Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

A sensation across Europe—millions of copies sold A spellbinding amalgam of murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue. It’s about the disappearance forty years ago of Harriet Vanger, a young scion of one of the wealthiest families in Sweden . . . and about her octogenarian uncle, determined to know the truth about what he believes was her murder. It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading... (more)

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court

by Jeffrey Toobin

Bestselling author Jeffrey Toobin takes you into the chambers of the most important—and secret—legal body in our country, the Supreme Court, and reveals the complex dynamic among the nine people who decide the law of the land. Just in time for the 2008 presidential election—where the future of the Court will be at stake—Toobin reveals an institution at a moment of transition, when decades of conservative disgust... (more)

State of Fear

by Michael Crichton

In Tokyo, in Los Angeles, in Antarctica, in the Solomon Islands . . . an intelligence agent races to put all the pieces together to prevent a global catastrophe.

The Art of War

by Sun Tzu

The Art of War is one of the oldest books on military strategy in the world. It is also one of the most famous studies of strategy and has had a huge influence on Eastern and Western military planning, business tactics, and beyond. First translated into a European language in 1782 by French Jesuit Jean Joseph Marie Amiot, and had possibly influenced Napoleon, and even the planning of Operation Desert Storm.... (more)

Gulliver's Travels

by Jonathan Swift

This new edition of Swift's satiric classic is based on the 1726 text—the edition textual scholars now consider the most authoritative. It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. "Contexts" collects materials that influenced Swift's writing of the novel, as well as documents that suggest its initial reception, including Swift's correspondence, Alexander Pope's poems on Gulliver's Travels , and... (more)

What's The Matter With Kansas?

How Conservatives Won the Heart of America

by Thomas Frank

One of “our most insightful social observers”* cracks the great political mystery of our time: how conservatism, once a marker of class privilege, became the creed of millions of ordinary Americans With his acclaimed wit and acuity, Thomas Frank turns his eye on what he calls the “thirty-year backlash”—the populist revolt against a supposedly liberal establishment. The high point of that backlash is the... (more)

Liberal Fascism

The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

by Jonah Goldberg

“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst? Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing... (more)

Fast Food Nation

by Eric Schlosser

Fast food has hastened the malling of our landscape, widened the chasm between rich and poor, fueled an epidemic of obesity, and propelled American cultural imperialism abroad. That's a lengthy list of charges, but Eric Schlosser makes them stick with an artful mix of first-rate reportage, wry wit, and careful reasoning. Schlosser's myth-shattering survey stretches from California's subdivisions, where the... (more)

The Master and Margarita

by Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov

This title is translated by Michael Glenny. The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow accompanied by various demons, including a naked girl and a huge black cat. When he leaves, the asylums are full and the forces of law and order in disarray. Only the Master, a man devoted to truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves, can resist the devil's onslaught.

No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs

by Naomi Klein

With a new Afterword to the 2002 edition. No Logo employs journalistic savvy and personal testament to detail the insidious practices and far-reaching effects of corporate marketing—and the powerful potential of a growing activist sect that will surely alter the course of the 21st century. First published before the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, this is an infuriating, inspiring, and altogether... (more)

Snow

by Orhan Pamuk

Dread, yearning, identity, intrigue, the lethal chemistry between secular doubt and Islamic fanaticism–these are the elements that Orhan Pamuk anneals in this masterful, disquieting novel. An exiled poet named Ka returns to Turkey and travels to the forlorn city of Kars. His ostensible purpose is to report on a wave of suicides among religious girls forbidden to wear their head-scarves. But Ka is also drawn by his... (more)

Arguing with Idiots

How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government

by Glenn Beck

#1 New York Times bestselling author and radio and tv host Glenn Beck's ultimate handbook for tackling and winning life's most important arguments.

Graceling: Book 1

Graceling

by Kristin Cashore

Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight—she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug. When she first meets Prince Po, Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to... (more)

The Crucible

by Arthur Miller

Based on historical people and real events, Arthur Miller's play uses the destructive power of socially sanctioned violence unleashed by the rumors of witchcraft as a powerful parable about McCarthyism. Introduction by Christopher Bigsby

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

by James W. Loewen

Winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship Americans have lost touch with their history, and in this thought-provoking book, Professor James Loewen shows why. After surveying twelve leading high school American history texts, he has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an... (more)

Against All Enemies

Inside America's War on Terror

by Richard A. Clarke

THE EXPLOSIVE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER With all-new excerpts from Richard Clarke's dramatic public testimony, and revealing corroboration from The 9/11 Commission Report From the 9/11 Commission Report: "On the day of the meeting <September 4, 2001>, Clarke sent Rice an impassioned personal note. He criticized U.S. counterterrorism efforts past and present. The 'real question' before the principals,... (more)

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72

by Hunter S. Thompson

With the same drug-addled alacrity and jaundiced wit that made Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas a hilarious hit, Hunter S. Thompson turns his savage eye and gonzo heart to the repellent and seductive race for President.He deconstructs the 1972 campaigns of idealist George McGovern and political hack Richard Nixon, ending up with a political vision that is eerily prophetic.A classic!

A Man without a Country

by Kurt Vonnegut

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “<This> may be as close as Vonnegut ever comes to a memoir.” – Los Angeles Times “Like <that of> his literary ancestor Mark Twain, <Kurt Vonnegut’s> crankiness is good-humored and sharp-witted. . . . <Reading A Man Without a Country is> like sitting down on the couch for a long chat with an old friend.” –The New York Times Book Review In a volume that is... (more)

Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot

by Al Franken

Move over P.J. O'Rourke! From Al Franken, America's premier liberal satirist, comes a hilarious homage to the wonderful, awful, and always absurd American political process that skewers a whole new crop of presidential hopefuls--just in time for the 1996 presidential election. "(Franken is) responsible in part for some of the most brilliant political satire of our time".--John Podhoretz, New York Post.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

by Milan Kundera, Michael Henry Heim

A young woman in love with a man torn between his love for her and his incorrigible womanizing; one of his mistresses and her humbly faithful lover -- these are the two couples whose story is told in this masterful novel. In a world in which lives are shaped by irrevocable choices and by fortuitous events, a world in which everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance, its weight. Hence, we... (more)

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