Iain Finlayson, who reviews non-fiction for the London Times, named a critic's chart of the best of Alan Bennett.Untold Stories (2005)Read about all six titles on the list.
Bennett outs himself as gay and deals also with his cancer in this second mammoth memoir.
Paul McHugh is a University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. His book Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind will be published in October.Remembering TraumaRead about all five titles on McHugh's list.
by Richard J. McNally
Belknap/Harvard, 2003
Psychiatrists who follow Sigmund Freud make up the "psychodynamic faction" of psychiatry, and they explain mental disorders as the result of unconscious conflicts stemming from infantile sexuality. In the 1980s a splinter group within this faction claimed that the conflicts were driven by the actual sexualabuse of the child -- memories of which had been "repressed." These ideas about memory and trauma were mistaken, but they nonetheless spurred a witch hunt, led by psychotherapists, against parents and other guardians of children. In the remarkably dispassionate and thorough "Remembering Trauma," Harvard scientist and clinical psychologist Richard J. McNally looks closely at the issue of traumatic memory -- its history and its application in psychiatric explanations and therapy. The book systematically lays out all the claims about repressed memories and their role in mental disorders. And then McNally just as systematically demolishes every one of the claims. "The notion that the mind protects itself by repressing or dissociating memories of trauma, rendering them inaccessible to awareness," he concludes, "is a piece of psychiatric folklore devoid of convincing empirical support." This book effectively ended a disgraceful therapeutic craze.
Thomas Catán named a "critic's chart" of Spanish civil war books for the London Times.The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge by Paul PrestonLearn about the other five books on Catán's list.
A concise and well-written account re-edited for the 70th anniversary.
Michael Lewis' books include Liar's Poker, Moneyball, and The Blind Side. He talked to Newsweek about his five most important books."A Confederacy of Dunces" by John Kennedy Toole.Read about all five books on Lewis' list.
It's among the funniest books ever written.
The Last Grain RaceRead about the other titles on Knox-Johnson's list.
by Eric Newby
Houghton Mifflin, 1956
In the late 1930s, when the young Eric Newby signed on for an around-the-world voyage on a working square-rigger, war clouds were gathering all over the world as nations rearmed, and newer, faster vessels were being launched. Amid this frenzied activity, cargoes of grain were still being transported to Europe from Australia in sailing ships. Fewer than a dozen of these mighty windjammers remained, but their sailors, as men will, still competed to make the fastest voyage -- hence "The Last Grain Race." To hang over an icy spar that rolled and jerked while trying to haul in a stiff, ice-covered sail in howling winds with sleet lashing exposed flesh -- that was the truth of rounding Cape Horn. There was no romance in it, just back-breaking labor for 12 hours a day, more if the ship needed it. Newby faithfully recorded this experience and many others, conveying the feel of life on the great sailing ships.
The Americans by Robert FrankRead about all ten titles on Buckle's list.
An all-time classic, The Americans is a seminal body of work and still one of our bestsellers. This 50th-anniversary edition has an introduction by Jack Kerouac - perfect since it looks like a pictorial Fifties road trip.
Sepulchre by Kate MosseRead about the other 49 books on the list.
Mosse’s previous title, Labyrinth, was a doorstop of a book, full of grail mysteries and historical detail. It sold like a charm and in Sepulchre she has returned to the French town where it was set. It features a split-narrative that flits between the 1890s and the present day, with a heroine in each. Get ready for tons of tarot cards and a healthy dose of sinister occultism.
GothamRead about the other four books on Hamill's list.
by Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace
Oxford, 1999
Every great city is a palimpsest, an old text upon which new texts are inscribed before the old text is completely erased. My native New York is one of those cities. This long volume (1,383 pages) is among the most valuable I own. The authors adhere to scholarly exactitude but never lose sight of the driving narrative that led eventually to the city in which New Yorkers now live. The authors tell us what is knowable about the Native Americans who were here before Europeans arrived. They remind us that we had the good fortune to be established by a company (the Dutch West India Co.) and not a king or a religious sect. After New Amsterdam was taken at gunpoint by the British in 1664, the Dutch left us a number of gifts, the most important of which was tolerance. Across the centuries, in spite of slavery, riots, bigotry and the genteel brutalities of class, tolerance prevailed. In our daily lives, for those who have lived in New York for generations or who arrived last week, one fact is triumphantly clear: We live peacefully in a grand, imperfect city of people who are not like us. This book helps explain why.
Rebecca by Daphne du MaurierLearn about the other five books on May's list.
The sinister country house novel with the famous first line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
Simon Critchley is a Professor of Philosophy at The New School for Social Research and the author, most recently, of The Book of Dead Philosophers."to show that often the philosopher's greatest work of art is the manner of their death."The chart-topper:
Read about all ten dead philosophers on Critchley's list.Heracleitus (540-480 BC)
Heracleitus became such a hater of humanity that he wandered in the mountains and lived on a diet of grass and herbs. But malnutrition gave him dropsy and he returned to the city to seek a cure, asking to be covered in cow dung, which he believed would draw the bad humours out of his body. In the first version of the story, the cow dung is wet and the weeping philosopher drowns; in the second, it is dry and he is baked to death in the Ionian sun.
On the Beach Nevil ShuteRead about all six titles on Evans' list.
Perhaps the bleakest, most evocative novel on the aftermath of a nuclear war.
"Tales of Mystery and Imagination" by Edgar Allan Poe.Read about all five titles on Barker's list.
Terse, Gothic fiction that goes to the heart of American culture.
America Comes of Middle AgeRead about all five books on the list.
by Murray Kempton
Little, Brown, 1963
In 1958, at 17, having come east for college, I plunked down a nickel for a New York Post and read a Murray Kempton column. That is why -- I am simplifying somewhat -- I am a columnist. Kempton was a man of the left, but his politics were beside the point. The reason for reading him was the pleasure of a distinctive, sometimes mordant sensibility expressed in deliciously sinewy prose, such as this 75-word sentence from a 1956 column on a visit by President Eisenhower to Florida: "In Miami, he had walked carefully by the harsher realities, speaking some 20 feet from an airport drinking fountain labeled 'Colored' and saying that the condition it represented was more amenable to solution by the hearts of men than by laws, and complimenting Florida as 'typical today of what is best in America,' a verdict which might seem to some contingent on finding out what happened to the Negro snatched from the Wildwood jail Sunday." When Washington superlawyer Edward Bennett Williams defended Jimmy Hoffa, Kempton wrote: "To watch Williams and then to watch a Department of Justice lawyer contending with him is to understand the essential superiority of free enterprise to government ownership." Such lapidary judgments, which are found in every Kempton column, made him my kind of man of the left.
Beijing Coma by Ma JianRead about all six titles on Fenby's list.
A brilliant multilayered novel focusing on the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989.
"Mrs. Dalloway" by Virginia Woolf.Read about all five titles on Cunningham's list.
We see her learning how to write a great novel by writing one.
