaining literary references, The Thieves of Manhattan is an original, hilarious and provocative novel.
9. The Four Fingers of Death by Rick Moody
Montese Crandall is a downtrodden writer whose rare collection of baseball cards won’t sustain him, financially or emotionally, through the grave illness of his wife. Luckily, he swindles himself a job churning out a novelization of the 2025 remake of a 1963 horror classic, “The Crawling Hand.” Crandall tells therein of the United States, in a bid to regain global eminence, launching at last its doomed manned mission to the desolation of Mars. Three space pods with nine Americans on board travel three months, expecting to spend three years as the planet’s first colonists. When a secret mission to retrieve a flesh-eating bacterium for use in bio-warfare is uncovered, mayhem ensues. Only a lonely human arm (missing its middle finger) returns to earth, crash-landing in the vast Sonoran Desert of Arizona. The arm may hold the secret to reanimation or it may simply be an infectious killing machine. In the ensuing days, it crawls through the heartbroken wasteland of a civilization at its breaking point, economically and culturally–a dystopia of lowlife, emigration from America, and laughable lifestyle alternatives. The Four Fingers of Death is a stunningly inventive, sometimes hilarious, monumental novel. It will delight admirers of comic masterpieces like Slaughterhouse-Five, The Crying of Lot 49, and Catch-22.
10. What Is Left the Daughter by Howard Norman
Howard Norman, widely regarded as one of this country’s finest novelists, returns to the mesmerizing fictional terrain of his major books—The Bird Artist, The Museum Guard, and The Haunting of L—in this erotically charged and morally complex story. Seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is suddenly orphaned when his parents, within hours of each other, jump off two different bridges—the result of their separate involvements with the same compelling neighbor, a Halifax switchboard operator and aspiring actress. The suicides cause Wyatt to move to small-town Middle Economy to live with his uncle, aunt, and ravishing cousin Tilda. Setting in motion the novel’s chain of life-altering passions and the wartime perfidy at its core is the arrival of the German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents—including a German U-boat’s sinking of the Nova Scotia–Newfoundland ferry Caribou, on which Aunt Constance Hillyer might or might not be traveling—lend intense narrative power to Norman’s uncannily layered story. Wyatt’s account of the astonishing—not least to him— events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It’s a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one. An utterly stirring novel. This is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.
11. The News Where You Are by Catherine O’Flynn
From the bestselling author of What Was Lost comes a spirited literary mystery about a television anchorman’s search for the truth about the disappearances that surround him. Frank Allcroft, a television news anchor in his hometown (where he reports on hard-hitting events, like the opening of canine gyms for overweight pets), is on the verge of a mid-life crisis. Beneath his famously corny on-screen persona, Frank is haunted by loss: the mysterious hit-and-run that killed his predecessor and friend, Phil, and the ongoing demolition of his architect father’s monumental postwar buildings. And then there are the things he can’t seem to lose, no matter how hard he tries: his home, for one, on the market for years; and the nagging sense that he will never quite be the son his mother—newly ensconced in an assisted-living center—wanted. As Frank uncovers the shocking truth behind Phil’s death, and comes to terms with his domineering father’s legacy, it is his beloved young daughter, Mo, who points him toward the future. Funny and touching, The News Where You Are is a moving exploration of what we do and don’t leave behind, proving once more that Catherine O’Flynn’s writing “shimmers with dark brilliance” (Chicago Tribune).
12. I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson
It is 1989 and all over Europe Communism is crumbling. Arvid Jansen, 37, is in the throes of a divorce. At the same time, his mother is diagnosed with cancer. Over a few intense autumn days, we follow Arvid as he struggles to find a new footing in his life, while all the established patterns around him are changing at staggering speed. As he attempts to negotiate the present, he casts his mind back to holidays on the beach with his brothers, to courtship, and to his early working life, when as a young Communist he abandoned his studies to work on a production line. I Curse the River of Time is an honest, heartbreaking yet humorous portrayal of a complicated mother-son relationship told in Petterson’s precise and beautiful prose.
13. The Misogynist by Piers Paul Read
Setting and character more than compensate for a routine plot in Cotterill’s sixth procedural to feature Laos’s irreverent 73-year-old national coroner, Dr. Siri Paiboun (after 2008′s Curse of the Pogo Stick). In March 1978, Siri gets into trouble after the authorities discover he’s been living above his wife’s noodle shop rather than in the housing assigned him by the inept and corrupt socialist government. Luckily, he’s soon called to examine the body of an attractive young woman, who was found strangled, sexually abused and tied to a tree outside the capital of Vientiane. The country’s backward communication methods, which even affect law enforcement, make identifying other similar crimes difficult, but Siri’s doggedness eventually uncovers other such cases. While some may find the light tone the author takes in presenting the brutal crimes off-putting, the glimpses of everyday life in Laos will appeal to those readers curious about a culture unfamiliar to most Americans. (Aug.)
14. Inheritance by Nicholas Shakespeare
Andy Larkham is late. He is due at the funeral of his favourite school teacher, who once told him: ‘It’s hard work being anyone.’ It’s especially hard for Andy – stuck in a dead-end job, terminally short of cash and with a fiancée who is about to ditch him. When the funeral leads to unexpected consequences, Andy has to ask himself: how far will he go to change his life? From early-twentieth-century Turkey to modern day London, Nicholas Shakespeare takes us on an extraordinary journey that explores the temptations of unexpected wealth, the secrets of damaged families and the price of being true to oneself. At once a love story spanning many decades and a tragedy of betrayal and missed opportunities, it is a romance for our times.
15. Two for Sorrow by Nicola Upson
London, 1903. Two women are hanged in Holloway Prison for killing babies. More than thirty years later, their crimes resurface with shocking consequences… When Josephine Tey sets out to write a novel about Amelia Sach and Annie Walters, the notorious Finchley baby farmers, she can have little idea that the research for her book will be needed to help solve a modern-day killing – the sadistic murder of a young seamstress, found dead in the Motley sisters’ studio, amid preparations for a star-studded charity gala. The girl’s death seems to be the result of a long-standing domestic feud, but Josephine’s friend, Inspector Archie Penrose, is unconvinced; and when a second young woman is involved in an horrific accident soon afterwards, the search begins for a vicious killer who will stop at nothing to keep the past where it belongs. Moving between the decadence and glamour of a private women’s club, the bleak surroundings of Holloway prison, and the deprivation of London’s slums, Two for Sorrow is a dark and unsettling exploration of the way in which the crimes of the past destroy those left behind – long after justice is done.
16. Red Hook Road by Ayelet Waldman
As lyrical as a sonata, Ayelet Waldman’s follow-up novel to Love and Other Impossible Pursuits explores the aftermath of a family tragedy. Set on the coast of Maine over the course of four summers, Red Hook Road tells the story of two families, the Tetherlys and the Copakens, and of the ways in which their lives are unraveled and stitched together by misfortune, by good intentions and failure, and by love and calamity. A marriage collapses under the strain of a daughter’s death; two bereaved siblings find comfort in one another; and an adopted young girl breathes new life into her family with her prodigious talent for the violin. As she writes with obvious affection for these unforgettable characters, Ayelet Waldman skillfully interweaves life’s finer pleasures–music and literature–with the more mundane joys of living. Within these resonant pages, a vase filled with wildflowers or a cold beer on a hot summer day serve as constant reminders…
First Novels
1. The Quickening by Michelle Hoover
Enidina Current and Mary Morrow live on neighboring farms in the flat, hard country of the upper Midwest during the early 1900s. This hardscrabble life comes easily to some, like Eddie, who has never wanted more than the land she works and the animals she raises on it with her husband, Frank. But for the deeply religious Mary, farming is an awkward living and at odds with her more cosmopolitan inclinations. Still, Mary creates a clean and orderly home life for her stormy husband, Jack, and her sons, while she adapts to the isolation of a rural town through the inspiration of a local preacher. She is the first to befriend Eddie in a relationship that will prove as rugged as the ground they walk on. Despite having little in common, Eddie and Mary need one another for survival and companionship. But as the Great Depression threatens, the delicate balance of their reliance on one another tips, pitting neighbor against neighbor, exposing the dark secrets they hide from one another, and triggering a series of disquieting events that threaten to unravel not only their friendship but their families as well. In this luminous and unforgettable debut, Michelle Hoover explores the polarization of the human soul in times of hardship and the instinctual drive for self-preservation by whatever means necessary. The Quickening stands as a novel of lyrical precision and historical consequence, reflecting the resilience and sacrifices required even now in our modern troubled times.
2. Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James
So were you glad, deep down? Were you glad to be rid of her? Your perfect sister? Were you secretly glad when she was killed? Following a horrific tragedy that leaves her once perfect family devastated, Katherine Patterson moves to a new city, starts at a new school, and looks forward to a new life of quiet anonymity. But when Katherine meets the gregarious and beautiful Alice Parrie her resolution to live a solitary life becomes difficult. Katherine is unable to resist the flattering attention that Alice pays her and is so charmed by Alice’s contagious enthusiasm that the two girls soon become firm friends. Alice’s joie de vivre is transformative; it helps Katherine forget her painful past and slowly, tentatively, Katherine allows herself to start enjoying life again. But being friends with Alice is complicated – and as Katherine gets to know her better she discovers that although Alice can be charming and generous she can also be selfish and egocentric. Sometimes, even, Alice is cruel. And when Katherine starts to wonder if Alice is really the kind of person she wants as a friend, she discovers something else about Alice – she doesn’t like being cast off. Shocking and utterly absorbing, Rebecca James’ strong narrative will grip readers from the very first page. “Beautiful Malice” has become a publishing phenomenon, sparking numerous auctions worldwide, selling to 27 countries, and launching a previously unknown writer into the centre of the international book market.
3. Saraswati Park by Anjali Joseph
A tremendous first novel from an exciting young author. Feted for its electric chaos, the city of Bombay also accommodates pockets of calm. In one such enclave, Mohan, a middle-aged letter writer – the last of a dying profession – sits under a banyan tree in Fort, furnishing missives for village migrants, disenchanted lovers, and when pickings are slim, filling in money order forms. But Mohan’s true passion is collecting second-hand books; he’s particularly attached to novels with marginal annotations. So when the pavement booksellers of Fort are summarily evicted, Mohan’s life starts to lose some of its animating lustre. At this tenuous moment Mohan – and his wife, Lakshmi – are joined in Saraswati Park, a suburban housing colony, by their nephew, Ashish, a diffident, sexually uncertain 19-year-old who has to repeat his final year in college. As Saraswati Park unfolds, the lives of each of the three characters are thrown into sharp relief by the comical frustrations of family life: annoying relatives, unspoken yearnings and unheard grievances. When Lakshmi loses her only brother, she leaves Bombay for a relative’s home to mourn not only the death of a sibling but also the vital force of her marriage. Ashish, meanwhile, embarks on an affair with a much richer boy in his college; it ends abruptly. Not long afterwards, he succumbs to the overtures of his English tutor, Narayan. As Mohan scribbles away in the sort of books he secretly hopes to write one day, he worries about whether his wife will return, what will become of Ashish’s life, and if he himself will ever find his own voice to write from the margins about the centre of which he will never be a part. Elliptical and enigmatic, but beautifully rendered and wonderfully involving, Saraswati Park is a book about love and loss and the noise in our heads – and how, in spite of everything, life, both lived and imagined, continues.
Stories
1. Memory Wall by Anthony Doerr
Featuring four new short stories and two big novellas, this book takes place on four continents and addresses issues from Alzheimer’s in South Africa to infertility in Wyoming to fishing for endangered sturgeon in Lithuania. The title novella won the National Magazine Award for Fiction, the second story has been called “a masterpiece of observed detail and intuitive poetic sense, like DeLillo at his best,” the fourth story won an O. Henry Prize, and the fifth story won a 2011 Pushcart Prize. Can a short story collection take you to more places and introduce you to more people than a novel?
Poetry
1. In the Flesh by Adam O’Riordan
Adam O’Riordan’s remarkable first collection traces the hidden paths from past to present, from the lost to the living, seeking familiarity in a world of ‘false trails and disappearing acts’. Here relatives, friends and other absences are coaxed into life and urgently pressed on the reader as they surface, in the flesh. Journeys begin with indelible detail and open into new and astonishing landscapes of the head and the heart. Whether in graceful elegies for the dead or the charged lyrics of love and desire, poems cross space as well as time, from the ‘blackened lung’ of Victorian Manchester and the fateful events of the 1913 Derby, to enter a modern era of satellites and late night searches for lost lovers. At the heart of the collection lies the sonnet sequence “Home”, a slant look at the lives of William and Dorothy Wordsworth, intersected by more recent, sometimes unsettling, personal portraits. Clear-eyed and sensuous, these are poems linked by a strong sense of place and presence, longing and loss; of history captured in an irrevocable moment. “In the Flesh” is a startling debut from one of our finest young British poets.
2. Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott
Jo Shapcott’s award-winning first three collections, gathered in Her Book: Poems 1988–1998, revealed her to be a writer of ingenuous, politically acute and provocative poetry, and rightly earned her a reputation as one of the most original and daring voices of her generation. In Of Mutability, Shapcott is found writing at her most memorable and bold. In a series of poems that explore the nature of change – in the body and the natural world, and in the shifting relationships between people – these poems look freshly but squarely at mortality. By turns grave and playful, arresting and witty, the poems in Of Mutability celebrate each waking moment as though it might be the last, and in so doing restore wonder to the to the smallest of encounters.
Nonfiction
1. The Art of Description: World Into Words by Mark Doty
“It sounds like a simple thing, to say what you see,” Mark Doty begins. “But try to find words for the shades of a mottled sassafras leaf, or the reflectivity of a bay on an August morning, or the very beginnings of desire stirring in the gaze of someone looking right into your eyes . . .” Doty finds refuge in the sensory experience found in poems by Blake, Whitman, Bishop, and others. The Art of Description is an invaluable book by one of America’s most revered writers and teachers.
2. Encounter by Milan Kundera
With the same dazzling mix of emotion and idea that characterizes his novels he illuminates the art and artists who remain important to him and whose work helps us better understand the world. An astute and brilliant reader of fiction, Kundera applies these same gifts to the reading of Francis Bacon’s paintings, Leos Janácek’s music, the films of Federico Fellini, as well as to the novels of Philip Roth, Dostoyevsky, and García Márquez, among others. He also takes up the challenge of restoring to their rightful place the work of major writers like Anatole France and Curzio Malaparte who have fallen into obscurity. Milan Kundera’s signature themes of memory and forgetting, the experience of exile, and his spirited championing of modernist art mark these essays. Art, he argues, is what we have to cleave to in the face of evil, against the expression of the darker side of human nature. Elegant, startlingly original and provocative, Encounter follows Kundera’s essay collections, The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed and The Curtain.
3. The Art of Recklessness: Poetry as Assertive Force and Contradiction by Dean Young
In Dean Young’s sprawling and subversive first book of prose on poetry, imagination swerves into primitivism and surrealism and finally toward empathy. How can recklessness guide the poet, the artist, and the reader into art, and how can it excite in us a sort of wild receptivity, beyond craft? “Poetry is not a discipline,” Young writes. “It is a hunger, a revolt, a drive, a mash note, a fright, a tantrum, a grief, a hoax, a debacle, an application, an affect . . .”
June 20th, 2010 § § permalink
Leading Across Boundaries offers a stimulating and highly accessible guide for leaders of nonprofit and governmental organizations who want to develop successful and lasting partnerships. Written by Russell Linden, an expert in the field of organizational change, this important resource shows how to make collaboration work in real-world situations. Linden explores the interpersonal and organizational forces that can inhibit collaboration and offers strategies for overcoming these often daunting challenges.
Business Intelligence by Rajiv Sabherwal and Irma Becerra-Fernandez
Business professionals who want to advance their careers need to have a strong understanding of how to utilize business intelligence. Business Intelligence provides a comprehensive introduction to the basic business and technical concepts they’ll need to know. It integrates case studies that demonstrate how to apply the material. Business professionals will also find suggested further readings that will develop their knowledge and help them succeed.
Covering cloud computing from what the business leader needs to know, this book describes how IT can nimbly ramp up revenue initiatives, positively impact business operations and costs, and how this allows business leaders to shed worry about technology so they can focus on their business. It also reveals the cloud’s effect on corporate organization structures, the evolution of traditional IT in the global economy, potential benefits and risks of cloud models and most importantly, how the IT function is being rethought by companies today who are making room for the coming tidal wave that is cloud computing.
SHIFT by Gary Keller
Markets shift, and you can too. Sometimes you’ll shift in response to a falling market, and other times you’ll shift to take your business to the next level. Both can transform your business and your life. You can change your thinking, your focus, your actions, and, ultimately, your results to get back in the game and ahead of the competition. The tactics that jump-start your business in tough times will power it forward in good times. No matter the market-shift SHIFT!
The Why of Work by David Ulrich and Wendy Ulrich
The Why of Work provides the frameworks and tools for leveraging every individual’s need for meaning in order to build a winning company culture and seize the competitive advantage. It helps leaders establish a vision that resonates not only within the minds but also within the hearts of those they lead.
Cultures and Organizations by Geert Hofstede, Gert Jan Hofstede and Michael Minkov
Since its original publication in 1991, Cultures and Organizations has been helping business leaders understand how people think as members of a group—which dramatically increases managers’ effectiveness leading and developing cross-cultural workforces. This groundbreaking work reveals the unexamined rules behind the thoughts and emotions of people of different cultures, ways in which cultures differ in the areas of collectivism/individualism, assertiveness/modesty, tolerance for ambiguity, and deferment of gratification as well as how organizational cultures differ from national cultures, and how they can be managed.
June 18th, 2010 § § permalink
Novels
At a loose end after college, Ellis Barstow drifts back to his home town and a strange profession: reconstructing fatal traffic accidents. He seems to take to the work immediately , and forms a bond with his boss and mentor, John Boggs, an intriguing character of few but telling words.
First, the unthinkable: a security breach at a secret U.S. government facility unleashes the monstrous product of a chilling military experiment. Then, the unspeakable: a night of chaos and carnage gives way to sunrise on a nation, and ultimately a world, forever altered. All that remains for the stunned survivors is the long fight ahead and a future ruled by fear—of darkness, of death, of a fate far worse.
Bennie Salazar, an aging punk rocker and record executive, and the beautiful Sasha, the troubled young woman he employs, never discover each other’s pasts, but the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other people whose paths intersect with theirs in the course of nearly fifty years. A Visit from the Goon Squad is about time, about survival, about our private terrors, and what happens when we fail to rebound.
Twenty-five years on from Less Than Zero, we pick up again with Clay. Less Than Zero chronicles the frightening consequences of unmitigated hedonism within the ranks of the ethically bereft youth of 80s Los Angeles. Now, twenty-five years later, Ellis returns to those same characters: to Clay and the band of infamous teenagers whose lives weave sporadically through his. But now, some years on, they face an even greater period of disaffection: their own middle age.
On the eve of the Revolutionary War, a young woman is caught between tradition and independence, family and conscience, loyalty and love, in this spellbinding novel from the author of The Widow’s War and Bound.
Rose Mae Lolley is a fierce and dirty girl, long-suppressed under flowery skirts and bow-trimmed ballet flats. As “Mrs. Ro Grandee” she’s trapped in a marriage that’s thick with love and sick with abuse.
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Life of Pi comes another ingenious, provocative, and mesmerizing new novel that explores big questions about humanity-about who we are and what we are capable of doing in order to survive.
On a stormy winter night, two strangers wait for a flight at the Salt Lake City airport. Ashley Knox is an attractive, successful writer, who is flying East for her much anticipated wedding. Dr. Ben Payne has just wrapped up a medical conference and is also eager to get back East for a slate of surgeries he has scheduled for the following day.
From the author of I Was Amelia Earhart comes this luminous love story that winds through several generations—told in Jane Mendelsohn’s distinctive, mesmerizing style.
Imagine an empire that has shut out the world for a century and a half. No one can leave, foreigners are excluded, their religions banned and their ideas deeply mistrusted. Yet a narrow window onto this nation-fortress still exists: an artificial walled island connected to a mainland port, and manned by a handful of European traders. And locked as the land-gate may be, it cannot prevent the meeting of minds – or hearts.
Zoe Nielsen was just like any other ten year old walking to school, not knowing that a chance encounter with Thurman Hayes would lead to her abduction and imprisonment in a converted nuclear bunker beneath a remote Arizona ranch house, 4,000 miles away from her home on an island off the coast of Newfoundland.
The author of the greatest American immigrant novel, Call It Sleep, returns with this posthumous work.
First Novels
In this delightful debut novel, a daughter of a quaint New England college town returns to confront her father’s legacy and the surprising pieces of life he has left behind.
On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from the Hudson River – taken from the world is the controversial lion of Philippine literature.
Novellas/Stories
A knockout new novella that perfectly captures a time and a place–New York in the ’80s–from iconic American writer Ann Beattie.
The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which a gang of men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.
Nonfiction
This is the story of one of the most gifted, charismatic and successful young literary agents in New York and his catastrophic fall into full-blown crack addiction: a collapse that would cost him his business, his home, many of his friends and – very nearly – his life.
Scruton argues that the tragedies and disasters of the history of the European continent have been the consequences of a false optimism and the fallacies that derive from it.
June 12th, 2010 § § permalink
With The Making of a Market Guru, you’ll gain an insightful look at Fisher’s prolific career over the years and discover the high-profile market calls he’s made so far in these monthly columns. At times engaging and timely, at others revealing and informative, this book is a sweeping look at a recent and eventful slice of stock market history. You’ll read about what’s changed, but you’ll be more amazed by what hasn’t. And you’ll see investing wisdom that still applies, now and for the foreseeable future, from a quarter-century of Fisher’s concise and witty market wisdom.
In The Stress Effect, leadership expert Henry L. Thompson reveals that stress is often the culprit behind leadership failure. When leaders’ stress levels become sufficiently elevated, their ability to call on both emotional and cognitive intelli-gences to make wise decisions is dramatically impaired. Experts have argued that increasing your emotional intelligence will help you cope with and manage stress. But Thompson clearly shows that stress actually blocks access to your emotional intelligence as well as your cognitive intelligence, two critical components in the decision-making process.
The recent economic crisis was not just caused by a failure of regulation or economic policy; it was a story of the failure of management in a fundamental sense—a deeply flawed approach to management that encouraged bankers to pursue opportunities without regard for their long-term consequences, and to put their own interests ahead of those of their employers and their shareholders.
Are you among the thousands of small businesses frustrated by market challenges, willing to change, but unsure of the right path for your business? Are you looking for the advice of an expert consultant, but unable to spend the money? Then The Retail Doctor’s Guide to Growing Your Business is for you.
God Goes to Work unlocks your “spiritual assets” so that you can achieve both business and personal success. Written by veteran entrepreneur, executive, and speaker Tom Zender, this groundbreaking book gives you practical steps you can implement immediately, starting you on a path towards more profitable interactions at all levels.
In Co-Opportunity, green business guru Grant shows how we, when we join forces through co-operative initiatives, can really make changes and work towards a better future. John uses cases and examples from around the world, from social networks to social ventures, Carrot Mobbing to the Carbon Disclosure Project, to show how a move to greater co-operation via what he calls Co-operative Networks can be a way forwards for all of us to increase the common well-being.
June 10th, 2010 § § permalink
Whether you’re a small-business owner, department manager, or individual investor or business student, How to Read a Balance Sheet provides the skills you need to make the wisest financial decisions possible. A critical but rarely used business tool for non-financial professionals, the balance sheet provides a snapshot of a company’s financial position at any single point in time.
Competitive Selling has what you need to out-maneuver, out-negotiate, and out-sell everyone who stands between you and a closed sale. It reveals exactly how today’s highest achievers win every battle and provides a blueprint for replicating this success.
Companies that successfully harness employees’ creativity and convert it to business innovation are leading the charge today. While this isn’t a brand-new concept, no one has explained how connections between people initially remote from each other generate innovation—until now. Riding the Waves of Innovation fills the void.
The Hyper-Social Organization includes self-analysis tools, bold new insights from interviews with industry leading corporations, and other powerful features combine in this definitive, maximum-impact guide to using social media as the ultimate competitive advantage.
Success Secrets of Social Media Marketing Superstars by Mitch Meyerson
In Success Secrets of Social Media Marketing Superstars, online marketing guru Mitch Meyerson presents entrepreneurs with an unmatched advantage into the world of social media as well as the secrets, strategies, tactics, and insights of more than 20 of today’s top social media experts. Handpicked to cover almost every aspect of social media marketing, experts, including Marie Smith, Fast Company’s “Pied Piper of Facebook,” and Joel Comm, author of Twitter Power, teach entrepreneurs how to create effective social media campaigns to exponentially expand their reach and grow their business.
April 20th, 2010 § § permalink
1. Necropolis: London and Its Dead By Catharine Arnold
Necropolis is a luminous, oddly beguiling account of how London has treated its dead, ranging from Roman burial rites to the horrors of the plague, from the founding of the great Victorian cemeteries to the more recent trends of collective grief and the cult of mourning, such as that surrounding the death of Princess Diana. Leaving no headstone unturned, Catherine Arnold unearths one of the great untold histories of the nation’s capitol. Skillfully blending history, architecture, archaeology, and anecdote, she also explores phenomena like bodysnatching, public executions, and the rise of the undertaking trade. Ghoulishly entertaining and full of fascinating nuggets of information, Necropolis is destined to become a classic work on the city.
2. Warsaw 1920: Lenin’s Failed Conquest of Europe By Adam Zamoyski
In 1920 the new Soviet state was a mess, following a brutal civil war, and the best way of ensuring its survival appeared to be to export the revolution to Germany, itself economically ruined by defeat in World War I and racked by internal political dissension. Between Russia and Germany lay Poland, a nation that had only just recovered its independence after more than a century of foreign oppression. But it was economically and militarily weak and its misguided offensive to liberate the Ukraine in the spring of 1920 laid it open to attack. Egged on by Trotsky, Lenin launched a massive westward advance under the flamboyant Marshal Tukhachevsky. All that Great Britain and France had fought for over four years now seemed at risk. By the middle of August the Russians were only a few kilometers from Warsaw, and Berlin was less than a week’s march away. Then the Miracle of the Vistula occurred: the Polish army led by Jozef Pilsudski regrouped and achieved one of the most decisive victories in military history. As a result, the Versailles peace settlement survived, and Lenin was forced to settle for Communism in one country. The battle for Warsaw bought Europe nearly two decades of peace, and communism remained a mainly Russian phenomenon, subsuming many of the autocratic and Byzantine characteristics of Russia’s tsarist tradition.
3. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West By Dee Brown
Eloquent, heartbreaking, and meticulously documented, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee follows the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the 19th century. Upon its publication in 1970, the book was universally lauded and became a cultural phenomenon that proved instrumental in transforming public perceptions of manifest destiny and the “winning” of the West. Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown’s work highlighted the voices of those American Indians who actually experienced the battles, massacres, and broken treaties. Here is their view of the events that ultimately left them demoralized and defeated, including: the Battle of Sand Creek; Red Cloud’s War; the Battle of the Little Bighorn; and, of course, the Wounded Knee Massacre.
4. A People’s History of the World By Chris Harman
The only comprehensive “bottom up” history of the world from the earliest human society to the twenty-first century. Chris Harman describes the shape and course of human history as a narrative of ordinary people forming and re-forming complex societies in pursuit of common human goals. Interacting with the forces of technological change as well as the impact of powerful individuals and revolutionary ideas, these societies have engendered events familiar to every schoolchild – from the empires of antiquity to the world wars of the twentieth century. In a bravura conclusion, Chris Harman exposes the reductive complacency of contemporary capitalism, and asks, in a world riven as never before by suffering and inequality, why we imagine that it can – or should – survive much longer. Ambitious, provocative and invigorating, A People’s History of the World delivers a vital corrective to traditional history, as well as a powerful sense of the deep currents of humanity which surge beneath the froth of government.
5. Empires of the Sea: the Final Battle for the Mediterranean, 1521-1580 By Roger Crowley
In 1521, Suleiman the Magnificent, ruler of the Ottoman Empire at the height of its power, despatched an invasion fleet to the island of Rhodes. This was the opening shot in an epic struggle between rival empires and faiths, and the ensuing battle for control of the Mediterranean would last sixty years. Empires of the Sea tells the story of this great contest. It is a fast-paced tale of spiralling intensity that ranges from Istanbul to the Gates of Gibraltar and features a cast of extraordinary characters: Barbarossa, the pirate who terrified Europe; the risk-taking Emperor Charles V; the Knights of St John, last survivors of the crusading spirit; and the brilliant Christian admiral Don Juan of Austria. Its brutal climax came between 1565 and 1571, six years that witnessed a fight to the finish, decided in a series of bloody set pieces: the epic siege of Malta; the battle for Cyprus; and the apocalyptic last-ditch defence of southern Europe at Lepanto one of the single most shocking days in world history that fixed the frontiers of the Mediterranean world we know today. Empires of the Sea follows Roger Crowley’s first book, the widely praised Constantinople: The Last Great Siege. It is page-turning narrative history at its best – a story of extraordinary colour and incident, rich in detail, full of surprises and backed by a wealth of eyewitness accounts.
6. Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1944-1945 By William I Hitchcock
“In this book, historian William I. Hitchcock surveys the European continent from D-Day to the final battles of the war and the first few months of the peace. Based on exhaustive research in five nations and dozens of archives, Hitchcock’s account shows that the liberation of Europe was both a military triumph and a human tragedy of epic proportions.” This multinational history of liberation brings to light the interactions of soldiers and civilians, the experiences of noncombatants, and the trauma of displacement and loss amid unprecedented destruction. This book recounts a surprising story, often jarring and uncomfortable, and one that has never been told with such richness and depth.
7. The Ascent of Money: a Financial History of the World By Niall Ferguson
Bread, cash, dosh, dough, loot: Call it what you like, it matters. To Christians, love of it is the root of all evil. To generals, it’s the sinews of war. To revolutionaries, it’s the chains of labour. But in “The Ascent of Money”, Niall Ferguson shows that finance is in fact the foundation of human progress. What’s more, he reveals financial history as the essential back-story behind all history. The evolution of credit and debt was as important as any technological innovation in the rise of civilization, from ancient Babylon to the silver mines of Bolivia.Banks provided the material basis for the splendours of the Italian Renaissance, while the bond market was the decisive factor in conflicts from the Seven Years’ War to the American Civil War. With the clarity and verve for which he is famed, Niall Ferguson explains why the origins of the French Revolution lie in a stock market bubble caused by a convicted Scots murderer. He shows how financial failure turned Argentina from the world’s sixth richest country into an inflation-ridden basket case – and how a financial revolution is propelling the world’s most populous country from poverty to power in a single generation. Yet the most important lesson of the financial history is that sooner or later every bubble bursts – sooner or later the bearish sellers outnumber the bullish buyers – sooner or later greed flips into fear. And that’s why, whether you’re scraping by or rolling in it, there’s never been a better time to understand the ascent of money.
8. Clean: An Unsanitised History of Washing By Katherine Ashenburg
Personal hygiene is something that only other people never seem to get quite right…Yet in this fascinating history of washing our bodies Katherine Ashenburg discovers that cleanliness exists above all in our minds: it is a cultural creation and a constant work in progress…Napoleon once wrote in a love letter to Josephine ‘I return to Paris in five days. Stop washing.’ To smell like a human was not always the misdemeanour it is today. Body odour was in fact an important factor of sex and courtship, considered by some to be a powerful aphrodisiac, as we see in Napoleon’s letter. Contrary to what we like to think, no bodily odour is innately disgusting, instead it is our noses which adapt to fit our beliefs.The Romans would bathe in company and daily. Later, Europe underwent four centuries without a bath. Was it the threat of diseases like syphilis that it feared in the soapy water? Religion links the act of washing with forgiveness and regeneration. We wash the bodies of dead loved ones because somehow we imagine it as the end of the old and the beginning of the new. The history of washing our bodies reveals much about our intimate selves, about how we want to be seen and what we desire most…In this gripping new history, Ashenburg searches for clean and dirty in plague-ridden streets, hospitals, battlefields and makeshift water closets. In the bizarre prescriptions of history’s doctors, the eccentricities of famous bathers and the hygienic peccadilloes of great writers we see the twists and turns that have brought us to our own, arbitrary notion of ‘clean’.
9. Pompeii: The Life of a Roman Town By Mary Beard
Pompeii explodes a number of myths – from the very date of the eruption, probably a few months later than usually thought; the hygiene of the baths which must have been hotbeds of germs; and the legendary number of brothels, most likely only one, to the massive death count which was probably less than ten per cent of the population. Street Life, Earning a Living: Baker, Banker and Garum Maker (who ran the city), The Pleasure of the Body: Food, Wine, Sex and Baths, these chapter headings give a surprising insight into the workings of a Roman town. At the Suburban Baths we go from communal bathing to hygiene to erotica. A fast-food joint on the Via dell’ Abbondanza introduces food and drink and diets and street life. These are just a few of the strands that make up an extraordinary and involving portrait of an ancient town, its life and its continuing re-discovery, by Britain’s leading classicist.
10. Henry: The Virtuous Prince By David Starkey
The first instalment of the highly anticipated biography of Henry VIII, written by one of the UK’s most popular, established and exciting historians. ‘Henry: Virtuous Prince’ is a radical re-evaluation of the monarchy’s most enduring icon. Henry VIII was Britain’s most powerful monarch, yet he was not born to rule. Thrust into the limelight after the sudden death of his elder brother, Prince Arthur, Henry ascended the throne in 1509, marking the beginning of a reign that altered the course of English history. In his youth Henry was highly intelligent, athletic and musically talented. He excelled in Latin and Mathematics and was an accomplished musician. On his accession to the throne, aged just seventeen, after the tumultuous rule of his father, he provided England with hope of a new beginning. Nobody could have foreseen how radical Henry’s rule would prove to be. Often overshadowed by the bloody saga of his six marriages, his reign has left a lasting legacy. An absolute monarch, Henry’s quest for fame was as obsessive as any modern celebrity. His fierce battles against Papal authority mark one of the most dramatic and defining moments in the history of Britain.Yet his early life was insecure. The Tudor regime was viewed by many as rule by usurpers and the dark shadows of the Wars of the Roses often threatened to tear England apart once more. The culmination of a lifetime’s research, David Starkey gives a radical and unforgettable portrait of the man behind the icon; the Renaissance prince turned tyrant, who continues to tower over history.
January 26th, 2010 § § permalink
Worst Case by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
Worst Case by James Patterson and Michael Ledwidge
Best case: survival
The son of one of New York’s wealthiest families is snatched off the street and held hostage. His parents can’t save him, because this kidnapper isn’t demanding money. Instead, he quizzes his prisoner on the price others pay for his life of luxury. In this exam, wrong answers are fatal.
Worst case: death
Detective Michael Bennett leads the investigation. With ten kids of his own, he can’t begin to understand what could lead someone to target anyone’s children. As another student disappears, one powerful family after another uses their leverage and connections to turn the heat up on the mayor, the press–anyone who will listen–to stop this killer. Their reach extends all the way to the FBI, who send their top Abduction Specialist, Agent Emily Parker. Bennett’s life–and love life–suddenly get even more complicated.
This case: Detective Michael Bennett is on it
Before Bennett has a chance to protest the FBI’s intrusion on his case, the mastermind changes his routine. His plan leads up to the most devastating demonstration yet–one that could bring cataclysmic devastation to every inch of New York. From the shocking first page to the last exhilarating scene, Worst Case is a non-stop thriller from “America’s #1 storyteller” (Forbes).
A Dark Matter by Peter Straub
The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body—and the shattered souls of all who were present.
Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub’s many ardent fans, and win him legions more.
The Girl Who Chased the Moon by Sarah Addison Allen
In her latest enchanting novel, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Addison Allen invites you to a quirky little Southern town with more magic than a full Carolina moon. Here two very different women discover how to find their place in the world—no matter how out of place they feel.
Emily Benedict came to Mullaby, North Carolina, hoping to solve at least some of the riddles surrounding her mother’s life. Such as, why did Dulcie Shelby leave her hometown so suddenly? And why did she vow never to return? But the moment Emily enters the house where her mother grew up and meets the grandfather she never knew—a reclusive, real-life gentle giant—she realizes that mysteries aren’t solved in Mullaby, they’re a way of life: Here are rooms where the wallpaper changes to suit your mood. Unexplained lights skip across the yard at midnight. And a neighbor bakes hope in the form of cakes.
Everyone in Mullaby adores Julia Winterson’s cakes—which is a good thing, because Julia can’t seem to stop baking them. She offers them to satisfy the town’s sweet tooth but also in the hope of rekindling the love she fears might be lost forever. Flour, eggs, milk, and sugar . . . Baking is the only language the proud but vulnerable Julia has to communicate what is truly in her heart. But is it enough to call back to her those she’s hurt in the past?
Can a hummingbird cake really bring back a lost love? Is there really a ghost dancing in Emily’s backyard? The answers are never what you expect. But in this town of lovable misfits, the unexpected fits right in.
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley
From Dagger Award–winning and internationally bestselling author Alan Bradley comes this utterly beguiling mystery starring one of fiction’s most remarkable sleuths: Flavia de Luce, a dangerously brilliant eleven-year-old with a passion for chemistry and a genius for solving murders. This time, Flavia finds herself untangling two deaths—separated by time but linked by the unlikeliest of threads.
Flavia thinks that her days of crime-solving in the bucolic English hamlet of Bishop’s Lacy are over—and then Rupert Porson has an unfortunate rendezvous with electricity. The beloved puppeteer has had his own strings sizzled, but who’d do such a thing and why? For Flavia, the questions are intriguing enough to make her put aside her chemistry experiments and schemes of vengeance against her insufferable big sisters. Astride Gladys, her trusty bicycle, Flavia sets out from the de Luces’ crumbling family mansion in search of Bishop’s Lacey’s deadliest secrets.
Does the madwoman who lives in Gibbet Wood know more than she’s letting on? What of the vicar’s odd ministrations to the catatonic woman in the dovecote? Then there’s a German pilot obsessed with the Brontë sisters, a reproachful spinster aunt, and even a box of poisoned chocolates. Most troubling of all is Porson’s assistant, the charming but erratic Nialla. All clues point toward a suspicious death years earlier and a case the local constables can’t solve—without Flavia’s help. But in getting so close to who’s secretly pulling the strings of this dance of death, has our precocious heroine finally gotten in wayover her head?
The Man from Beijing by Henning Mankell
The acclaimed author of the Kurt Wallander mysteries now gives us an electrifying stand-alone thriller that takes off into a sweeping international drama.
January 2006. In the Swedish hamlet of Hesjövallen, nineteen people have been massacred. The only clue is a red ribbon found at the scene. Judge Birgitta Roslin has particular reason to be shocked: her grandparents, the Andréns, are among the victims. The police insist that only a lunatic could have committed the murders. But when Birgitta discovers the diary of another Andrén – a gang master on the American transcontinental railway in the nineteenth century – that describes the cruel treatment of Chinese slave-workers, she is determined to uncover what she suspects is a more complicated truth.
The investigation leads to modern-day Beijing and its highest echelons of power, to Zimbabwe and Mozambique. But the narrative also takes us back 150 years, into a history that will ensnare Birgitta as she draws ever closer to solving the Hesjövallen murders.
December 27th, 2009 § § permalink
The best books of the year have two stories to tell: How we got into this economic crisis (and how we can prevent it from happening again) and how there’s a class of companies wreaking their own brand of havoc on their industries. Both offer fascinating tales of innovation, and you’ll learn everything from the secret underpinning some of the world’s fastest-growing companies to strategies and insights for building a more sustainable society in the wake of the recession. FastCompany
In Cheap We Trust by Lauren Weber
This history of frugality in America–why it’s been stigmatized and whether there’s a sustainable alternative to a purely consumption-based economy–is consistently surprising and clever. A very worthwhile indulgence.
Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg
No book better explains the rocket-ship growth of a service like Facebook or Twitter and how their rapid spread through the culture isn’t accidental but carefully baked into the product.
Create Your Own Economy by Tyler Cowen
At first glance, our time communicating with friends on Facebook, Googling, organizing photos on Flickr, and other social activity seems like a waste of time. But Cowen, an economist, provocatively argues that they are all forms of economic activity and we need to account for the internal production inside our minds.
Bright-Sided by Barbara Ehrenreich
The author of Nickel and Dimed gleefully pops the positive-thinking bubble that, she argues, has propped up everything from banks’ belief in complex derivatives to the pink-ribboned industry surrounding breast cancer. Amazingly, she’ll make you laugh, albeit ruefully, as she presents how society’s relentless focus on being upbeat has eroded our ability to ask–and heed–the kind of uncomfortable questions that could have fended off economic disaster.
Googled by Ken Auletta
Hardly a week goes by without someone describing Google as “the most important company in the history of the world.” Veteran media reporter and New Yorker writer Ken Auletta has the inside scoop on how Google reached such heights in such short order, and he explores its relentless ambitions and the impact that insatiability has across the rest of the media landscape.
Busted by Edmund Andrews
The “innovations” that led to the housing crisis and economic meltdown are made concrete–and all the more damning–when told through the personal story of the author, who bought too much house for all the wrong reasons and found himself on the wrong side of the American dream.
Change by Design by Tim Brown
The CEO of the uber design-firm Ideo takes us on a journey through the flexibility and power of design thinking that also serves as a primer on Ideo’s evolving larger ambitions. Brown convincingly depicts how design can be used to improve the every day utility of objects we might take for granted, but more important, how it can address larger societal issues such as health care, education, and economic opportunity in the developing world.
Adland by James Othmer
State-of-the-industry advertising manifestos are usually written by titans of the business, not former mid-level creatives who bounced around a number of large agencies. Yet this unlikely guide is the perfect one to take us through the apocalypse current roiling “Adland.” Othmer shows us what’s wrong about the old model by telling war stories with a jaundiced eye, and he then uses that same eye to look in on the cutting-edge, next-generation “don’t call us an ad agency” creative shops defining the future.
In-N-Out Burger by Stacy Perman
The West Coast burger chain with an international cult of fans is a paragon of simplicity, from its menu of burgers, fries, and shakes to how it slowly grows its business. Perman constructs the building blocks of In-N-Out’s success and presents them in stark relief to the rest of the fast-food industry, depicting how strong values-based businesses can trump their peers on their own terms. And as In-N-Out’s story also shows, abiding principles can even overcome the most lurid behind-the-scenes drama.
Strategy for Sustainability by Adam Werbach
The noted environmentalist lays out his green business ideas, formed by working with the likes of Sierra Club and Wal-Mart, for how corporations can be a force for good on the planet.
December 23rd, 2009 § § permalink
The Anthologist by Nicholson Baker
Novels
1. The Anthologist (Simon & Schuster, 2009) / Nicholson Baker
2. Strangers (Fig Tree, 2009) / Anita Brookner
3. The Children’s Book (Knopf/Doubleday, 2009) / A.S. Byatt
4. Await Your Reply (Ballantine/Random House, 2009) / Dan Chaon
5. Galore (Doubleday Canada, 2009) / Michael Crummey
6. The Bradshaw Variations (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Rachel Cusk
7. Solo (Fourth Estate, 2009) / Rana Dasgupta
8. The Great Lover (Sceptre, 2009) / Jill Dawson
9. Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi (Canongate, 2009) / Geoff Dyer
10. The Man in the Wooden Hat (Chatto & Windus, 2009) / Jane Gardam
11. Another Gulmohar Tree (Telegram Books, 2009) / Aamer Hussein
12. This Is How (Canongate, 2009) / M.J. Hyland
13. The Truth About Love (Virago, 2009) / Josephine Hart
14. Family Album (Fig Tree, 2009) / Penelope Lively
15. The Confessions of Edward Day (Nan A. Talese/Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) / Valerie Martin
16. Wolf Hall (Fourth Estate, 2009) / Hilary Mantel
17. The Glass Room (Little, Brown, 2009) / Simon Mawer
18. Let the Great World Spin (Bloomsbury, 2009) / Colum McCann
19. The Bishop’s Man (Random House Canada, 2009) / Linden MacIntyre
20. Under This Unbroken Sky (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) / Shandi Mitchell
21. A Gate at the Stairs (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Lorrie Moore
22. Stone’s Fall (Jonathan Cape/Spiegel & Grau, 2009) / Iain Pears
23. Lark and Termite (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) / Jayne Anne Phillips
24. The Mistress of Nothing (McArthur & Co., 2009) / Kate Pullinger
25. Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury, 2009) / Kamila Shamsie
26. Brooklyn (Viking, 2009) / Colm Toibin
27. Love and Summer (Viking, 2009) / William Trevor
28. Half Broke Horse: A True-Life Novel (Scribner, 2009) / Jeannette Walls
29. The Little Stranger (Virago, 2009) / Sarah Waters
An Equal Stillness by Francesca Kay
First Novels
30. An Equal Stillness (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) / Francesca Kay
31. The Golden Mean (Random House Canada, 2009) / Annabel Lyon
32. American Rust (Simon & Schuster, 2009) / Philipp Meyer
33. After the Fire, a Still Small Voice (Jonathan Cape, 2009) / Evie Wyld
Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga
Stories
34. Between the Assassinations (Free Press/Simon & Schuster, 2009) / Aravind Adiga
35. Love Begins in Winter (HarperCollins, 2009) / Simon Van Booy
36. An Elegy for Easterly (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Petina Gappah
37. A Good Fall (Pantheon/Knopf Doubleday, 2009) / Ha Jin
38. It’s Beginning to Hurt (Jonathan Cape/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) / James Lasdun
39. Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (Riverhead Books, 2009) / Maile Meloy
40. Too Much Happiness (Knopf Doubleday/Chatto & Windus, 2009) / Alice Munro
41. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders (W.W. Norton/Bloomsbury, 2009) / Daniyal Mueenuddin
42. My Father’s Tears and Other Stories (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) / John Updike
43. Once the Shore (Sarabande, 2009) / Paul Yoon
Poetry
44. The Striped World (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Emma Jones
45. Rain (Faber & Faber, 2009) / Don Paterson
Cheever: A Life Author by Blake Bailey
Nonfiction
46. Life Class: The Selected Memoirs of Diana Athill (Granta Books, 2009) / Diana Athill
47. Cheever: A Life (Alfred A. Knopf, 2009) / Blake Bailey
48. William Golding: The Man Who Wrote Lord of the Flies (Faber & Faber, 2009) / John Carey
49. Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (Bloomsbury, 2009) / William Dalrymple
50. The Music Room: A Memoir (W.W. Norton, 2009) / William Fiennes
51. Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (Little, Brown, 2009) / Brad Gooch
52. The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham (John Murray, 2009) / Selina Hastings
53. Saving God: Religion after Idolatry (Princeton University Press, 2009) / Mark Johnston
54. Lit: A Memoir (Harper, 2009) / Mary Karr
55. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years (Allen Lane, 2009) / Diarmaid MacCulloch
56. The Essays of Leonard Michaels (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2009) / Leonard Michaels
57. The Blue Hour: A Portrait of Jean Rhys (Bloomsbury, 2009) / Lilian Pizzichini
58. Raymond Carver: A Writer’s Life (Scribner, 2009) / Carol Sklenicka
59. Charles Dickens: A Life Defined by Writing (Yale University Press, 2009) / Michael Slater
60. Muriel Spark: The Biography (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2009) / Martin Stannard
The Book Addicts Top 60 Favourite Reads of 2009 is courtesy of Eric Forbes Book Addict’s Guide to Good Books
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