Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

If I die in a combat zone;: Box me up and ship me home

If I die in a combat zone;: Box me up and ship me home

by Tim O'Brien

Before writing his award-winning Going After Cacciato , Tim O'Brien gave us this intensely personal account of his year as a foot soldier in Vietnam. The author takes us with him to experience combat from behind an infantryman's rifle, to walk the minefields of My Lai, to crawl into the ghostly tunnels, and to explore the ambiguities of manhood and morality in a war gone terribly wrong. Beautifully written and... (more)

In the Wake: A Novel

by Per Petterson

When Arvid Jansen comes-to one morning in the doorway of a bookstore in Oslo, Norway, his grief comes back to him in devastating flashes: His parents and his brothers are dead, he has lost touch with his wife and daughters, abandoned his career as a writer and bookseller. His old life is gone. In the Wake is the story of Arvid's first steps toward resuming that life, of his gradual confrontation with... (more)

Between You and Me : A Memoir

by Mike Wallace

Mike Wallace. His very name conjures up a certain kind of journalism -- smart, informed, intense, and groundbreaking. Who else has wrangled sit-downs with his roster of world leaders and criminals, celebrities, and underdogs, heroes and scoundrels? Organized by interview subject -- including Presidents, Icons and Artists, Con Men and Other Crooks, The General and the Whistle-Blower -- Between You and Me , now... (more)

Those Who Save Us

by Jenna Blum

For fifty years, Anna Schlemmer has refused to talk about her life in Germany during World War II. Her daughter, Trudy, was only three when she and her mother were liberated by an American soldier and went to live with him in Minnesota. Trudy's sole evidence of the past is an old photograph: a family portrait showing Anna, Trudy, and a Nazi officer, the Obersturmfuhrer of Buchenwald. Driven by the guilt of her... (more)

Plum Wine

by Angela Davis-Gardner

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy—one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi’s... (more)

Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State

Living on the Edge of the World: New Jersey Writers Take On the Garden State

Mobsters. Big hair. The smelly Turnpike. The poor cousin of its glittering neighbor Manhattan. Could that really be all there is to New Jersey? In Living on the Edge of the World, the best and brightest young writers from the much maligned state answer back with edgy, irreverent pieces of nonfiction paying tribute to New Jersey's unique place in the cultural consciousness. Like a drive along the Garden State... (more)

Standing Bear Is A Person: The True Story of a Native American's Quest for Justice

Standing Bear Is A Person: The True Story of a Native American's Quest for Justice

by Stephen Dando-Collins

The only book about the landmark trial of the first Native American to be recognized legally as a person-"an eloquent reminder of a fight well fought."- Kirkus In a federal courtroom in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1879, Standing Bear, clan chief of the small and peaceful Ponca tribe, was in court demanding the same basic right that white Americans enjoyed-the right to be recognized legally as a human being. The... (more)

Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters

Happy Birthday or Whatever: Track Suits, Kim Chee, and Other Family Disasters

by Annie Choi

Meet Annie Choi. She fears cable cars and refuses to eat anything that casts a shadow. Her brother thinks chicken is a vegetable. Her father occasionally starts fires at work. Her mother collects Jesus trading cards and wears plaid like it's a job. No matter how hard Annie and her family try to understand one another, they often come up hilariously short. But in the midst of a family crisis, Annie comes to... (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)

Unaccustomed Earth

by Jhumpa Lahiri

From the internationally best-selling, Pulitzer Prize–winning author, a superbly crafted new work of fiction: eight stories—longer and more emotionally complex than any she has yet written—that take us from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they enter the lives of sisters and brothers, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, friends and lovers. In the stunning title story, Ruma, a young mother in a... (more)

Swallow the Ocean: A Memoir

by Laura Flynn

A heartbreaking true story of three small girls who find the imaginative strength to survive their mother's slow spiral into schizophrenia. When Laura Flynn was a little girl her beautiful, dynamic mother was the center of her imagination--Sally Flynn engaged her three girls in rounds of elaborate games and felt great maternal joy at their smallest accomplishments. It wasn't long, however, before Sally's... (more)

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets

by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh

First introduced in Freakonomics , here is the full story of Sudhir Venkatesh, the sociology grad student who infiltrated one of Chicago's most notorious gangs The story of the young sociologist who studied a Chicago crack-dealing gang from the inside captured the world's attention when it was first described in Freakonomics . Gang Leader for a Day is the fascinating full story of how Sudhir Venkatesh... (more)

The Forever War

by Dexter Filkins

From the front lines of the battle against Islamic fundamentalism, a searing, unforgettable book that captures the human essence of the greatest conflict of our time. Through the eyes of Dexter Filkins, the prizewinning New York Times correspondent whose work was hailed by David Halberstam as “reporting of the highest quality imaginable,” we witness the remarkable chain of events that began with the rise of the... (more)

I Was Told There'd Be Cake

by Sloane Crosley

Wry, hilarious, and profoundly genuine, this debut collection of literary essays is a celebration of fallibility and haplessness in all their glory. From despoiling an exhibit at the Natural History Museum to provoking the ire of her first boss to siccing the cops on her mysterious neighbor, Crosley can do no right despite the best of intentions-or perhaps because of them. Together, these essays create a... (more)

Outliers

The Story of Success

by Malcolm Gladwell

In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of "outliers"--the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their... (more)

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada's Quest to Change Harlem and America

by Paul Tough

What would it take? That was the question that Geoffrey Canada found himself asking. What would it take to change the lives of poor children—not one by one, through heroic interventions and occasional miracles, but in big numbers, and in a way that could be replicated nationwide? The question led him to create the Harlem Children’s Zone, a ninety-seven-block laboratory in central Harlem where he is testing new... (more)

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging

by The editors of the Huffington Post

The editors of The Huffington Post -- the most linked-to blog on the web -- offer an A-Z guide to all things blog, with information for everyone from the tech-challenged newbie looking to get a handle on this new way of communicating to the experienced blogger looking to break through the clutter of the Internet. With an introduction by Arianna Huffington, the site's cofounder and editor in chief, this book is... (more)

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption

by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino

Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was... (more)

Nikolski

by Nicolas Dickner

A sweet and quirky novel that follows three characters as they search for home while clinging to artifacts of their past: a misdirected compass, a book with no cover, and tales of piracy. This is a story of three characters—Noah, Joyce, and the anonymous narrator—as each leave their far-flung birthplaces to follow their own personal songs of migration. All three end up in Montreal, each on his or her voyage of... (more)

W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues

W.C. Handy: The Life and Times of the Man Who Made the Blues

by David Robertson

Before there was Elvis, there was W.C. Handy, “the man who made the blues.” Here is the first major biography in decades of the man who gave us such iconic songs as “St. Louis Blues,” “The Memphis Blues,” and “Beale Street Blues,” and who was responsible, more than any other musician, for bringing the blues into the American mainstream. David Robertson charts W.C. Handy’s rise from a rural Alabama childhood in... (more)

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