Best Books 2005

By Tania Barnes, Margaret Heilbrun, Barbara Hoffert, Heather McCormack, Mirela Roncevic, & Wilda Williams -- Library Journal, 1/15/2006

Shakespeare and sharks. Mad guitarists and not-so-mad scientists. A history of post–World War II Europe and a novel-as-history of Europe before and during the war. Sound intriguing? The 28 books on LJ's best books list for 2005 cover all this and more. In addition, you'll find an enhanced selection of top genre fiction; this year, we've spiced up the proceedings by adding thrillers to the “Best” list. And “Best How-To” returns after last year's successful debut.

Ackroyd, Peter. Shakespeare: The Biography. Nan. A. Talese: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51139-6. $32.50.

Shakespeare biographies are to publishing what the little black dress is to fashion: they never go out of style. In this magnum opus, British historian Ackroyd wastes no time in convincing us what impossible-to-confirm facts we should go by, instead delving deeply and passionately into the world that surrounded and inspired the greatest man of letters. No stone is left unturned and no reader unaffected. (LJ 8/05)

Brookes, Tim. Guitar: An American Life. Grove. ISBN 0-8021-1796-1. $24.

For every “proper” guitar player out there, there are 50 air guitarists, all of them part of a long social history that NPR commentator Brookes recounts for the first time here. In his quest to replace his beloved Fylde, he combines the wisdom and wisecracks of master luthier Rick Davis with the stories of players nameless and famous. A most democratic passion sounds loud and clear. (LJ 4/1/05)

Casey, Susan. The Devil's Teeth: A True Story of Obsession and Survival Among America's Great White Sharks. Holt. ISBN 0-8050-7581-X. $25.

Just 30 miles west of San Francisco lie the barren and spooky Farallon Islands, where every September the largest concentration of great white sharks in the world gathers to feed on the local seals. On their tails are the dedicated biologists who seek to understand these mysterious creatures better. Part natural history, part adventure story, this is a gripping, unforgettable read. (Web-exclusive review, LJ 7/5/05)

Clarke, Erskine. Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic. Yale Univ. ISBN 0-300-10867-2. $35.

Slaveholders in antebellum Georgia, Charles Colcock Jones and his family have been expertly studied before (in Robert Manson Myers's 1972 National Book Award winner, Children of Pride). But Clarke digs further into the primary sources, meticulously tracing the intertwined stories of enslaved and enslavers, the latter aware of their sins as oppressors yet ultimately unable to renounce their way of life. With building power, a multigenerational chronicle of heartbreak unfolds in white and black. (LJ 9/15/05)

Cross, Charles R. Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix. Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0028-6. $24.95.

Cross (Heavier Than Heaven) took the road less traveled by biographers, using an economy of words in the context of several years' research. The result exudes empathy and respect for a musician who has too often been mythologized and, in effect, dehumanized. Here you'll meet Hendrix's impoverished though persevering family—his troubled mother, father, brothers, and sisters. And, for the first time, you'll meet Jimi. (LJ 7/05)

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: How Societies Choose To Fail or Succeed. Viking. ISBN 0-670-03337-5. $29.95.

Diamond's Pulitzer Prize–winning Guns, Germs, and Steel examined the environmental and technological factors that led to the predominance of Western civilizations. In his equally impressive follow-up, he studies the collapse of past societies—Easter Island, the Maya and Anasazi, and a Viking colony in Greenland—and offers ideas on how we might avoid their tragic fate. (LJ 2/15/05)

Didion, Joan. The Year of Magical Thinking. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4314-X. $23.95.

Some may say that to draw inspiration for writing from one's own life is too easy, but those who have done so know better. This is more than a memoir about a well-known writer's acceptance of her husband's death and her daughter's devastating illness. It is a fragile narrative of an equally fragile woman standing naked before herself and allowing grief to lead the way. (LJ 9/1/05)

Doyon, Stephanie. The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole. S. & S. ISBN 0-7432-7133-5 [ISBN 978-0-7432-7133-2]. $24.

Why would anyone want to be the Greatest Man in a sad-sack town inhabited by losers and underachievers? But golden boy Robert Cutler strives year after year to be Cedar Hole's model citizen until a tragic accident gives his overshadowed rival, Francis “Spud” Pinkham, a chance to prove his worth. A charming and touching adult debut from young adult author Doyon, who once studied with Richard Russo. (LJ 7/05)

Eames, Andrew. The 8:55 to Baghdad: From London to Iraq on the Trail of Agatha Christie. Overlook, dist. by Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 1-58567-673-X. $24.95.

In 2002, British journalist Eames boarded the Orient Express in London and embarked on a journey across Europe into Asia. His mission was not impossible but highly ambitious: to re-create Agatha Christie's 1928 journey from London to Iraq, which inspired her novel Murder on the Orient Express. The result is at once a reverent yet clear-headed tribute to Christie and a travelog of the highest order. (LJ 5/15/05)

Fox, William Price. Satchel Paige's America. Univ. of Alabama. ISBN 0-8173-5189-2. pap. $16.95.

Novelist Fox here returns to early 1970s Kansas City, MO, where he'd been sent to write an article on baseball pitching great Satchel Paige. Following Paige from bowling alley bars to barbecue joints to his home, Fox listened to a man who never stopped pitching stories—even as he plotted his next barnstorming tour of small-town baseball diamonds. Now we have a lively, moving, and often hilarious tale of an encounter 30 years ago and of a life richly led. (Baseball roundup, LJ 2/1/05)

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. S. & S. ISBN 0-684-82490-6 [ISBN 978-0-684-82490-1]. $35.

After a professional stumble in 2002, Goodwin redeems herself with this page-turner in which Lincoln gains the 1860 Republican presidential nomination over the leading contenders—Salmon P. Chase, Edward S. Bates, and William H. Seward, characterized here with force and depth—and then invites them to join his cabinet. This gesture of conciliation, emblematic of Lincoln's skills, enabled him to forge a leadership that could reckon with the Union's disintegration. Related by a magnificent storyteller, this history reads like one of those 19th-century novels you can't put down. (LJ 10/15/05)

Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. Knopf. ISBN 1-4000-4339-5. $24.

In still, exquisitely rendered language, Kathy H. recalls her lost youth with difficult Ruth and sweet, confused Tommy at Hailsham, an English estate one might call idyllic—were the students not clones who in later life will be harvested for their vital organs. What's horrific about this scenario is that the protagonists aren't so horrified; how shattering to realize that we can be so easily bent. (LJ 1/05)

Judt, Tony. Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945. Penguin Pr: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 1-59420-065-3. $39.95.

Judt thinks like a fox—he knows many things—in this sweeping account of Europe's battle back from the brink in the wake of World War II. Eschewing simplistic pronouncements, Judt views the continent's triumphs (and disasters) as a series of choices made by men and not a historic inevitability or unaccounted for miracle. The result is history as it should be: convincingly argued, formidably researched, and riveting from first to last. (LJ 10/1/05)

Koeppel, Dan. To See Every Bird on Earth: A Father, a Son, and a Lifelong Obsession. Hudson Street. ISBN 1-59463-001-1. $24.95.

In the course of 25 years, the author's father traveled to more than 60 countries and saw over 7000 of the world's 9600 bird species, an accomplishment achieved only by ten other people. The price he paid? A broken marriage and two estranged sons. In trying to understand this obsession, nature writer Koeppel eventually reconciles with his distant father. Poignant and absorbing. (LJ 5/1/05)

Kotz, Nick. Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws That Changed America. Houghton. ISBN 0-618-08825-3. $26.

The genesis of the 1960s Civil Rights legislation is here told by casting light on its two major architects, with the crafty LBJ revealed as an idealist and King the humanitarian as a savvy politician. The vivid story transforms readers into listeners who could swear they are actually hearing the voices of these two great and complex men in that time before the Vietnam war overtook the Johnson White House and the Civil Rights war killed King. (LJ 11/15/04)

Leeman, Richard. Cy Twombly. Flammarion, dist. by Rizzoli. ISBN 2-080-30483-6. $125.

Few will dispute the contribution Cy Twombly has made to 20th-century art, but he remains something of an enigma; his unparalleled melding of painting, drawing, and writing to articulate both memory and desire has always defied categorization. Finally, the man gets the respect he deserves in this lavish monograph. Art historian Leeman interprets Twombly's oeuvre both thematically and chronologically, producing the most complete study of the artist to date. (LJ 9/1/05)

McEwan, Ian. Saturday. Nan A. Talese: Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51180-9. $26.

On Saturday morning, London neuro­surgeon Henry Perowne has a minor fender bender with irascible lowlife Baxter, and by evening Baxter and his cohorts have invaded Henry's house, a trespass so painfully and realistically rendered that it's almost unbearable to witness. Although superbly polished, the book is prickly with uneasy issues, and the tension here is palpable. (LJ 3/15/05)

Miller, Arthur I. Empire of the Stars: Obsession, Friendship, and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes. Houghton. ISBN 0-618-34151-X [ISBN 978-0-618-34151-1]. $26.

Behind science's greatest discoveries lie great human dramas. In 1935, leading astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington publicly rejected Indian mathematician Chandra's theory of black holes, setting back the course of physics for almost 40 years. Science historian Miller's engrossing account examines the reasons for Eddington's antagonism and reveals how Chandra was eventually vindicated with a Nobel prize. (LJ 4/1/05)

Milton, Edith. The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English. Univ. of Chicago. ISBN 0-226-52946-0. $22.50.

This multilayered enchantment is both a memoir of a German Jewish childhood transformed under the care of a family in England during World War II and a bracing rumination on the contours of remembrance, coping with destiny's odd turns, and reckoning with family and loss. Milton's descriptive prose, by turns witty and acutely empathetic, is among the most accomplished you're likely to encounter. (LJ 10/1/05)

Moehringer, J.R. The Tender Bar. Hyperion. ISBN 1-4013-0064-2. $23.95.

Those few among us who can claim to have been raised in a bar often remember only the stench of alcohol and a childhood deprived of innocence. Not Moehringer. In this poignant memoir about growing up in Manhasset, NY, the Pulitzer Prize winner declares, “Long before it legally served me, the bar saved me.” To a fatherless boy like him, it was the only place where he felt safe and understood. (LJ 9/1/05)

Pears, Iain. The Portrait. Riverhead: Putnam. ISBN 1-57322-298-4. $19.95.

An unnamed artist who has exiled himself from glittering early 1900s London paints the portrait of the critic friend who made his career, recalling their shared past and the sitter's irredeemable sins in darkly escalating language. In this startling departure from his weighty literary thrillers, Pears accomplishes the near-impossible: he turns relentless monolog into a chilling tour de force. (LJ 3/1/05)

Schickel, Richard. Elia Kazan: A Biography. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-019579-7 [ISBN 978-0-06-019579-3]. $29.95.

Film scholar Schickel is a man on a mission—to break through the rancor surrounding Kazan's House Un-American Activities Committee testimony and reveal the gifted director of stage and screen. No doubt he falters by overdefending his subject, but the moment passes because Schickel focuses his steely passion on Kazan's considerable oeuvre. Skeptics and believers alike will embrace this distinctly American artist. (LJ 9/15/05)

Smith, Zadie. On Beauty. Penguin Pr: Penguin Putnam. ISBN 1-59420-063-7. $25.95.

More than beauty, it is love that binds together art professor Howard Belsey, African American wife Kiki, and their three complicated children. And it's love that threatens to tear them apart. Smith completely revivifies a range of complex topics, from adolescent angst to identity politics, but the book's greatest gift is its perceptive and keenly felt portrait of a family remaking itself. (LJ 8/05)

Spitz, Bob. The Beatles. Little, Brown. ISBN 0-316-80352-9. $29.95.

Too much is not enough for most Beatles fans, but Spitz's eight-year, 900-page magnum opus will not cause the reading equivalent of obesity. This feast of anecdote and detail manages to go down lightly thanks to jaunty (if occasionally melodramatic) writing. Sample your favorite eras—the lads' Liverpool youths are especially juicy—or devour them all in good time. (LJ 9/15/05)

Stevenson, Talitha. Exposure. Harcourt. ISBN 0-15-101162-1. $24.

Stylish yet penetrating, this work portrays the Langford family—the picture of smug contentment until an attack on noted judge Alistair unlocks a lifetime of deception. Meanwhile, immigrant couple Goran and Mila, the pet project of Langford son Luke, struggle with fictions of their own. A morality tale? Yes, but this is especially affecting as a portrait of people who perpetually sabotage themselves. (LJ 8/05)

Van Ronk, Dave with Elijah Wald. The Mayor of MacDougal Street: A Memoir. Da Capo. ISBN 0-306-81407-2. $26.

If you thought Bob Dylan's Chronicles emanated atmosphere, try Van Ronk's salty, seamless, and often hilarious re-creation of Greenwich Village during the blues and folk revival of the 1960s. Where His Bobness could be frustratingly oblique, Van Ronk—a beloved guitarist/songwriter in his own right—is concrete to the point of 3-D. The “mystical” veil shrouding the era is thrown back to reveal kids fumbling at art, sex, and politics. (LJ 6/1/05)

Vollmann, William. Europe Central. Viking. ISBN 0-670-03392-8. $39.95.

Slated as an LJ Best Book even before it won the National Book Award, Vollmann's rich and original work links the stories of those giants of 20th-century totalitarianism, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Creating (or re-creating) the voices of artists, generals, and ordinary folk, Vollmann doesn't write historical fiction but history as fiction. A breathtaking accomplishment.

Ward, Peter. Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search for (and Synthesis of) Alien Life. Viking. ISBN 0-670-03458-4. $25.95.

From the tiniest microbe to the largest mammal, life as we know it on Earth is DNA-based. But what if there are other “alien” life forms here and out there in the universe? It might sound like science fiction, but Ward, a principal investigator for NASA's Astrobiology Institute, reports on the cutting-edge research that seeks to redefine life. Especially provocative is his proposal for a new taxonomy open to nonearth and synthetic life forms. (LJ 11/15/05)