A Stroll with William James Jacques Barzun

This is a really great book—it’s not quite a biography, and not all the way about philosophy. Barzun frames it as the exploration of “an intellectual debt.” James is a fascinating subject and, as Barzun tells the story of his life and work, he carefully points out its modern implications. They are both excellent writers, so the charming directness of James’s quotes and the curmudgeonly Barzun’s commentary lead to a kind of banter between them. This is a stroll worth taking.

American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer Kai Bird & Martin Sherwin

A worthy biography of the atom bomb, its “father,” and the culture that produced them. Oppenheimer is a great subject.

As If an Enemy’s Country: The British Occupation of Boston and the Origins of Revolution Richard Archer

A detailed & scholarly but well-told narrative history of how Boston was occupied, radicalized and pushed to the brink of war between 1765 and 1774.

The Baroque Cycle Neal Stephenson

A three-book epic series about science, adventure, and war in the 17th century. My favorite historical fiction so far.

Beautiful Evidence Edward Tufte

Like Tufte’s other books, Beautiful Evidence is a fascinating, detailed, and droolworthy artifact in its own right. The text of the book is comparatively disjointed and includes a chapter on sculpture, but Tufte’s diatribe against PowerPoint is high nerdcraft.

Chronicles Vol. 1 Bob Dylan

One of the best memoirs I’ve ever read, an impressionistic and rambling tour through Bob Dylan’s world in his inimitable voice—which is, like his music, partly a mashup of existing literary traditions and influences. The character descriptions are endlessly entertaining and Dylan reveals a lot of himself, or of who he wants to be.

I can’t wait to see what he comes up with for Vol. 2.

Cloud Atlas David Mitchell

An inventive and complex novel, or rather six novels nested inside one, like Russian matryoshka dolls. They range from historical fiction to murder mystery to science fiction, with threads of previous and future stories tucked into the text. All of them are entertaining and written brilliantly, and the book’s only flaw is a postmodern and perhaps deliberate failure to establish the relationship of the different stories to each other. Minor consistency issues don’t take away from the excitement of reading this and putting the pieces together.

Common as Air: Revolution, Art, and Ownership Lewis Hyde

This book is about copyright law and where it goes wrong in dismantling traditional European ideas of “the commons,” a delightful read. It checks so many boxes on the list of topics I like to read about: the American Revolution, the follies of the MPAA and RIAA, Bob Dylan’s creative process, the justifications for intellectual property. Highly recommended for a wide variety of people.

Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families J. Anthony Lukas

Epic journalism and twentieth century history. A history of Boston politics, race and class relations provides the background for a gripping examination of what happened when a judge ordered the city’s schools to integrate in the 1970s. Lukas tells the complex and ugly story of that decade as experienced by the McGoffs, Twymons, and Divers of Boston. Like The Wire, this is a masterful unraveling of a city’s identity and the consequences of urban policy.

Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky

This is an epic psychological novel, the story of a murderer who can’t decide whether to give himself up. I find the plot kind of hard to describe, and the little things about 1860s Russian society (e.g., why are people always “flying at” each other?) can confuse you. But the core of the book is Raskolnikov, and his struggle to (a) realize he is like everyone else, subject to collective ideas of morality and punishment, (b) cope with the shame and dread of what he’s done, and (c) keep from getting caught despite his suspicious and public disintegration. The detective character is also great.

The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935 James D. Anderson

Anderson shows how Northern philanthropists, Southern governments, and freed people worked together to establish a woefully inadequate system of public education in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Booker T. Washington and the Hampton/Tuskegee system of “industrial education” are heavily criticized, and rightly so. This isn’t the most exciting read ever, but I learned a lot from it. One thing missing is the extent to which local white-supremacy terrorism kept schools from operating successfully, a topic other histories dwell on. Anderson seems more concerned with explaining how good intentions translate into broken institutions.

Faces of Revolution: Personalities & Themes in the Struggle for American Independence Bernard Bailyn

Portraits of some well-known and lesser-known figures of the American Revolution. The two best subjects, in my opinion, are John Adams (as emotional cripple) and Harbottle Dorr (the obsessive newspaper-annotator.)

For Whom The Bell Tolls Ernest Hemingway

Thrilling and sad novel about an American in the Spanish Civil War, fighting against the fascist army with republican guerrillas in the mountains. It’s very well written, as you might expect, and the way Hemingway transliterates Spanish conversation to English is both funny and profound. On top of the language, it’s a classic adventure story.

From Resistance to Revolution: Colonial Radicals and the Development of American Opposition to Britain, 1765–1776 Pauline Maier

A classic study of political mobilization in the colonial period. Maier situates the people who became American rebels in a long and fascinating history of incremental radicalization. This book inspired a lot of my undergraduate work on the Revolutionary period.

God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West Todd Kerstetter

Kerstetter traces three unusual religious movements of the American West—the Indians’ Ghost Dance religion, Mormonism, and the Branch Davidians—and explains what happened when each one went further in its beliefs and practices than the federal government thought it could allow. The Mormons were driven out to Utah in a series of guerilla wars, the Paiute and Sioux were massacred by the U.S. Army, and the Branch Davidians died in an FBI shootout in Waco, Texas. The links between these movements and the backlashes against them are not immediately obvious, but Kerstetter makes a compelling case that the free practice of religion in America is heavily limited by the national cultural consensus of the time.

Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Role of New York’s Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution Jesse Lemisch

A really smart, really convincing New Left history showing that ordinary laborers in New York (and elsewhere) had a lot to do with starting the American Revolution. Lemisch was one of the early captains of the “people’s history” movement that helped Americans focus on the historical significance of people who weren’t necessarily rich, white, male, or in the habit of saving their letters—and this book, Lemisch’s 1962 Ph.D. dissertation from Yale, is everything that movement still strives to produce.

The Land Where The Blues Began Alan Lomax

Alan Lomax is one of the people who, beginning around the time of the New Deal, ventured into the rural South to record and catalogue black music. In this book, he tells stories about the people and styles he found, as well as about the historical foundations of blues culture. I was especially impressed by the parts about forced prison labor & sharecropping practices as a source of blues material.

The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America David Henkin

A really interesting look at not just how the antebellum postal system worked, but how it affected American urban culture, and what mail meant to people.

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design Bill Buxton

A modern classic from the old school of interaction design. Buxton is now at Microsoft Research, and his delightful book is about how sketching and free-form innovation have improved everything from mountain bikes to MP3 players.

The Social Life of Information Paul Duguid and John Seely Brown

A dated (1999) but insightful and entertaining warning about the dangers of technological utopianism; a reminder that information has a life in the world that can surprise and outwit its developers. Most of this book holds up well today; search engines for example have exceeded Duguid & Brown’s expectations but many things have not.

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market Walter Johnson

A powerful and original account of the internal slave trade in the antebellum period, demonstrating that slaves had some measure of agency and power in the marketplace that distributed them across the country.

The Stamp Act Crisis: Prologue to Revolution Edmund & Helen Morgan

The classic history of the Stamp Act, with a thorough treatment of the English point of view—something often lacking in similar books. The Morgans do a great job of telling their story, and this is one of my favorite history books.

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 Daniel Walker Howe

A “magisterial” but still really interesting overview of the antebellum U.S. through a variety of lenses. My favorite topics covered: the postal service, voluntary associations & reform movements, and Indian affairs. Howe is also a big fan of John Quincy Adams, which is nice. Recommended, but it’s definitely a thick read.

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation Steven B. Johnson

Musings on the environmental conditions that spawn innovation. As Johnson says in the intro, this is kind of a culmination of his other books on urban spaces, science, and social networks. Definitely an “airport book” that skims lightly over a dozen topics, but insightful and fun and a good case for city living.

Why I Write George Orwell

A set of wise and quotable essays on English.