An Abridged Personal Canon of Recommended Books of 2006

Dear Friends -

My tastes run from treasure to trash. Some entries from the books of 2006:

Top recommendation:
Steve Leveen - The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life - This is a book about, of all things, reading. And I think that my enjoyment of books is a little richer by reading this.

Lawyer novels:
Paul Levine - Solomon vs. Lord
Paul Levine - The Deep Blue Alibi: A Solomon vs. Lord novel and
Paul Levine - Kill All the Lawyers: A Solomon vs. Lord novel - Irreverent, funny and unabashedly emotional - sorta like my self-image, but I know that I flatter myself.
John Grisham - The Broker - First Grisham I've read in YEARS, and almost as good as his early novels. (His later novels sucked, IMHO.)

Books about the justice system:
Steve Bogira - Courtroom 302: A Year Behind the Scenes in an American Criminal Courthouse
David Feige - Indefensible: One Lawyer’s Journey into the Inferno of American Justice
Both scary if you're a citizen who trusts our court systems. Remember the Law of Sausage? "Those who like sausage or respect the law should never watch either being made."

Contemporary fiction:
William Lashner - Falls the Shadow
Jeffrey Archer - False Impression - Archer is sanguine about his time in the penitentiary
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - The Book of the Dead
Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child - Still Life with Crows - These guys do a helluva read, and their characters are wonderful.

Obsessive subject:
Bill Quinn - How Wal-Mart is Destroying America
Charles Fishman - The Wal-Mart Effect: How the World’s Most Powerful Company Really Works - and How It’s Transforming the American Economy
John Dicker - The United States of WalMart
Anthony Bianco - The Bully of Bentonville: How the High Cost of Wal-Mart’s Everyday Low Prices is Hurting America
Wal-Mart is the big dog of the American economy. To understand the economy, it is helpful to understand them, and these books cover the spectrum of hate it to love it.

Difficult to categorize:
Michael S. Berman (with Laurence Shames) - Living Large - Non-fiction about a professional living as an obese person. Well, it's interesting to me.

History:
Richard Carwardine - Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power - So-so, but after you've read the one volume The Prairie Years and The War Years by Sandburg, there's not a hell of a lot more to say in a general bio. And if you read the six-volume version, the mind-numbing one, there is nothing else to add.
John F. Harris - The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House
Patricia O’Toole - When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House
H. W. Brands - Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times
Edward Steers, Jr. - Blood on the Moon: The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln
James L. Swanson - Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer - The best book on the Lincoln Assassination I've ever read. Highly recommend.
Edward H. Bonekemper, III - A Victor, Not a Butcher: Ulysses S. Grant’s Overlooked Military Genius - A refreshing viewpoint, well documented.
David McCullough - 1776 - Well, everyone else was reading it too, so . . .

Political:
James Carville & Paul Begala - Take It Back: Our Party, Our Future, Our Country
David Sirota - Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government - And How We Can Take It Back - The best progressive book of the year, guaranteed to piss you off.

Sci-fi:
Ben Bova - The Precipice, The Rock Rats, The Silent War - More than mind candy, a moving and believable "near" science-fiction series.

Westerns:
Zane Grey - Riders of the Purple Sage - Always worth re-reading. The denouement is thrilling no matter how many times you read it.
Chuck Norris - The Justice Riders - A surprising entree into the Western genre.

Mizpah.

Roger