My Reading List
You are what you read or, as Santayana
said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I've always envied the people
who read a book or two a week like my mother. I spend several hours a day reading,
mostly the newspaper and periodicals. I've read newspapers daily since I was a high
school debater. I have subscribed to a science magazine
and American Heritage for over twenty-five years. I used to read
Newsweek cover to cover though today I tend to skim over it. Thank God for
National Public Radio news which I listen to while perusing the paper.
Books require much more
endurance than the short bursts of interest I easily muster for short articles.
As a kid I had a Faustian desire to know all things. Because I've never known
who to sell my soul to the best I could do was read. Although my reading list is modest it
is eclectic. I don't know how to solve the world's problems but I do have
a good head for trivia.
Shortly after my failure
teaching history I consciously began filling in the
gaps in my knowledge and started keeping track of the books I'd finished. Starting
with 1979 I've listed the books which I've read cover to
cover excluding children's literature. There are many other books in my library with bookmarks
tucked between the pages where I left off. I conclude this list with all the books I
could recall having read prior to 1979.
*
* *
1979
The Hobbit
J.R. Tolkien
Hawaii
James Mitchner
Fellowship of the Ring
J.R. Tolkien
Two Towers
J.R. Tolkien
Return of the
King
J.R. Tolkien
Plain Speaking
A lauditory, but partly fraudulent,
book about Harry Truman
Giants in the Earth
Rölvaag
Campaigning for President Weisbord
Stories of various American
presidential campaigns
Birth of
Britain
Winston Churchill
A florid account of England's early
history, first in a series of four volumes
Republican
Roosevelt
Morton Blum
Roman
Republic
Isaac Asimov
Brave New
World
Aldous Huxley
Dragons of Eden
Carl Sagan
Napoleon
?
Red Badge of
Courage
Stephen Crane
The
Greeks
Isaac Asimov
Roman
Empire
Isaac Asimov
Dark
Ages
Isaac Asimov
The
Egyptians
Isaac Asimov
The Near
East
Isaac Asimov
The Challenge and Rejection Julius Pratt
Perhaps about Woodrow Wilson or
American Diplomatic History
The Religions of
Man
Huston Smith
a survey on all the major religions
Ascent of
Man
Jacob Bronkowski
a humanist's view of the development
of civilization
Dawn of African
History Roland
Oliver
A History of
Asia
Bingham, Conroy, Iklé
Medieval
Europe
Hollister
The New
Archaeology
Wilson
The Land of Caanan
Isaac Asimov
The Shaping of
England Isaac
Asimov
The Forgotten
Empire
Isaac Asimov
History of the Byzantine Empire
(
I read thirty books in 1979. I'd never
done anything like this before and I haven't done it since. Books
in red are fiction. Books in Green
are science related)
1980
The History of
England John
Borke
The
100
Michael H Hart
one man's list of the 100 most
influential people in history
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
Shogan
James Clavell
Minnesota
Theodore Blegen
a history
Alexander
Hamilton
?
A Child is
Born
?
for new parents
What Every Mother Should Know about Having a Baby
Ditto
1981
All Quiet on the Western
Front Maria Remarck
influential anti-war novel about WW1
that helped turn America to isolationism
Times Atlas of World History London
Times
Half maps, half history, I read it
cover to cover
Fathers and Sons
Turgenev
Broca's Brain
Carl Sagan
Science and social history
This Hallowed
Ground
Bruce Catton
Civil War History
Man's Search for
Meaning Viktor
Frankl
Holocaust survivor's account and psychological
insights in inner strength
Runaway Horses
Yukio Mishima
a novel by a Japanese nationalist who
later committed seppuku as a moral example for a nonmilitant generation of
Japanese
Latin American
History
Wilgus & D´eca
Barron's Essentials of American
History Nelson Klose
1982
The World According to Garp
John Irving
Clan of the Cave Bear
Jean Auel
1983
Dune 1st of Trilogy
Frank Herbert
Dune 2nd of Trilogy
Frank Herbert
Path to
Power
Robert Caro
Lyndon Johnson Bio the early years,
highly regarded its sequel was panned
Valley of the Horses
Jean Auel
The Murder of
Napoleon Ben
Weider, David Hapgood
Gorky Park
Martin Cruz Smith
1984-86
Polar Star
Martin Cruz Smith
The Read Aloud
Handbook Jim
Trelease
my bible on reading out loud to kids
with a great bibliography of kid's lit.
( I either stopped reading or stopped keeping track of the books read for these
years or perhaps both)
1987
Washington, The Indispensable Man
J.T. Flexner
1988
The Romance of Bible Scripts
& Scholars John Reumann
a history of different versions and
translations of the Bible
Plagues and
People
William H. McNeill
a history of the effects of pandemics
on world history
The Laughing
Savior
John Dart
a history of Gnostic Christianity
1989
The Bad
Popes
E.R. Chamberlin
a history about some really bad popes
Washington Goes to
War
David Brinkley
a reminiscence from one of America's preeminent
journalists about Washington DC's growth as America entered WWII
From Harlem to the
Rhine
Arthur Little
a history of the all black 369th
Infantry, raised in Harlem, NY which fought in WW1 and to which my grandfather
George Robb was assigned as an officer. In the racist US Army of that era black
troops were mostly commanded by white officers.
Hot Blooded Dinosaurs
A. Desmond
Dinosaur Heresies
Robert Bakker
1990
Parting the
Waters
Taylor Branch
a remarkable history of the modern
Civil Rights movement
The Emperor, Downfall of an Autocrat Ryszard Kapuscinski
an idiosyncratic, patched together
narrative of the fall of Ethiopia's Emperor for Life, Haile Selassie, written my
a communist journalist who was given remarkable freedom to chronicle
unflattering things about the non-communist world.
Twelve Parables of
Jesus
Maxie Dunnam
a Sunday school study guide
Surrender or
Starve
Robert D Kaplan
the story about the intentional
starvation of the Ethiopian people
Catcher in the Rye
J D Salinger
read for the second time
Hannibal
Harold Lamb
Hiroshima
John Hersey
an account of the dropping of the
bomb from the viewpoint of the people on the ground
The Trial of
Socrates
I F Stone
From Beirut to
Jerusalem
Thomas Friedman
current events
1991
More Like
Us
James Fallows
a writer's thoughtful analysis of
what makes American's Americans
Wonderful Life
Stephen Jay Gould
about the explosion of new life found
in precambrian fossil shale deposits
Decision in
Philadelphia
Chris & James Lincoln Collier
the creation of the US Constitution
1992
Lincoln and his
Generals
T. Harry Williams
Is Paris
Burning
Collins & LaPierre
How Paris was spared destruction in
WWII
Confucius and the Chinese
Way H G Creel
1993
Forgotten
Scripts
Cyrus Gordon
The story of the decipherment of lost
languages
Who Wrote the
Bible
Richard Friedman
Analysis of the Old Testament's
authorship
Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton
Zealous
Intruders
Naomi Shepherd
The rediscovery of the Holy Land by
western tourists in the 17 and 1800s
The African Slave
Trade
Basil Davidson
explains how the slave trade
unraveled African society and culture
Vanished
Library
Canfora
The destruction of the great library
of Alexandria
The Man in the Roman
Street
Garret Mattingly
Everyday life in ancient Rome
The
Persians
Time Life, ed. by Jim Hicks
a history
1933
Philip Metcalfe
five people's experiences in Germany
the year Adolph Hitler became Chancellor
The Christians as the Romans Saw Them Robert Wilkin
1994
The Learning
Gap
Stigler & Stevensen
gap between rich and poor in
education or something like that
King of
Pontus
Alfred Doggan
Biography of Mithradates enemy of
Rome
Aaron Burr The Great Am
Rascal Philip
Vail
Balkan
Ghosts
Robert Kaplan
Balkan History
Pilgrims in their Own
Land
Martin Marty
History of American Christianity
1995
The Great
Triumvirate
Merrill Peterson
Biography of Webster, Calhoun and
Henry Clay
Profiles in
Courage
John F Kennedy
rereading
The
Armada
Garrett Mattingly
Spanish Armada
1996
Bob
Dole
Richard Ben Cramer
The Time Before History
Colin Tudge
Human Prehistory
1066 The Year of the
Conquest David
Howarth
(audio book) the last successful
invasion of England
The Last Best Hope on
Earth
Mark E Neely Jr.
Abraham Lincoln
No Ordinary
Time
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt and
the coming of war
1997
The Celts - First Masters of
Europe New Horizons
Undaunted
Courage
Stephen Ambrose
Journey of Lewis & Clark
Longitude
Dava Sobel
History of mastering of navigation
technology
How the Irish Saved
Civilization
Thomas Cahill
transmission of ancient classical
texts
1998
American
Sphinx
John Ellis
Bio of Thomas Jefferson
To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee
rereading
Japanese Destroyer
Captain
T Hara
war memoir
1999
One Hundred
Days
Alan Schom
Napoleon from Elba to Waterloo
The Rape of Nanking
Iris Chang
2000
King Leopold's
Ghost
A Hochschil
The Rape of the Congo by King Leopold
Guns Germs and
Steel
Jared Diamond
How latitude, geography and
environment have determine history's winners and losers
The Lynchings in
Duluth
Michael Fedo
2001
Day of
Deceit
Robert Stinnett
FDR's conspiracy to provoke a
Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor - supports the theory
April 1865 the Month that Saved America John Winik
The last month of the Civil War
A Short History of
Reconstruction
Eric Foner
Frederick
Douglass
William S. McFeely
The Professor and the
Madman Simon
Winchester
The history of the creation of the
Oxford English Dictionary
Taliban - Militant Islam, Oil, Fund...
alism in Central Asia
Ahmed Rashid
2002
Founding
Brothers
Joseph J. Ellis
The Revolutionary Generation
Libraries in the Ancient
World
Lionel Casson
The Hidden
Hitler
Lothar Machtan
E=mc² ...the World's Most Famous Equation David Bodanis
Confederates in the
Attic
Tony Horowitz
travelogue of the modern
"Confederate" South by a Pulitzer winner
Ulysses S. Grant Soldier & President
Geoffrey Perret
2003
The River
Congo
Peter Forbath
The White
Headhunter
Nigel Randell
Impact of Europeans on Melanesian Society
The Map that Changed the
World
Simon Winchester
Wm. Smith, makes sense
of English stratigraphy and gives birth to the science of geology
Life of
Pi
Yann Martel
I read this out loud to
my wife. It's wonderful!
Tuxedo
Park
Jennet Conant
A wall street millionaire's obsession with science leads to discoveries
that will win WW2
2004
The Miraculous Fever
Tree
Fiammetta Rocco
History of the the drug Quinine which
is still the world's most reliable cure for Malaria
God's
Secretaries
Adam Nicolson
on making the King James Bible
"We are Lincoln
Men"
David Herbert Donald
Wine &
War
Don & Petie Kladstrup
French vintners roll in W W II
Paris 1919 Six Months that Changed the World Margaret
MacMillan
Cicero Life and Times of Rome's Greatest Pol
Anthony Everitt
The Good Women of
China
Xinran
Wrenching stories of the pain endured
by Chinese women since 1949
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder
2005
1912 - Wilson, Roosevelt,Taft and
Debs
Election that changed the
Country
James Chace
Lincoln at Cooper Union the speech that
made Abraham Lincoln
President
Harold Holzer
Lincoln
Gore Vidal
Stalin, The Court of the Red
Tsar
Simon S Montefiore
Animal Farm
George Orwell
Naked
David Sedaris
Wall St. Journal Guide to
Wine
Gaiter & Brecher
The Devil's Disciples - Hitler's Inner Circle
Anthony Read
2006
1812 The War that Forged a
Nation
Walter R. Borneman
2007
Master of the
Senate
Robert A Caro
Dial M The Murder of Carol
Thompson
William Swanson
2008
2009 .......For two years
I was so wrapped up in a political project
that I read no books from cover to cover.
2010
Sunburnt
Country
Bill Bryson
A humorist's Australian Travelogue
Thunderbolt
Kid
Bill Bryson
A humorist's Iowa Childhood memoir
Lincoln, The biography of a
writer
Fred Kaplan
1776 Washington crosses the Delaware David McCullough
The Diary of Anne Frank (Definitive edition) Anne Frank
Nature's Building Blocks A-Z guide to
Elements
John Emsley
In
Tasmania
Nicholas Shakespeare
The Fatal
Shore THE one volume Australian Robert Hughes
History (Began reading it 20 years earlier)
2011
Searching for Aboriginal
Languages
R.M.W. Dixon
A History of New
Zealand
Keith Sinclair
Carnivorous Nights (Trail of Taz Tiger)
Mittelbach & Crewdson
New Zealand Wildlife BRADT travel guide Julian Fitter
Australian Wildlife BRADT ditto Stella Martin
The Last of the Nomads
W J Peasley
True account of the hunt for the last Aborigines
to relive the traditional nomad life in the 1970's
after the fled to the inhospitable Outback
for breaking a tribal taboo
The Original Australians Aborigines History Josephine Flood
2012
Walter Mondale, The Good Fight
Walter Mondale
Hubert Humphrey a Biography
Carl Solberg
Lyndon Johnson The Passage of Power
Robert Caro
The Political Career of Floyd B. Olson George H. Mayer
Bio about MN's Depression Era Governor
The Swerve, How the World became Modern Stephen Greenblatt
Consequences of the Renaissance discovery
of an ancient poem by Lucretius
Lincoln, Team of Rivals
Doris Kearns Goodwin
The Devil in the White City
Erik Larson
Account of a prodigious solo mass murderer
operating during Chicago's World Fair
Thaddeus Stevens 19th Century Egalitarian Hans L.
Trefousse,
Bio of the leading Civil War Radical Republican
2013
Black Sea
Neal Ascherson
Discursive History of the region
The Book Thief
Markus Zusak
Unreliable Memoirs
Clive James
by Australian Born British movie reviewer
The Barbarous Years
Bernard Bailyn
The first hundred years of 13 British colonies
Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain
Polk, the Man who Transformed
the Presidency and America
Walter R. Borneman
The Warmth of Other Suns
Isabel Wilkerson
History of black migration out of South from
1915 to 70's
2014
One Summer America 1927
Bill Bryson
Fascinating weaving of many events
Zealot, Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth Reza
Alsan
Practical non biblical analysis of the times
of Jesus
The Bully Pulpit
Doris Kearns Goodwin
Teddy Roosevelt and his buddy Wm Taft
Lincoln's Boys
Joshua Zeitz
How his two secretaries rewrote his Pres. Bio
and elevated his reputation from saintly bumbler
to the most canny of Presidents
The Color of Water
James McBride
The story of a black reporter's discovery of
his Jewish Mother's remarkable beginnings
The Narrow Road to the Deep North
Richard Flanagan
Man Booker winner about an Australian POW's
life before and after being interned in hell
The President's War - 5 living Presidents
Chris DeRose
who mostly disagree with their successor
Lincoln and his conduct of the War
Orphan Train
Kristina Baker Kline
2015
Dead Wake Last Crossing of the
Lusitania Erik Larson
Wild Swans
Jung Chang
Three Generations of Chinese women from the
Warlord period through the Cultural Revolution
My Promised Land
Ari Shavit
Israel's history 1897 - 2013
Harlem's Rattlers and the Great War
Sammons & Morrow
2016
The Wright Brothers (audio
version)
David McCullough
In the Garden of the Beasts
Erik Larson
A Bell for Adano
John Hershey
Empires of the Sea
Roger Crowley
Christendom stops Turkish Advance
Dark Horse a Bio. of Wendell Willkie
Steve Neal
American Rose A Nation Laid Bare
Karen Abbott
2017
The Old Testament NRSV
Moses et al
Bleeding Kansas Contested Liberty
Nicole Etcheson
in the Civil War Era
Country Driving: A Journey from
Peter Hessler
Farm to Factory
1920 The Year of the Six Presidents
David Pietrusza
Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and
Faith in the New China
Evan Osnos
Mr. Speaker the Man who Broke the Filibuster James Grant
Destiny of the Republic (Garfield Assassination) Candice Millard
The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me
William Allen White
Minnesota Rag (Landmark Supreme Ct ruling) Fred W. Friendly
Mao Tse-Tung and I Were Beggars
Siao-Yu
Born a Crime
Trevor Noah
Last Hope Island
Lynne Olson
*
* *
Through Junior High School
(1963-66)
( * books were required reading )
a biography of Harry Houdini ?
Swiss Family
Robinson Johann
David Wyss
Secret Garden
Hodgsen?
Profiles in
Courage
John F. Kennedy
Danny Dever Books
(several in a
series)
?
adventure books for boys
The Rover Boys
(several in a
series)
?
adventure books for boys - belonged
to my Grandfather Henry H. Welty
Kon Tiki
Thor Heyerdahl
This book helped awake in me an
armchair wanderlust augmenting my stamp collection which bequeathed me a
considerable geographic and historic knowledge.
Tale of Two Cities*
Dickens
The Rover
Joseph Conrad
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the
Sea
Jules Verne
Treasure Island* Robert Louis Stephenson
Black Arrow
Robert Louis Stephenson
Island of the Blue Dolphin Scott
O'Dell
Old Yeller Fred
Gipson
Animal Farm* George Orwell
Scaramouch
Rafael Sabatini
Sense and Sensibility
Jane Austin
Through Senior High School (1966-69)
Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron
In Cold
Blood
Truman Capote
Nigger of the Narcissus
Joseph Conrad
Cry the Beloved Country*
Alan Patton
A Choice of
Weapons
Gordon Parks
Autobiography of Gordon Parks
Kim
Rudyard Kipling
Captains Courageous
Rudyard Kipling
Odyssey
*
Homer
Sidhartha
Herman Hesse
Steppenwolf
Herman Hesse
Damien
Herman Hesse
Cheaper by the
Dozen
Frank B., Jr. Gilbreth
Belles on their Toes
Frank B., Jr. Gilbreth
Tales of the South Pacific
James Michener
The Source
James Michener
The Day Christ
Died
Jim Bishop
The Day Lincoln
Died
Jim
Bishop
Catcher in the Rye
J D Salinger
Franny and Zooey
J D Salinger
Inheritors
Golding
Alice in Wonderland
Lewis Carol
Heart of Darkness*
Joseph Conrad
Secret Sharer*
Joseph Conrad
Huckleberry Finn
Mark Twain
Born
Free
Joy Adamson
( I have only included books I read completely. For instance, I never finished
the required text Moby Dick. I read perhaps three fourths of it. It didn't help
that I bought a small note pad and began jotting down every word in it I didn't
know to look up in the dictionary. It slowed down the reading because it
contained many unfamiliar words. I kept filling my note pad for several years
thereafter. )
Through College (1969-73)
(I read very few college
texts from cover to cover and except for works of fiction I can't recall most of
the books anyway.)
Black Like Me
John Howard Griffin
Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka
Japan Yesterday and
Today
ed. Ray Downs
Cat's Cradle
Kurt Vonnegut
Slaughter House Five*
Kurt Vonnegut
Catch 22*
Joseph Heller
The Stranger*
Albert Camus
The End of the Road*
John Barth
The Forrest
People
Colin Turnbull
The Harrad Experiment Robert
Rimmer
(Everybody has read something
embarrassing but, hey, I enjoyed the book.)
How to Pick Up
Girls Eric
Weber
(Ditto. Sorry, but
I'm trying to be comprehensive here. It didn't help me much anyway. I was
amazed to find it listed at Amazon.Com otherwise I'd never have remembered the
author.)
Post College to
1979 (1973-78)
Lord of the Flies
William Golding
The Prairie Years Vol
1
Carl Sandburg
Bio of Lincoln
The Prairie Years Vol
2
Carl Sandburg
Inside the Third
Reich
Albert Spear
by Hitler's friend and associate
36
Children
Herman Kohl
a teacher's year in a Harlem school
Autobiography of Malcom
X
Malcom X ed by Alex Haley
The Story of
Language
Mario Pei
Actually, this is the only book on
the list that I may not have completed cover to cover. I skipped around in it
but I read most of its 450 pages. The story of the evolution of language.
The
Mafia
Fred Cook
Boys of
Boise
Gerassi
The story of a ring of gay pedophiles
that was hushed up after some early exposure
Marco
Polo
Collins
Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe
Foundation
Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation
Isaac Asimov
Foundation and Empire
Isaac Asimov
1984
George Orwell
Brave New World
Thomas Huxley
Chariots of the
Gods
Von Daniken
a ridiculous speculation about extraterrestrial
visitations that while not fiction might as well be
Green Hills of Mars
Robert K. Heinlein
Beyond This Horizon
Ray Bradbury Grendel
John Gardner
Eva
Peron
John Barnes
Sugar
Blues
William Duffy
Expose of the ills cause by sugar. I
haven't stopped consuming it although I was inspired to bake a couple apples
pies with honey. I'm a lousy cook.
How I Went from Failure to Success
Frank Bettger
My boss gave it to me to inspire me
to sell insurance. It didn't work.
Think
Rich
Napoleon Hill
Hey, it was the Eighties!
Blind
Ambition
John Dean
