The Year's Best Books

The essential dilemma: Is taking a regular job growing up or selling out?
A committed slacker with an occasional background in marketing, Dan Kennedy gets a chance to join the rat race while keeping his cool when he is offered a job at Atlantic Records in 2002. On the inside, he finds the mixture of chaos, capitulation and fear that you’d expect of a major record label in the early 21st century. But despite the bewilderment and flashes of contempt inspired by his new surroundings, Kennedy can’t suppress the desire to fit in. He splurges on pricey picture frames and pricey Barney’s windbreakers, thinking that these, maybe, are the kinds of things successful people do.

Sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, Kennedy sticks his pins were they hurt; the names are changed not to protect the guilty, but to give him free rein. Not withstanding its fits of wicked point-settling, the book has a poignant core, since Kennedy is struggling with himself as much as anyone around him. Is taking a regular job growing up or selling out? Is his quasi-bohemian telecommuting lifestyle a matter of principle, or is it just that no one’s offered him enough money to sit behind a desk? Kennedy’s ill-advised, ambivalent, and occasionally successful attempts to fit in to a culture he doesn’t understand and often doesn’t respect give the book an undercurrent of self-examination that contrasts with Kennedy’s sometimes glib attacks on his bosses.

A spoken-word performer as well as a contributor to McSweeney’s and GQ, Kennedy knows how to punch up his writing with well-timed interpretation, although it’s odd to hear him talk about music for so long without actually hearing any.

Just about every possible thesis against the existence of an all-powerful deity.
The Portable Atheist includes part of a letter that Albert Einstein sent to an acquaintance in the early years of the 20th century. Noting the vastness of human suffering, Einstein wondered where God fit into the equation. "(I)n my opinion," he wrote, "only his nonexistence could excuse Him."

This book's editor, the prolific Christopher Hitchens, is not out to "excuse" God — he's far more interested in the "nonexistence" part. Seeking to gather every possible thesis against the existence of an all-powerful deity, Hitchens has assembled a volume of writings that rely on scrupulous intellectual reasoning and, occasionally, dry wit.

Starting with an essay by Lucretius, the Roman scholar who died more than 2,000 years ago, Hitchens' selections span centuries; included are entries from writers as dissimilar in era and vocation as John Stuart Mill, the 19th century thinker, and Penn Jillette, the contemporary magician/author/filmmaker. Two philosophers from long ago — Benedict de Spinoza (who lived in the 1600s) and David Hume (the 1700s) — write about the ways in which religion is often linked to "fear." Novelist Ian McEwan delineates the odd relationship between a belief in a supreme being and a fixation on a forthcoming apocalypse.

The essays are largely quite serious, but Hitchens is smart enough to leaven The Portable Atheist with some comic irreverence. A satirical piece by author Michael Shermer looks at the creation of the universe. After all his work, Shermer writes, "God was tired, so He proclaimed, 'Thank me it's Friday'." Even funnier are parts of Bertrand Russell's "An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish." Discussing fake prophets, Russell writes, "I received once a communication from the god Osiris, giving me his telephone number; he lived, at that time, in a suburb of Boston."

Hitchens' book is read by English actor Nicholas Ball, who has a sturdy voice for his second line of work. Although some of the book's passages are complex, or are related in language that has gone out of fashion, Ball's smooth cadence makes it all fairly easy to absorb.

The science of why we buy
Why, oh why, do we buy what we buy? Does a pretty face in an ad make us more prone to purchase? Or do we plunk down the plastic because a product is cool? Marketing expert Lindstrom taps into the research of neuroscientists to address these questions, oft pondered by business types and academics alike. He discusses the results of brain-scan studies and delivers crackling anecdotes about everything from mirror neurons to dopamine, the pleasure-producing chemical that's released in our brains when we see something we like. It turns out dopamine can indeed make us "dopey," leading us to spend money on that shiny digital camera or sparkling diamond watch before we think it through.

Lindstrom's commentary on consumer behavior ranges from the predictable to the unexpected (did you know, for instance, that sex doesn't always sell?). He's not bothered by the fact that marketers might manipulate the public in irresponsible ways. Pop culture (big surprise!) is a critical conduit for swaying customers to spend. After Tom Cruise sported Ray-Bans in the 1983 hit movie, Risky Business, sales of the shades rose 50 percent. Narrator Don Leslie has such a rich, reassuring tone, he could sell ice cubes to Eskimos. His voice may be familiar to some; he's a veteran on-air narrator who's done lots of movie trailers, too. In this smooth, sonorous reading, facts and figures glide gently off Leslie's tongue.

Two sides of a family, two very different directions.
At the moment Flight 77 smashed into the Pentagon, Shafiq bin Laden — Osama’s brother — was at the Washington D.C. Ritz-Carlton, attending an investors conference sponsored by the Carlyle Group, the global equity firm heavily connected with members of former President George H. W. Bush’s administration. Another brother, Abdullah, a graduate of Harvard Law School, was in line for a latte at a Cambridge Starbucks.

Two sides of a family, two very different directions. It’s well-known that the Bin Laden family made mega-millions building Saudi Arabia’s infrastructure as oil revenues exploded, thanks to an assiduous courtship of the Saudi royal family and American decision makers. Osama bin Laden, of course, irate over the presence of U.S. troops in the kingdom during the first Gulf War, broke with his family and declared war on America. But what Steve Coll describes in such rich detail in “The Bin Ladens” is exactly how Westernized the rest of the family remains.

Coll, a New Yorker writer who won the Pulitzer Prize for Ghost Wars (his history of American bumbling in Afghanistan), uncovers the family’s mind-blowing ties to the West. This is a story of Hollywood, Disneyland and the Ivy League, of investments in shopping malls and thoroughbreds, of friendships and partnerships with presidents (Bush, Carter), moguls (Trump) and country singers (Kenny Rogers). The bitter irony? No matter how the family denounces Obama, 9/11 proved to be great business; war in the Middle East has only made “the kingdom’s Halliburton” wealthier and more powerful.

Giggle-inducing musings from a foulmouthed Barbie
"Let’s talk alcohol. Are you with me?" So says Chelsea Handler to her rather strict nutritionist, whose disparagement of vodka — mother’s milk to Chelsea — feels downright hurtful: "It's not easy to hear negative stuff about the person closest to you, even if it is true." Welcome to Chelsea's booze-soaked world, one in which decorum, discretion and political correctness are as immaterial as Jen is to Brad and Angie. Best known for skewering questionably famous celebs on her E! talk show, Chelsea Lately, it’s a delight to hear Chelsea turn her hypercritical eye on herself in her unapologetically naughty essay collection, Are You There, Vodka? It’s Me, Chelsea. She makes for a juicy target.

Handler is the queen of "oh no, she didn’t"-worthy quips, injecting scandal into even the most mundane moments in her life — the suburban New Jersey childhood, the crazy family, the string of loser boyfriends, the Hollywood nightlife scene. Whether she's detailing her hatred of dog-sitting ("I'd rather be forced to watch a Lord of the Rings marathon and then be raped by a Hobbit"), a dicey experience at a neighborhood "spa" ("No, I don't want sucky sucky, I just want a massage"), or her well-documented love of little people ("next to fat babies, midgets are my favorite things to hold") Chelsea's various pronouncements are wet-your-pants funny and defiantly obnoxious — definitely not for the faint of heart. And if Are You There, Vodka doesn't happen to be the most cohesive, exquisitely crafted collection, well, so what? Like the best kind of Absolut-fueled bender, it may be full of empty calories, inappropriate ramblings, and pointedly anti-intellectual conversation, but it's also a silly, dizzy, damn good time.

One of the literary world's most prestigious figures delivers a gleeful swashbuckler
Sir Salman Rushdie spent the nearly three decades since publishing Midnight's Children winning just about every literary award that a living author can collect. Now, in The Enchantress of Florence, he has delivered a tale that — its sumptuous field of historical allusions aside — actually seems designed for pleasure. It is an unabashedly heroic, swashbuckling tale infused with all the sensuality and richness of Indian, Ottoman, and Italian culture.

The storyteller is a Florentine rogue who arrives in the capital of the Mogul empire in Hindustan after a brief ocean voyage that entailed dosing the ship's captain with laudanum, then robbing him blind. Posing as Queen Elizabeth's emissary to the Mogul court, the Italian trickster charms his way into Emperor Akbar's inner circle, then announces unceremoniously that he has a story to tell — and a secret that may change the emperor's world forever. Spanning continents, traipsing casually through a number of languages (pronounced with admirable gusto and accuracy by Firdous Bamji), and encompassing historical figures like Machiavelli, Amerigo Vespucci and warlords galore, The Enchantress of Florence gleefully and fascinatingly cannibalizes all the history, Eastern and Western, that Rushdie can get his hands on. It's a rousing, epic tale, a kitchen-sink romance that delights even when it meanders, and one of the most satisfying novels Rushdie has written in years.

© 2008 by Salman Rushdie

Death: it's never been sexier.
Literati and sports fans alike know the writing of David Shields, author of several books, including Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season, a highly charged exploration of race politics surrounding the NBA that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle and PEN/USA Awards. Currently an English professor at the University of Washington, his profession as a teacher seems strikingly sedentary considering the obsession with physicality in his latest work, The Thing About Life is That One Day You'll Be Dead.

In The Thing About Life, Shields writes nothing less than a “biography” of the human body, exploring physical reality so ecstatically that it is hard to sit still while listening. An obsession with mortality haunts every moment, so much so that Shields often conflates sexual drives and death. At one point, he charts the decay of our bodies in terms of the decline of our fertility: After menopause, women’s faces appear gaunt, as fat stores are depleted from their once-smooth cheeks. And as men produce fewer viable sperm, they shed hair and struggle with enlarged prostate glands. Yet, the way Shields writes about it, my future gaunt face does not depress me; instead, I see it within a context greater than my individual vanity.

It is perfect, then, that he grounds the book in a lifelong conflict with his father, a centigenarian-wanna-be whose obsession with life clashes with the author’s equal obsession with death. This larger, generational context adds richness and depth — tapping into universal tensions and fears. In fact, Shields calls the book an “autobiography of my body, a biography of my father’s body, an anatomy of our bodies together, especially my dad’s — his body, his relentless body.” The word “relentless” is key: Shields is nothing if not conflicted about his father: “And I love him and I hate him,” he writes. “And I want him to live forever, and I want him to die, tomorrow.” It all feels terribly Freudian.

For Shields, our psychological, spiritual, and physical lives are as entangled as strands of DNA — each dictating and reinforcing the other, propelling us not only into puberty and aging, but also into conflicts with mothers, fathers and children — much like the one with his father at the heart of this book. He weaves strands of science, psychology, memoir and philosophy as tightly as X- and Y-chromosomes, and yet, also keeps them separate enough for one to resonate with the other — like the interplay of genes.

Veteran narrator Don Leslie's website describes his voice as "deep, authoritative, velvety and resonant," and all of these adjectives hold true for his reading of The Thing About Life. Not only does his rich voice have a fatherly authority, but it also saturates the text with sexual tension. He has a way of smoothing consonants and drawing out vowels to make them ooze sex — further highlighting the intricate connection between sex and death.

It disappoints me, though, that Shields does not himself narrate the text. As he ponders the human attraction to deep voices and revels in bodily existence, I feel robbed of his physical reality.

A lifelong procrastinator finds the roots to her disposition in ancient Greece
The term "acedia" comes from the Greek and has never properly translated to English — which has caused it to drift in and out of our dictionaries for years with a variety of definitions (among them, "indolence," "apathy," and the deadly sin of "sloth.") Kathleen Norris, a celebrated theological poet, essayist and bestselling author, stumbled upon the term "acedia" in the writings of a fourth-century Christian monk. In this superb, bookish memoir, she details how the term exemplified an addiction she has struggled with for most of her life, beginning in her early teens.

Norris leaves no stone unturned in her attempt to transplant the concept of acedia from its ancient religious past and apply it to modern society, quoting from Christian thinkers spanning centuries, as well as studying the nuances of her own relationships, particularly her marriage to poet David Dwyer, who died in 2003. By examining her own version of acedia, which includes reading four bad mystery novels in a day while ignoring the vital repetitions of life such as making the bed, cleaning the house or doing the laundry, Norris invites readers to explore how acedia manifests itself in their own lives — say, in surfing the internet, playing video games, watching blockbuster movies, and so forth. In identifying these various forms of escapism, she makes a clear distinction between acedia and depression: the former, she insists, is a bad habit that must be tempered through discipline while the latter is, generally, a treatable illness.

The end result is a deeply inspiring, lively memoir by a tremendous thinker whose insight and call to arms over this universal vice is both enjoyable to read and, as Norris surely intends, genuinely rousing.

An exhaustive, microscopic exploration of the quirky multibillionaire Oracle of Omaha
Eccentric multibillionaire Warren Buffett, who Forbes Magazine has labeled the richest man in the world, attributes his fortune to the idea that "Life is like a snowball. The important thing is finding wet snow and a really long hill." Certainly Buffett, known as The Oracle of Omaha, is a fiscal genius, and his ability to identify undervalued business is extraordinary. But Schroeder's microscopic scrutiny of his life — the first that he has authorized — makes clear that the man who became an entrepreneur at six, bought his first stock at ten and invested the profits of his teenage paper route in a Nebraska farm, also leavened each decision with uncommon doses of thriftiness and ingenuity.

Hardly a scandalous tell-all, Buffett's quirky personal life — the longtime mistress, penchant for eating Fritos for breakfast, and general disinterest in the trappings of his wealth — plays second fiddle to his unique business decisions, which line up like perfect puzzle pieces. With the economic crisis dominating world news, Buffett's storied career and encyclopedic knowledge of the stock market take on new importance, and Schroeder pays careful homage in particular to his recent hesitations surrounding government regulation of big business.

With the unprecedented gift of Buffett's cooperation (and seven years of access to him), Schroeder does fall victim to oversaturation of information — a good editor could easily have cut the book in half with the same results. Thankfully, the abridged audiobook, which still weighs in at almost 10 hours, culls the best of this goldmine of information, providing a more manageable look at this fascinating man.

A career-spanning collection of short fiction from the author of This Boy's Life.
Tobias Wolff, like any skilled miniaturist, can find beauty and pain in the smallest detail. Our Story Begins, his career-spanning collection of short fiction, is not perfect — “Her Dog,” a story in which a canine and a human have a telepathic conversation, is one Wolff should have reconsidered — but it’s largely a smartly-selected group of rich tales about complicated women and men.

“The Rich Brother,” for example, is a story about siblings who have very little in common. Pete is wealthy, adventuresome and a bit smug; Donald is broke, withdrawn and sensitive to a fault. Over the course of a single car ride, Wolff explores his vastly different characters in a manner that makes them feel like people we know, if not quite understand.

“Sanity” is about Claire and April, a woman and her step-daughter who have embarked on a trip to the mental hospital where April’s father has been staying. The characters don’t quite connect — a fact that makes the story so compelling — but a small detour will allow each to learn something new about one another.

“Say Yes” takes place in a kitchen, as a man tries to explain to his wife why he wouldn’t have married her if she was African-American. Predictably, the conversation ends in an argument, but Wolff can find interesting details in almost any character, even when they’ve retreated in silence to separate rooms.

Wolff may be best-known as a memoirist — his book about his tough childhood, This Boy's Life, became a film starring Robert DeNiro and Leonard DiCaprio — but his stories are just as strong as his nonfiction work. A misstep or two aside, Our Story Begins is compelling work.

Fans of the dark humor and grim whimsy of Augusten Burroughs’ previous memoirs — the filmified Running With Scissors, the underrated Dry — will be completely, utterly, repeatedly shocked by A Wolf At The Table. It’s still a memoir, the really true truth as Burroughs remembers it, but it’s also a horror story. Good versus evil? Sort of. More like boy versus monster. There’s our young protagonist, a kid starved for attention and barely old enough to understand what he’s up against. And in this corner, his dad, a full-fledged adult covered with bloody sores and fueled by rage, alcohol and erratic, sociopathic cruelty. Burroughs’ slow, deliberate narration — occasionally interspersed by musical interludes from Patti Smith, Ingrid Michaelson, Tegan Quin and Sea Wolf — plays every heartbreak for maximum effect, building the tension, helping you brace yourself for the next time the monster appears out of the fog. Although time and distance have allowed the author to turn his greatest pains into a spellbinding piece of literature, it’s clear he’s never forgiven the physical and psychological abuse he suffered at the hands of his (now deceased) father, or the shame and double-life living that came with it. The sentences drip with anger. The narrator is still seething, grasping for answers. You might quip that Burroughs has written more memoirs than any 40-something has a right to, but this intensely personal book could not exist without the others, and it is his best yet.

The celebrated humorist travels the world in search of. . . something.
With a title inspired by a Japanese safety pamphlet, David Sedaris's new book of essays whips through time and space traveling, in no particular order, through his past and present. Readers familiar with his work will enjoy more tales of Sedaris' childhood in North Carolina. In "The Understudy," he recalls the incredulousness with which he and his siblings observed a live-in babysitter named Mrs. Peacock who collected dolls and demanded that her charges scratch her back with what appeared to be a monkey paw attached to a stick. Sedaris mines his present life for anecdotes that reflect his witty touch on sometimes-macabre subjects — like the practical difficulties of purchasing a human skeleton as a present for his boyfriend.

Are there as many laugh-out-loud moments as in prior books such as Me Talk Pretty One Day? No — occasionally his transitions and endings feel a bit stretched. But Sedaris at his weaker moments is still more fun to read than many other humor essayists at their best. The book, practically a collection of travel essays, is an especially enjoyable read during the summer, when there's more time to dream about far-flung locales like Rotterdam, Tokyo, Normandy, Sydney and North Carolina, and to enjoy Sedaris' distinct way of observing them.

A sensible argument for sensible eating.
If science journalist Pollan’s bestseller The Omnivore’s Dilemma detailed the industrialized food systems eroding our environment, this follow-up serves as a companion guide through the morass of the supermarket back to the eating patterns that will truly nourish us. First, though, Pollan takes aim at “nutritionism,” the Western belief system that focuses on the trees of individual nutrients as opposed to the forest of our overall diets. Take, for example, the omega-3 fatty acids that Americans tend not to eat in their natural form (fish), but instead inject into orange juice in a misguided attempt to Eat Right. The food industry, of course, has happily indulged this way of thinking, pumping out overly processed pseudo-foods that tout improbable health claims. Not exactly better living through chemistry.

Despite our interest in nutrition, Westerners are fatter and more prone to diabetes, heart disease and cancer than ever before. Pollan’s proposition is that we rethink our habits — the microwaved Hot Pockets scarfed in the car, the bingeing on low-fat/low-sugar/low-satisfaction cookies, the obsession with the antioxidant of the week — and instead return to the traditional diets of our ancestors. (Here Pollan asserts that it doesn’t matter if they were Italian or Aborigine as just about every native culture had a healthier approach to food than we do today.) Narrated evenly by Scott Brick, it’s a well-reasoned argument, as plain and sensible as a plate of broccoli.

The co-founder of string field theory explains anti-gravity to the rest of us.
Funny thing about theoretical physicists: Most of them seem to know how to talk to n00bs. This isn't rocket science — wormholes are far more complicated — and yet somehow accredited brainiacs like Michio Kaku find a way a putting things so as we c'n unnerstand em. For him, maybe it's because he's never lost touch with his inner Trekkie. In Physics of the Impossible, the co-founder of string field theory is just as handy referencing Gene Roddenberry and Douglas Adams as he is Einstein and Hawking. Which is the point here: to examine science fiction's most imaginative plot devices — anti-gravity, teleporters, the Death Star — and cook up some way they might become a reality (in, say, a couple centuries). Often, the path takes Kaku to some wonderfully messed up places: "To make Harry Potter invisible, one would have to liquefy him, boil him to create steam, crystallize him, heat him again, and then cool him off, all of which would be quite difficult to accomplish, even for a wizard." Brilliant.

The enlightened anthropologist's view of traffic — or Freakonomics on wheels
Driving can make us do funny things. Have you ever been cut off and then sped up to catch view of the offending driver to see if he looked as stupid as you thought he must be? Felt like you were a saintly human being just for letting someone merge in front of you? Cursed a traffic jam even though you were clearly part of the problem? You'll find these situations all addressed in Tom Vanderbilt's Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Essentially Freakonomics on wheels, this well-researched, conversational book investigates why we act the way we do on the road. The psychological tendencies explored in the book are backed up by countless studies and entertaining historical anecdotes (such as the Roman emperors' futile attempts to improve their own bad traffic). When you listen on your iPod or at home, the statistical elements of the audiobook can become a bit dull — it's much more engaging when you actually play Traffic, yes, in traffic, when the many foibles and idiosyncrasies of life in cars can be observed first-hand. In fact, it may diminish road-rage when the absurdity of driving's emotional aspects are addressed in the field. You'll feel like an enlightened anthropologist and not just someone stuck in the slow lane.

Another captivating, time-skipping romp through history with Vowell
"History is written by the writers."

Sarah Vowell could never be BFFs with the 17th-century puritans who colonized Massachusetts Bay — they wrote the book(s) on American intolerance and exceptionalism, she sighs — but she can't help but dig their longwindedness. Those Church of England refugees were always posturing and sermonizing, and then running home to write in their diaries about it. Which makes them ideal subjects for Vowell's trademark time-skipping historical romps, and good excuses to reference the Brady Bunch and Happy Days Thanksgiving episodes. Where text books have often rendered John Winthrop and Roger Williams as paper-thin bores, The Wordy Shipmates, informed by all kinds of journals, logs and letters, paints them as fascinatingly literate anti-heroes, sympathetic for their flaws, laudable for their courage in the face of hardship, and devout as hell. If you're already a fan of Vowell's sly wit (and Lisa Simpson voice), this one is essential, captivating, more than worthy. And, if you're not, it's time to set sail.

Sharp African stories from a promising new voice
Given the weight of his compelling New Yorker short stories and the fact that he was shortlisted for the "African Booker," Uwem Akpan's first collection, Say You're One of Them, comes with high expectations. Akpan, a Jesuit priest turned writer, grandly delivers. His stories of an impoverished Africa are bracing without being heavy-handed, and the strong audio narration might make you forget you're listening to someone reading a book.

From the horrors of the Rwandan genocide to a mother letting her son sniff glue in order to stave off hunger pangs on "Ex-mas" night, Akpan's themes are bleak. Yet his light touch and skillful presentation make the stories more engrossing than depressing. Part of this is due to Akpan's narrators, as each of the tales in this collection is seen through the eyes of a child. Without sentimentalizing his subjects, Akpan uses his young protagonists' naïveté to both deconstruct the lives of the adults and imbue his stories with hope. The results are daringly honest, energetic narratives.

Much has been made of Akpan's dialogue, which mixes French and English with pidgins and African languages like Idaatcha and Egun. Although the mélange of tongues can be difficult to navigate on the page, the audio version shines. Wire cast member Dion Graham and actor Robin Miles draw on African accents and rich impressions to render the dialogue at once foreign and comprehensible.

Say You're One of Them marks the powerful debut of a talented voice in contemporary fiction. One longs to see which side of Africa Akpan will explore next.

Pucker up, all you hopeless romantics. Prepare to share a big wet kiss with the folks from McSweeney's. For this second installment of Field Recordings, created exclusively for eMusic, the venerated indie book and magazine publisher has combed its archives to create a seductive story collection subtitled Sweet Nothings and Essential Slow Jams. So think of this audiobook as a literary mixtape, one that strikes the perfect balance of tender, brainy and lusty tracks, a combination designed to make both the mind and the pulse race.

McSweeney's creates an intimate mood by delving outside the impersonal confines of a studio: the five storytellers record their pieces in locations of their own choosing, an effect that allows them to inject their own personalities into their readings. Sheila Heti takes narrative freedom to new heights, bringing a fresh perspective to two of her jarring fairytales. From her New York City apartment, Heti first makes a gleefully NC-17 proposal to read while engaging in other more, um, athletic activities with her boyfriend. Her plan, however, quickly devolves into something totally different, making for the first time in audiobook history that a narrator interrupts her reading in order to bicker with her significant other. What better way to frame a pair of stories that challenge the concept of happily-ever-after than by catching a slice of the author's own romantic travails on tape?

Pia Erhardt also uses setting to great effect, recounting her heartwrenching story from the Katrina-wracked shores of Lake Pontchartrain. The sound of the lake lapping beneath Erhardt's confessional narration could almost be an ambient nature effect on a meditation record. But the water carries a threatening undercurrent; the story, titled "How It Floods," details the efforts of a woman to prepare for an approaching hurricane even as she tries to navigate her own tumultuous love life.

The collection's most romantic piece is Tony D'Souza's "The Man Who Married a Tree." The story is just as the title implies: a pseudo-oral history documenting the intense connection between a plant and the man who loved her. D'Souza's astounding performance finds him assuming the roles townspeople, animals, inanimate objects, even God. Try not to sob when the title character's sister reveals, "I loved an elm. Loved him my whole life."

To narrate "After the Disaster," Ben Ehrenreich sits in the relative calm (with the exception of a passing helicopter) of Elysian Park in Los Angeles. His peaceful location provides a sharp contrast to his post-apocalyptic tale of two lost souls and the giant squid they rescue from the Museum of Natural History. After carrying the mollusk through the ruined streets of Manhattan, Bruno and Mildred's fates and bodies soon become as entwined in each other as they are in the squid’s tentacles.

Be sure to stick around for comic relief from Chris Bachelder, who reads his epistolary story perched near a mailbox. "My Son, There Exists Another World Alongside Our Own" is a hilarious missive from a father who attempts to teach his sexually curious son a valuable lesson beyond birds and bees: "there exists a parallel universe precisely identical to ours, but for the fact that its inhabitants engage in frequent, vigorous and thrillingly filthy congress." His advice? Go forth into this other world where people are actually engaging in sexual activity rather than just imagining it: "Enter it. Penetrate it. . . Seek asylum, citizenship on the other side." The second volume of Field Recordings echoes that advice, encouraging immersion and citizenship in the amorous, and offering a hint of what might happen when that occurs.

McSweeney's liner notes for Notes from the Field are available as a .pdf here; a hi-res version of the cover is available here

The story of 20th-century classical music
The often-misunderstood world of 20th-century classical music is fortunate to have an advocate as capable as Alex Ross. A critic for The New Yorker, a devoted music blogger and a recent MacArthur Genius, Ross has taken the lead in popularizing contemporary classical without dumbing it down. The Rest Is Noise, his first book, is the rare layperson’s history that can also satisfy the experts. Telling the story of classical music since 1900, the book conveys Ross’s delight in this music without sacrificing the intellectual rigor it often demands.

Ross starts with Mahler and Strauss, whose music formed a bridge that crossed from the extravagant Romanticism of the late 19th century to the strange modern music of Schoenberg, Cage, Stockhausen and beyond. Although the music is always the center of his focus, Ross also delivers stirring portraits of the composers behind it: especially strong are his evocations of Schoenberg, the uncompromising prophet of atonality who nonetheless craved popular respect, and Shostakovich, the maverick and innovator who played an anxious game of cat and mouse with the Soviet authorities for the better part of his career.

Throughout, Ross’s story is enriched by an awareness of the greater cultural trends against which 20th-century classical music was composed. Beyond the obligatory inclusion of the two World Wars, Ross also shows how the music was impacted by popular music, literature, social and religious movements, and more. His breadth of knowledge is further proven by an exhaustive roll call of composers, although one of the book’s few flaws is that too many of them are jammed in near the end. Several years in the making, The Rest Is Noise is a substantial work, a popular history of 20th century classical music against which all further entries in the field will have to be judged.

The gripping debut volume in the now-famous trilogy
In this gripping debut — the first installment of a trilogy swiftly becoming a publishing sensation — disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist accepts a confusing but lucrative freelance assignment: move from Stockholm to a rural town in northern Sweden to help the elderly Henrik Vanger, head of a once-dominant industrial family, and find out what happened to his grand-niece Harriet, who disappeared 40 years ago. The case is a commanding twist on the famed locked-room mystery — due to unusual circumstances, the suspect list is limited only to members of the Vangar family, a deeply twisted clan with a harrowing set of secrets. Eventually, Blomkvist teams up with the titular heroine of the book, a savvy but anti-social technological savant 25 years his junior. The unlikely pair tackles not only Harriet's case, which turns out far grislier than expected, but also the corrupt corporation that caused Blomkvist's professional downfall.

Stieg Larsson, who died suddenly shortly after finishing his trilogy, was, like Blomkvist, a journalist and political activist, and his treatment of corruption both large and small is intelligent and piercing. The translation is imperfect, but stiff prose is easily overlooked thanks to masterful plotting, an evocative setting and a set of complex heroes whose deep flaws make them all the more appealing.

An astonishingly human-level account of the War on Terror that makes you feel it in your gut
Dexter Filkins wasn't there from the beginning, exactly, but for a Western journalist, he was definitely one of the first. "There" meaning the front lines of what came to be called the War on Terror and its arenas of a Taliban-ruled Afghanistan and the post-invasion Iraq. Filkins, a New York Times correspondent, chronicles his time — running from about 1998 to 2007 or so — in both countries in The Forever War, constructing beautiful, immersive vignettes that recall Michael Herr's great Vietnam book Dispatches. Nothing can touch the manic energy of Dispatches, those little vignettes snowballing and cascading into an orgy of despair and violence, but The Forever War is one of the most human accounts of war and its victims that I have ever read.

Here's the best way I can think to illustrate this: whereas any other Western writer might see a battle between Afghan warlords and the Taliban as a fight between "warring tribal factions" waged by "a young Taliban fighter," Filkins sees people. He talks to them, shares their names, sees past the cultural divides. He can write about talking to a powerful Afghan warlord and realizing that the man was a hick — a hick, he actually uses the word — and uneducated, and how the warlord realized that Filkins realized that, and the way the conversation shifted as a result. It’s the way you might recount to a friend the interaction you had with someone at the mall. Somehow, Filkins always connects on a very human level. It's startling.

That said, Filkins doesn't hesitate to condemn or cast judgment. Certainly he’s more of a moral relativist than anyone in the American government, but you'd be surprised by the hard lines he’s willing to draw. He sees evil. Not on a cultural or political level but, again, on a human level. And we can sense from Filkins' experienced, weathered voice that this is a man who has seen pain and hard times, this is a voice that is qualified, that we can trust.

Filkins puts himself into his story. He talks about daily life in Baghdad, and its rapid disappearance after L. Paul Bremer's disastrous decisions as head of the Coalition Provision Authority. He talks about his friendships with both American military leaders on the ground and the leaders of both the Iraqi government and resistance. He even has nice things to say about Ahmad Chalabi, praising his wit, intelligence and conversation skills, all the while investigating and questioning his relationship with Iran. (Filkins even visits Tehran with the former INC leader.)

There are plenty of Iraq books that offer a damning, expansive view on all of this occupation's flaws, but there are few that make you feel it in your gut. That share the utter horrors of war, the way it has punished the normal people in Kabul or Tikrit. Filkins doesn't have answers. But he can explain why war is cultural in Afghanistan (Afghans were shocked when the US military and then Al Qaeda began fighting there; they were trying to kill each other, whereas for Afghans, war is closer to a very serious game of pickup basketball. Victory and defeat are not measured by death, but in honor.). He can explain the insane lives that Iraqi interpreters must live. He can tell us about the heartbreaking death of an American soldier. He can explain this forever war, and the horrific costs it has ravaged. For that, we owe him our thanks.