Best of the Year: Non-fiction (non-religious)

I have three honorable mentions, plus a special mention of the book Culture Shock: Ukraine, which is an excellent book, ad possibly an intriguing read for anyone, but I doubt anyone would read it unless they are planning a trip to Ukraine.

Honorable mentions:

From Beirut to Jerusalem: Thomas L Friedman
Moab is my Washpot, Stephen Fry
No Shirt, No Shoes . . . No Problem!, Jeff Foxworthy


10 Roughin It, Mark Twain--a truly unique first-hand account of the Nevada silver rush. While Twain's refusal to stick closely to the facts makes it difficult to assess things with any precision, his description of the violent and lawless life of the mining community is something you really won't see elsewhere. Would go higher on the list except that the last hundred pages about his trips to California and Hawaii really need to be ripped out of the book.

9 Red Lobster. White Trash and the Blue Lagoon, Joe Queenan--I think I read most of this one out loud to my wife. Good if you need cheering up and want to feel superior to the masses at the same time.

8 The Armchair Economist, Stephen Landsburg--I think this would be a great text to get people interested in what economists do. Explores a number of oddball questions from an economists point of view. Also demonstrates, IMHO, the type of ethics that seems commensurate with economic analysis of everything, but that discussion will have to wait for another day.

7 The Pillars of Hercules, Paul Theroux--Theroux's diary of his trip through (almost) all the countries of the Mediterranean. I suppose the big surprise was that the only realy interesting places he descibed were Turkey and Syria. I suppose that Algeria and Libya are also intersting, but those were the ones he missed. Most of the med is apparently a cultural wasteland.

6 Burden of Dreams, Catherine Wanner--An academic study of post-independence Ukrainian culture. I suppose I was only interested since I was planning to travel there and my ignorance was pretty thorough, but I think the book is laudable on its own merits. Also, I bet you (unless your last name is Bush) don't know anything about the subject either. The uneasy relationship between Ukraine and Russia is one of the themes and will be something to watch as the future of all the former soviet lands unfolds.

5 To Resist or Surrender, Paul Tournier--Only two things, as far as I can tell, have prevented Paul Tournier from being read as widely as Chesterton or Lewis: the fact that he wasn't English (he was Swiss and wrote in French), and the fact that his theology was somewhat unorthodox (he was a universalist). Tournier was a doctor in general practice and was constantly learning things about the human psyche fom his work. This particular book is short and narrowly focussed on the question of what to do when dealing with oppressive situations and people. Should one stand up and fight about it, or should one just let things be and take it? Under what circumstances should one path be chosen rather than the other? There's lots to think about i the way he answers these questions.

4 City Life, Witold Rybczynski--This one could fairly be summarized by the question, "Why don't american cities look like european cities?" Rybczynski traces the origins of the american city and its planners and compares the ideas of how cities are conceived in the western world.

3 Gangs of New York, Herbert Asbury--If you liked any part of the movie (go see it now if you haven't yet), you'll like this book, unless you are squeamish or you demand that a book have a plot. There is no overarching story here, merely anecdotes of various lengths about 19th century Manhattan. The level of violence in New York in this period defies description, at least by me. Mr. Asbury, though, does a fine job. The book was researched and published back in the '20's, so you'll see some, umm, interesting attitudes on display, but just consider them another part of the history.

2 An Anthropologist on Mars, Oliver Sacks--I didn't want to rate Sacks so highly, since he's a wacko-liberal (not just the ordinary kind), but he's an extremely gifted writer. I enjoy learning about how varied human experience can be, and Sacks certainly describes some of the most varied! The chapters each focus on one "abnormal psychology" case, some stemming from head traumas, some genetic conditions, one apparently brought on by drug abuse. The "cases" are of course people in thier own right, and they all have their own stories as well. I still find myself thinking about things I learned from this book quite often. Also, th main character from Motherless Brooklyn seems to be drawn almost straight from this book, so if you are planning to read Lethem, read him first before Sacks. You don't want to read the sources for the fiction you read, trust me.

1 King Leopolds Ghost, Adam Hochschild --Some of you could probably enlighten me further in this regard, but this book was really the first book that actually made me feel ashamed to be a white guy. I think it's possible that we ignore african history for some of the same reasons Germans prefer not to talk about WWII. There is simply no easy way to get rid of the guilt feelings. That being said, the big villain if this piece is of course the title character. I won't tell you why that is, since you are going to read the book anyway (right?), but I'll tell you that when you do so, you'll also learn the strange story of Henry Morton Stanley ("Dr Livingstone, I presume?"), as well as those of a couple of heroic, black, southern presbyterian missionaries. Need I say more?