Newsweek's What to Read Now. And Why

Add to my lists | Print this list

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

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

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

  4. 5.
    ?
    The Bear
    by WIlliam Faulkner

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

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

  7. 8.

  8. 10.
    God: A Biography
    by Jack Miles

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

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

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

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

  13. 16.
    Leaves of Grass (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Walt Whitman

  14. 18.
    City: Rediscovering the Center
    by William H. Whyte

  15. 19.
    ?
    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
    by Philip K. Dick

  16. 20.
    Benjamin Franklin
    by Edmund S. Morgan

  17. 21.

  18. 22.
    Among the Thugs
    by Bill Buford

  19. 23.
    Brooklyn: A Novel

  20. 24.
    Frankenstein (Enriched Classics)
    by Mary Shelley

  21. 27.

  22. 28.
    Midnight's Children: A Novel
    by Salman Rushdie

  23. 29.
    American Prometheus
    by Kai Bird

  24. 30.
    The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
    by Daniel Mendelsohn

  25. 31.
    ?
    Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

  26. 33.
    Kim (Oxford World's Classics)
    by Rudyard Kipling

  27. 34.
    Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement
    by John Lewis

  28. 35.
    Line of Beauty

  29. 36.
    The Dark Is Rising (Dark Is Rising Sequence)
    by Susan Cooper

  30. 37.
    The Complete Persepolis
    by Marjane Satrapi

  31. 38.
    Underworld
    by Don DeLillo

  32. 39.
    Why Evolution Is True
    by Jerry A. Coyne

  33. 40.
    American Pastoral
    by Philip Roth

  34. 41.
    The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
    by Michael Pollan

  35. 42.
    Regeneration Trilogy Pb
    by Pat Barker

  36. 43.
    Senator Joe McCarthy
    by Richard H. Rovere

  37. 44.
    Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague
    by Geraldine Brooks

  38. 45.
    The Elegance of the Hedgehog
    by Muriel Barbery

  39. 46.
    Gone Tomorrow (Jack Reacher, No. 13)
    by Lee Child

  40. 47.
    ?
    Things Fall Apart (Norton Critical Editions)
    by Chinua Achebe

  41. 48.
    ?
    American Journeys
    by Don Watson

  42. 49.
    Cotton Comes to Harlem
    by Chester Himes

  43. 50.

This is a community list. You can contribute, edit, or help maintain it by adding it to your lists.
Created by jandrewgraber on Jul 02, 2009.
 

Comments


or
Login with Facebook