Newsweek's What to Read Now. And Why

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We know it’s insane. We know people will ask why on earth we think that an 1875 British satirical novel is the book you need to read right now—or, for that matter, why it even made the cut. The fact is, no one needs another best-of list telling you how great The Great Gatsby is. What we do need, in a world with precious little time to read (and think), is to know which books—new or old, fiction or nonfiction—open a window on the times we live in, whether they deal directly with the issues of today or simply help us see ourselves in new and surprising ways. Which is why we’d like you to sit down with Anthony Trollope, and these 49 other remarkably trenchant voices.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/204300/page/1

  1. 1.
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    The Way We Live Now (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Anthony Trollope

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  2. 2.
    The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11
    by Wright Lawrence

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  3. 4.
    The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google
    by Nicholas Carr

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  4. 5.
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    The Bear
    by WIlliam Faulkner

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  5. 6.
    Winchell: Gossip, Power, and the Culture of Celebrity
    by Neal Gabler

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  6. 7.
    Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
    by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc

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  7. 8.

  8. 10.
    God: A Biography
    by Jack Miles

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  9. 11.
    The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture
    by Wendell Berry

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  10. 12.
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    A Good Man Is Hard To Find And Other Stories
    by Flannery O'Conner

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  11. 13.
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    Underground (Vintage International)
    by Murakami Haruki

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  12. 14.
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  13. 15.
    Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
    by Dave Hickey

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  14. 16.
    Leaves of Grass (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

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  15. 18.
    City: Rediscovering the Center
    by William H. Whyte

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  16. 19.
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    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    by Philip K. Dick

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  17. 20.
    Benjamin Franklin
    by Edmund S. Morgan

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  18. 21.

  19. 22.
    Among the Thugs
    by Bill Buford

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  20. 23.
    Brooklyn: A Novel

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  21. 24.
    Frankenstein (Enriched Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

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  22. 27.

  23. 28.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

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  24. 29.
    American Prometheus
    by Kai Bird

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  25. 30.
    The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
    by Daniel Mendelsohn

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  26. 31.
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    Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

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  27. 33.
    Kim (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Rudyard Kipling

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  28. 34.
    Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
    by John Lewis

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  29. 35.
    The Line of Beauty
    by Alan Hollinghurst

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  30. 36.
    The Dark Is Rising
    by Susan Cooper

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  31. 37.
    The Complete Persepolis: Now a Major Motion Picture
    by Marjane Satrapi

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  32. 38.
    Underworld
    by Don DeLillo

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  33. 39.
    Why Evolution Is True
    by Jerry A. Coyne

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  34. 40.
    American Pastoral
    by Philip Roth

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  35. 41.
    The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
    by Michael Pollan

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  36. 42.
    Regeneration Trilogy
    by Pat Barker

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  37. 43.
    Senator Joe McCarthy
    by Richard H. Rovere

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  38. 44.
    Year of Wonders
    by Geraldine Brooks

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  39. 45.
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    by Muriel Barbery

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  40. 46.
    Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13)
    by Lee Child

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  41. 47.
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    Things Fall Apart (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Chinua Achebe

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  42. 48.
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    American Journeys
    by Don Watson

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  43. 49.
    Cotton Comes to Harlem
    by Chester Himes

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  44. 50.

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Created by jandrewgraber on Jul 02, 2009.
 

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