Best Books 2008

Listen up, Barack Obama! You'll find useful reading on LJ's annual Best Books list, from Stephen Hess's What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect to Mahvish Rukhsana Khan's My Guantánamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me and Raja Shehadeh's Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. It's not all politics, though. From fiction debuts by Uwem Akpan, Nam Le, and Saša Stanišic´ to works from masters Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, and Marilynne Robinson, from a biography of Shakespeare's wife to a chronicle of Sixties “girls like us,” and from accounts of divorce and madness to hot thrillers and cool how-to, this list has enough to occupy anyone for the coming year.

Akpan, Uwem. Say You're One of Them. Little, Brown. ISBN 978-0-316-11378-6. $23.99.

Forthright language, scalding scenarios: an uncle tries to sell his niece and nephew into slavery, a girl sees her family slaughtered in Rwanda. Akpan, a Nigerian-based Jesuit priest, triumphs with a debut collection that illustrates the bone-crushing fate of Africa's children. (LJ 5/1/08)

Alameddine, Rabih. The Hakawati. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26679-8. $25.95.

Assuming the role of a hakawati, a Middle Eastern storyteller, Alameddine takes us on a magic-carpet ride as he weaves together five separate narratives that revolve around an extended Armenian-Druze-Lebanese family in war-weary Beirut. A spellbinding tour de force. (LJ 3/1/08)

Aslam, Nadeem. The Wasted Vigil. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26842-6. $25.

At his home in Afghanistan, English-born doctor Marcus Caldwell gathers stray souls whose interlocking stories illuminate the awful complexities of conflict in the Middle East. Told in lucid, shatteringly gorgeous prose, this novel reminds us that no one side holds the truth. (LJ 8/08)

Barcott, Bruce. The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight To Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird. Random. ISBN 978-1-4000-6293-5. $26.

It sounds like an ecothriller: a circus performer–turned–zoo owner battles a corrupt Central American government and corporate interests to stop dam construction that threatens the last scarlet macaws in Belize. But Barcott's tale, a lively combination of travelog, history, and nature writing, is narrative nonfiction at its best. (LJXpress 2/5/08)

Brown, Janelle. All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. Spiegel & Grau. ISBN 978-0-385-52401-8. $24.95.

On the day her wealthy husband's pharmaceutical company goes public, Janice Miller and her two daughters find their own lives going bust. An incisive and seriously funny debut novel about a Silicon Valley family in crisis. (LJXpress 6/17/08)

Carr, David. The Night of the Gun: A Reporter Investigates the Darkest Story of His Life. His Own. S. & S. ISBN 978-1-4165-4152-3. $26.

New York Times columnist Carr found the devil—and worse—in the details of his former life as a junkie. Three years of reporting and videotaped interviews resulted in this page-turning reconstruction of his degradation and eventual redemption. As close to the “truth” as we've come in memoir and totally addictive. (LJ 9/1/08)

Faust, Drew Gilpin. This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-40404-7. $27.95.

Faust meticulously explores how Americans, North and South, ordinary and exceptional, at home and in battle, coped with death physically, clinically, spiritually, and creatively as the nation's most deadly war overtook them. Faust's calm and sure-handed book has a building power all its own. (LJ 11/15/07)

Finnamore, Suzanne. Split: A Memoir of Divorce. Dutton: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 978-0-525-95046-2. $24.95.

Best-selling novelist Finnamore (The Zygote Chronicles) never saw her divorce coming; to make sense of it, she dissects her once-broken heart with an astonishing calm and precision, breathing new life into a tramped genre. Fellow divorcées and connoisseurs of the English language will savor each exquisitely cut piece. (LJ 1/08)

Greenberg, Michael. Hurry Down Sunshine: A Memoir. Other. ISBN 978-1-59051-191-6. $22.

In this hyperreal reenactment of his daughter's psychotic breakdown one summer in New York, Times Literary Supplement columnist Greenberg reclaims the word crazy— thrown around a little too lightly in our culture. The prose is so fluid that it transports us into the author's head, making his shock, fear, and love our own. (LJ 7/08)

Greer, Germaine. Shakespeare's Wife. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-153715-8. $26.95.

Little is known about Shakespeare's wife, Anne Hathaway, yet academia has deemed her a villain. Armed with enviable knowledge of 16th-century Stratford and an imagination as intrepid as her statements, Greer “corrects” an image of Hathaway based on bias and rewrites history. (LJ 4/1/08)

Hess, Stephen. What Do We Do Now? A Workbook for the President-Elect. Brookings Inst. ISBN 978-0-8157-3655-4. pap. $16.95.

With presidential transition-team experience going back to Eisenhower, Hess distills all that he's learned—and gives us a page-turner accessibly combining serious purpose and fun. The result will appeal to armchair president-elects Left, Right, and Center as they become absorbed in the all-important task of setting up their administration, from picking their desk—to those essential cabinets! (LJ 10/1/08)

Khan, Mahvish Rukhsana. My Guantánamo Diary: The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. PublicAffairs: Perseus. ISBN 978-1-58648-498-9. $25.95.

An interpreter for Afghan prisoners at Gitmo, Afghan American law student Khan describes the degradation and abuse related by the captives she met, as well as her own subsequent trips to Afghanistan in their support. A disturbing and personal record of a nightmare that isn't over yet. (LJ 6/15/08)

Larsson, Stieg. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26975-1. $24.95.

Larsson's gripping debut thriller about the decades-old disappearance of a teenage heiress exposes the darkness beneath Sweden's sunny blond veneer and introduces us to the memorable Lisbeth Salander, a tattooed, antisocial computer hacker. (LJ 8/08)

Le, Nam. The Boat. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26808-2. $22.95.

Is Le a 14-year-old assassin in Colombia? A crabby if celebrated painter? An American woman in Tehran? Actually, the stories in this first collection are so piercingly told that it's easy to believe that the Vietnamese-born, Australian-raised author is all these things—and more. (LJ 5/1/08)

Lee, Jennifer. The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food. Twelve: Hachette. ISBN 978-0-446-58007-6. $24.99.

Curious about a Powerball drawing in which several people nationwide won a lottery after getting identical lucky numbers in their fortune cookies, New York Times reporter Lee traveled worldwide to investigate the secrets of Chinese restaurants. In this fascinating book, she even finds General Tso's birthplace and provides the history of chop suey. (LJ 2/15/08)

Le Guin, Ursula K. Lavinia. Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-15-101424-8. $24.

She was a silent minor character in The Aeneid, but in Le Guin's brilliant reimagining of the last six books of Virgil's epic poem, the Latin princess who marries the Trojan warrior Aeneas and sets the stage for the founding of Rome finds her eloquent voice. (LJ 3/1/08)

Lehane, Dennis. The Given Day. Morrow. ISBN 978-0-688-16318-1. $27.95.

Lehane's ambitious historical novel about the 1919 Boston police strike displays all the qualities of his acclaimed crime fiction: a compelling narrative, richly drawn characters, and an abiding love for his hometown. Readers will not soon forget the opening scene, as Babe Ruth and his white teammates play a racially charged pickup baseball game with some talented African American amateurs. (LJ 8/08)

McMurtry, Larry. Books: A Memoir. S. & S. ISBN 978-1-4165-8334-9. $24.

McMurtry isn't just the author of 28 novels; he also owns and operates a Texas-based bookstore that stocks 400,000 used and rare books. In this charming work, fittingly called a memoir, he writes persuasively about the transformative power of the written word. (LJ 8/08)

Morrison, Toni. A Mercy. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26423-7. $23.95.

Is it truly a mercy for a mother to give up her daughter to a less fearsome owner? Nobel laureate Morrison explores that awful question in coruscating prose, tracing the human cost of slavery back to Colonial America while reminding us of love's binding power. It's almost unimaginable that Morrison could best herself—but she has. (LJ 10/15/08)

Norman, Philip. John Lennon: The Life. Ecco: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-075401-3. $34.95.

After Shout!, his renowned biography of the Beatles, Norman homes in on the band's most mythic member. Just when you think no new information about Lennon can be uncovered, Norman presents a respectful if warts-and-all portrayal using a torrent of details to re-create Lennon's spheres of experience. (LJ 8/08)

Pérez-Reverte, Arturo. The Painter of Battles. Random. ISBN 978-1-4000-6598-1. $25.

As a former war photographer paints a magnificent mural, a man whose life he has ruined with a single snapshot approaches and pledges to kill him. Thus begins Pérez-Reverte's ruthlessly examined tale of moral responsibility. Like the photographer himself, who once lay in wait with a sniper to capture his handicraft, we're brought uncomfortably close to human violence. (LJ 1/08)

The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture. Phaidon. ISBN 978-0-7148-4874-7. $195.

Disregard for a moment this book's shelf-challenging size (18" x 12") and steep price and focus instead on why it will leave you breathless. This sweeping visual survey of the world's greatest buildings and architects goes way beyond the obvious, reminding us that creativity triumphs in the most unlikely places.

Robinson, Marilynne. Home. Farrar. ISBN 978-0-374-29910-1. $25.

As she unfolds the story of bad-boy Jack's return to his family, Robinson effortlessly clarifies both fraught family relationships and the larger issues of mid-20th-century America in prose that gathers strength like a slow-moving but ominous storm. (LJ 8/08)

Robinson, Roxana. Cost. Sarah Crichton: Farrar. ISBN 978-0-374-27187-9. $25.

Art professor Julia doesn't know it, but her life is about to plummet straight to hell. And you'll plummet with her when you discover that her offbeat younger son has become a heroin addict. Raw, pitch-dark, harrowingly frank—and absolutely astonishing. (LJ 4/1/08)

Roth, Philip. Indignation. Houghton. ISBN 978-0-547-05484-1. $26.

Roth's 29th book may be brief, but it's as poignant and absorbing a novel as one could want. Tracking dutiful Marcus Messner's flight from smothering parental concern in 1950s Newark, NJ, Roth once again demonstrates his unerring ability to capture a young man's coming of age within a larger historical context. (LJ 9/1/08)

Shaffer, Mary Ann & Annie Barrows. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Dial: Random. ISBN 978-0-385-34099-1. $22.

In 1946 England, writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a man living on Guernsey, recently liberated from Nazi occupation. So begins a correspondence that introduces Juliet to members of a unique reading group. Charming and optimistic without trivializing its dark subject, this debut epistolary novel celebrates the power of books to connect and comfort people during difficult times. (LJ7/08)

Shehadeh, Raja. Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape. Scribner. ISBN 978-1-4165-6966-4. pap. $15.

Palestinian lawyer and human rights activist Shehadeh is a passionate walker, but over the years his free-ranging hikes around the ancient hills near his hometown of Ramallah on the West Bank have become increasingly restricted and dangerous. A moving and beautiful elegy for a lost landscape and its people. (LJ 5/15/08)

Saša Stanišic´. How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone. Grove. ISBN 978-0-8021-1866-0. $24.

In incandescent, brilliantly warped language, Stanišic´ captures the horror of war from a child's perspective. No gritty realism here, just evidence of the power of memory and, more tellingly, of great writing. (LJ 4/15/08)

Steichen, Edward (photogs.) & Todd Brandow & others (text). Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography. Thames & Hudson, dist. by Norton. ISBN 978-0-393-06626-5. $100.

Replete with arresting reproductions of both favorites and little-known gems, all buttressed by a range of scholarly essays, this weighty tome serves as the definitive portrayal of Steichen's life, work, and enduring legacy. (LJ 4/15/08)

Steinmeyer, Jim. Charles Fort: The Man Who Invented the Supernatural. Tarcher: Penguin. ISBN 978-1-58542-640-9. $24.95.

Steinmeyer, designer and historian of magic, conjures forth Charles Fort (1874–1932)—no illusion but an intellectual eccentric who sought to record the historically and scientifically inexplicable in books still in print today. Just as Fort documented the paranormal, so Steinmeyer gives us this elusive and singular man, leaving us hungry to study him further. And that is true biography! (LJ 3/15/08)

Stolzenburg, William. Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators. Bloomsbury. ISBN 978-1-59691-299-1. $24.99.

Lions, and tigers, and bears, oh, my! Predators may be deadly, but their role atop the food chain is essential to a healthy environment. According to wildlife journalist Stolzenburg, their gradual extinction at the hands of humanity is resulting in ecologically devastated landscapes and leaving us bereft of nature's majesty. A powerful, important book. (LJ 7/08)

Strout, Elizabeth. Olive Kitteredge. Random. ISBN 978-1-4000-6208-9. $25.

In 13 linked stories that delineate the life and times of fussy but sympathetic Olive Kitteredge, Strout beautifully captures the sticky little issues of small-town life—and the entire universe of human longing, disappointment, and love. (LJ 2/1/08)

Vanderbilt, Tom. Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us). Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-26478-7. $24.95.

If only all traffic proceeded with the ease and flow it does here with Vanderbilt in the driver's seat. Under his guidance, you'll go on excursions to those intersections where the highway and human behavior meet. Just be prepared to stop in amazement at the false assumptions we share about our skills on the road. (LJ 6/15/08)

Veitch, Kate. Without a Backward Glance. Plume: Penguin Group (USA). ISBN 978-0-452-28947-5. pap. $14.

On Christmas Eve 1967 in Melbourne, Australia, a young wife and mother leaves to buy lights for the Christmas tree and never returns. Four decades later, her four children still grapple with their sense of abandonment. This heartfelt and beautifully written novel will resonate with many readers. (LJ 4/15/08)

Weller, Sheila. Girls Like Us: Carole King, Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon—and the Journey of a Generation. Atria: S. & S. ISBN 978-0-7434-9147-1. $27.95.

Weller deftly weaves together the biographies of Brooklyn-raised working-class everywoman Carole King, small-town Canadian girl next door/bohemian poet Joni Mitchell, and misfit amidst an aristocratic East Coast family Carly Simon. The Brill Building, drugs, coffeehouse folk clubs, surprise pregnancies, James Taylor—it's all here in this smooth, information-packed cross section of a fervent and varied cultural milieu. (LJ Xpress Reviews, 4/8/08)

Wood, James. How Fiction Works. Farrar. ISBN 978-0-374-17340-1. $24.

What does it take to write the next great American novel? Novelist/critic Wood should know. What starts out as merely numbered statements (123 in total) about everything from creating fictional characters to developing dialog ultimately emerges as both a novelist's manifesto and a witty history of the novel. (LJ 5/15/08)

Zimbardo, Philip & John Boyd. The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life. Free Pr: S. & S. ISBN 978-1-4165-4198-1. $27.

SELF-HELP gets respectable with this rigorously researched, crisply presented investigation of how attitudes toward time affect every aspect of human life. The authors help readers determine their personal time zone before revealing how to “reclaim yesterday, enjoy today, and master tomorrow.” Balance never seemed so attainable. (LJ 7/08)