Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes

by Mir Tamim Ansary

We in the west share a common narrative of world history—that runs from the Nile Valley and Mesopotomia, through Greece and Rome and the French Revolution, to the rise of the secular state and the triumph of democracy. But our story largely omits a whole civilization that until quite recently saw itself at the center of world history, and whose citizens shared an entirely different narrative for a thousand years. ... (more)

Hitler's Empire

by Mark Mazower

Drawing on an unprecedented variety of sources, Mark Mazower reveals how the Nazis designed, maintained, and ultimately lost their European empire and offers a chilling vision of the world Hitler would have made had he won the war . Germany’s forces achieved, in just a few years, the astounding domination of a landmass and population larger than that of the United States. Control of this vast territory was meant... (more)

Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America

Bright-sided : how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

A sharp-witted knockdown of America’s love affair with positive thinking and an urgent call for a new commitment to realism Americans are a “positive” people—cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat: this is our reputation as well as our self-image. But more than a temperament, being positive, we are told, is the key to success and prosperity. In this utterly original take on the American frame of mind, Barbara... (more)

Three kings : the rise of an American empire in the Middle East after World War II

Three kings : the rise of an American empire in the Middle East after World War II

by Lloyd C. Gardner

As American policy makers ponder a strategy for withdrawal from Iraq, one of our preeminent diplomatic historians uncovers the largely hidden story of how the United States got into the Middle East in the first place. A breathtaking recovery of decisions taken, brazen motives, and backroom dealings, Three Kings is the first history of America's efforts to supplant the British Empire in the Middle East, during... (more)

by Michael J. Sandel

What are our obligations to others as people in a free society? Should government tax the rich to help the poor? Is the free market fair? Is it sometimes wrong to tell the truth? Is killing sometimes morally required? Is it possible, or desirable, to legislate morality? Do individual rights and the common good conflict? Michael J. Sandel’s “Justice” course is one of the most popular and influential at Harvard.... (more)

Cheerful money : me, my family, and the last days of WASP splendor

Cheerful money : me, my family, and the last days of WASP splendor

by Tad Friend

Tad Friend's family is nothing if not illustrious: his father was president of Swarthmore College , and at Smith his mother came in second in a poetry contest judged by W.H. Auden--to Sylvia Plath. For centuries, Wasps like his ancestors dominated American life. But then, in the '60s, their fortunes began to fall. As a young man, Tad noticed that his family tree, for all its glories, was full of alcoholics,... (more)

Reset : how this crisis can restore our values and renew America

Reset : how this crisis can restore our values and renew America

by Kurt Andersen

“This is the end of the world as we’ve known it,” Kurt Andersen writes in Reset . “But it isn’t the end of the world.” In this smart and refreshingly hopeful book, Andersen–a brilliant analyst and synthesizer of historical and cultural trends, as well as a bestselling novelist and host of public radio’s Studio 360 –shows us why the current economic crisis is actually a moment of great opportunity to get... (more)

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series)T. R. Reid

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (Thorndike Press Large Print Nonfiction Series)

by T. R. Reid

Bestselling author T. R. Reid guides a whirlwind tour of successful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible paths toward U.S. reform. In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can't seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. In his global quest to find... (more)

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within

by Bruce Bawer

The struggle for the soul of Europe today is every bit as dire and consequential as it was in the 1930s. Then, in Weimar, Germany, the center did not hold, and the light of civilization nearly went out. Today, the continent has entered yet another “Weimar moment.” Will Europeans rise to the challenge posed by radical Islam, or will they cave in once again to the extremists? As an American living in Europe since... (more)

Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist's Travelogue

Cheap Motels and a Hot Plate: An Economist's Travelogue

by Michael Yates

The road trip is a staple of modern American literature. But nowhere in American literature, until now, has a left-wing economist hit the road, observing and interpreting the extraordinary range and spectacle of U.S. life, bringing out its conflicts and contradictions with humor and insight. Disillusioned with academic life after thirty-two years teaching economics, Michael D. Yates took early retirement in 2001,... (more)

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live in

The Great Arab Conquests: How the Spread of Islam Changed the World We Live in

by Hugh Kennedy

In this engaging history, world-renowned historian Hugh Kennedy deftly sews together the stories of the people, armies, and events that conquered an area from Spain to China in just over 100 years.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us)

by Tom Vanderbilt

Would you be surprised that road rage can be good for society? Or that most crashes happen on sunny, dry days? That our minds can trick us into thinking the next lane is moving faster? Or that you can gauge a nation’s driving behavior by its levels of corruption? These are only a few of the remarkable dynamics that Tom Vanderbilt explores in this fascinating tour through the mysteries of the road. Based on... (more)

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation

America, 1908: The Dawn of Flight, the Race to the Pole, the Invention of the Model T and the Making of a Modern Nation

by Jim Rasenberger

A breathtaking ride through the highs and lows of one spectacular, pivotal year in American history. As the earth turned toward the sun on the first morning of 1908, human flight remained, for most Americans, in the realm of myth and dream. But before the darkness fell on New Year's Eve at the end of the year, the Wright brothers would be worldwide celebrities, heralded as the first people in all of human history... (more)

Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

Gandhi & Churchill: The Epic Rivalry that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age

by Arthur Herman

In this fascinating and meticulously researched book, bestselling historian Arthur Herman sheds new light on two of the most universally recognizable icons of the twentieth century, and reveals how their forty-year rivalry sealed the fate of India and the British Empire. They were born worlds apart: Winston Churchill to Britain’s most glamorous aristocratic family, Mohandas Gandhi to a pious middle-class... (more)

Mosaic: Finding Beauty in a Broken World

Mosaic: Finding Beauty in a Broken World

by Terry Tempest Williams

In her most original, provocative, and eloquently moving book since Refuge , Terry Tempest Williams gives us a luminous chronicle of finding beauty in a broken world. Always an impassioned and far-sighted advocate for a just relationship between the natural world and humankind, Williams has broadened her concerns over the past several years to include a reconfiguration of family and community in her search for a... (more)

The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability

by James Gustave Speth

How serious are the threats to our environment? Here is one measure of the problem: if we continue to do exactly what we are doing, with no growth in the human population or the world economy, the world in the latter part of this century will be unfit to live in. Of course human activities are not holding at current levels—they are accelerating, dramatically—and so, too, is the pace of climate disruption, biotic... (more)

1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

1948: A History of the First Arab-Israeli War

by Benny Morris

This history of the foundational war in the Arab-Israeli conflict is groundbreaking, objective, and deeply revisionist. A riveting account of the military engagements, it also focuses on the war's political dimensions. Benny Morris probes the motives and aims of the protagonists on the basis of newly opened Israeli and Western documentation. The Arab side—where the archives are still closed—is illuminated with the... (more)

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism

by Ron Suskind

From Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist and bestselling author Ron Suskind comes a startling look at how America lost its way and at the nation's struggle, day by day, to reclaim the moral authority upon which its survival depends. From the White House to Downing Street, from the fault-line countries of South Asia to the sands of Guantánamo, Suskind offers an astonishing story that connects world leaders to the... (more)

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families

High Wire: The Precarious Financial Lives of American Families

by Peter Gosselin

If Americans are so prosperous, why do we feel so insecure? The U.S. economy is wrapping up twenty-five years of some of the strongest, smoothest growth in its history--a performance so sweet economists have given it a name: "the Great Moderation." So why have so many of us, even those making hundreds of thousands of dollars, arrived at the new century with a gnawing sense that events are moving against our... (more)

The Enemy At the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe

The Enemy At the Gate: Habsburgs, Ottomans and the Battle for Europe

by Andrew Wheatcroft

In 1683, an Ottoman army that stretched from horizon to horizon set out to seize the “Golden Apple,” as Turks referred to Vienna. The ensuing siege pitted battle-hardened Janissaries wielding seventeenth-century grenades against Habsburg armies, widely feared for their savagery. The walls of Vienna bristled with guns as the besieging Ottoman host launched bombs, fired cannons, and showered the populace with arrows... (more)

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