On Today’s Bookshelf (XX)

My acquisition of new titles to read never ends. Here is a list of some of the hardcovers and ebooks that I am reading or acquired and added to my to-be-read pile since the last On Today’s Bookshelf post:

Nonfiction –

• Lenin: A Revolutionary Life by Christopher Read
• Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson
• The Myth of Race: The Troubling Persistence of an Unscientific Idea by Robert Wald Sussman
• Kafka’s Law: “The Trial” and American Criminal Justice by Robert P. Burns
• The Roman Guide to Slave Management: A Treatise by Nobleman Marcus Sidonius Falx by Jerry Toner
• Nixon’s Secrets: The Rise, Fall and Untold Truth about the President, Watergate, and the Pardon by Roger Stone
• Smuggler Nation: How Illicit Trade Made America by Peter Andreas
• Reinterpreting the French Revolution: A Global-Historical Perspective by Bailey Stone
• War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race by Edwin Black
• The Great Turning Points of British History: The 20 Events That Made the Nation by Michael Wood
• The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution by Francis Fukuyama
• Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy by Francis Fukuyama
• Thirteen Days in September: Carter, Begin, and Sadat at Camp David by Lawrence Wright
• Behind the Shock Machine: The Untold Story of the Notorious Milgram Psychology Experiments by Gina Perry
• World Order by Henry Kissinger
• The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry by Gary Greenberg
• Grand Turk: Sultan Mehmet II-Conqueror of Constantinople and Master of an Empire by John Freely
• The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World by Greg Grandin
• Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford’s Forgotten Jungle City by Greg Grandin

Fiction –

• The Girl of Fire and Thorns, The Crown of Embers, & The Bitter Kingdom (The Girl of Fire and Thorns trilogy) by Rae Carson
• Serious Men by Manu Joseph
• The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt
• The Sentinel Mage by Emily Gee
• Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
• One Second After by William R. Forstchen
• The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis
• Haunted Ground by Erin Hart

I’ve been looking at my TBR piles — both print and ebook  — and wondering if I should just stop acquiring books. These piles are so large, that I’d have to read several books a day to get through them all before it’s time to greet my maker.

I know I’ve lamented that before, but I guess that is why I am an editor — a love of books and the knowledge they contain. I keep hoping that my grandchildren will want my library, but I suspect not. (They are currently too young to understand what a library is and why it is important.)

I have told my children that if they aren’t interested in my library, I want them to find a rural library that would be interested in receiving the books. The print books are nearly all pristine  — even though I have read them, they have the look and feel of new, unread books.

One thing I find interesting about a physical library, in contrast to an ebook “library,” is that the physical library acts as a visual reminder of how much information there is in the world that I have not yet explored. It also makes me admire even more some of the Renaissance people who are noted for having had the world’s knowledge at their fingertips — the Michaelangelos and Voltaires and Rousseaus and Jeffersons of past ages — something that would be very difficult, if not impossible, today. Today, we admire those who are masters of their sub-subspecialty areas.

The holiday season brought more books to my pile, including a book by my daughter, Mariah Adin, The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s. She and her husband badgered me to put aside everything else I was reading to read her book. I eventually caved and found the book to be an interesting read. Although I was a youngster at the time, I admit I was unaware of the debate that apparently raged around me about the negative influence of comic books on young minds. The arguments made then about comic books can certainly be made today about video games.

Did your holidays bring new books to your library?

Richard Adin, An American Editor

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