Click on links to read reviews of selected books.


1776 (2005)
by David McCullough

47 Down: The 1922 Argonaut Gold Mine Disaster (2004)
by O. Henry Mace

Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
by William Faulkner

The African Queen (1935)
by C.S. Forester

The Age of Grief (1987)
by Jane Smiley

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000)
by Michael Chabon

American Pastoral (1997)
by Phillip Roth

Assassination Vacation (2005)
by Sarah Vowell

August: Osage County (2008)
by Tracy Letts

Barrel Fever (1994)
by David Sedaris

Beat Not the Bones (1952)
by Charlotte Jay

A Bend in the River (1979)
by V.S. Naipal

The Big Sleep (1939)
by Raymond Chandler

Birdsong (1993)
by Sebastian Faulks

The Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts of In-flight Accidents (1998)
by Malcolm MacPherson

Black Dogs (1992)
by Ian McEwan

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux (1932)
by Black Elk and John G. Neihardt

The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to Do Them) (2007)
by Peter Sagal

The Book Thief (2006)
by Markus Zuzak

Brighton Rock (1938)
by Graham Greene

The Bureau and the Mole: The Unmasking of Robert Philip Hanssen, the Most Dangerous Double Agent in FBI History (2002)
by David A. Vise

Burmese Days (1934)
by George Orwell

Bury Me Standing (1995)
by Isabel Fonseca

Captain Bligh and Mister Christian: The Men and the Mutiny (1973)
by Richard Alexander Hough

Charlie Wilson’s War (2003)
by George Crile

The Chicago Way (2007)
by Michael Harvey

The Children of Henry VIII (1996)
by Alison Weir

The Children’s Blizzard (2004)
by David Laskin

The Circus Fire: A True Story (2000)
by Stewart O’Nan

Cities of the Plain (1998)
by Cormac McCarthy

Citizen Soldiers: The U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany (1997)
by Stephen E. Ambrose

A Civil Action (1995)
by Jonathan Harr

Collapse (2005)
by Jared Diamond

A Conspiracy of Paper (2000)
by David Liss

Corelli’s Mandolin (1994)
by Louis De Bernieres

Cosmopolitan: A Bartender’s Life (2003)
by Toby Cecchini

County: Life, Death, and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital (2010)
by David Ansell

Cruising Paradise: Tales (1996)
by Sam Shepard

The Crying of Lot 49 (1988)
by Thomas Pynchon

Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Explosion 1917 (2005)
by Laura M. MacDonald

Damascus Gate (1998)
by Robert Stone

Darkness at Noon (1941)
by Arthur Koestler

Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 (2003)
by Stephen Puleo

Dark Voyage (2004)
by Alan Furst

The Da Vinci Code (2003)
by Dan Brown

The Dean’s December (1982)
by Saul Bellow

Death in Summer (1998)
by William Trevor

Delta of Venus (1969)
by Anaïs Nin

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America (2003)
by Erik Larson

Disgrace (1999)
by J. M. Coetzee

Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic (1995)
by George W. Hilton

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (2006)
by Muriel Barbery

Empire Falls (2001)
by Richard Russo

Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (1959)
by Alfred Lansing

Eve Reviv’d, or the Fair One Stark-Naked (1684)
anonymous

Everything is Illuminated (2002)
by Jonathan Safran Foer

Every Man Dies Alone (1947)
by Hans Fallada

F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the 20th Century (2007)
by Mark Levine

The Fabulous Clipjoint (1953)
by Frederic Brown

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971)
by Hunter S. Thompson

The Finkler Question (2010)
by Howard Jacobson

Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire (1999)
by John MacLean

Firestorm at Peshtigo: A Town, Its People, and the Deadliest Fire in American History (2002)
by Denise Gess and William Lutz

Flashman in the Great Game (1975)
by George MacDonald Fraser

Footsteps: Adventures of a Romantic Biographer (1985)
by Richard Holmes

Fort Dearborn (2007)
by Jerry Crimmins

Frankenstein (1818)
by Mary Shelley

Fort Dearborn (2007)
by Jerry Crimmins & Gerald A. Danzer

The Fugitive Eye (1953)
by Charlotte Jay

Geronimo: His Own Story – The Autobiography of a Great Patriot Warrior (1970)
by Geronimo and S. M. Barrett

The God of Small Things (1997)
by Arundhati Roy

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain (1992)
by Robert Olen Butler

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991)
by Jose Saramago

The Great Atlantic Air Race (1977)
by Percy Rowe

House Made of Dawn (1969)
by N. Scott Momaday

The Human Stain (2000)
by Philip Roth

The Illustrated Man (1951)
by Ray Bradbury

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)
by Rebecca Skloot

An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves, and the Creation of America (2003)
by Henry Wiencek

In Cold Blood (1965)
by Truman Capote

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of Whaleship Essex (2000)
by Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Lake of the Woods (1994)
by Tim O’Brien

Into the Wild (1998)
by Jon Krakauer

Invisible Man (1947)
by Ralph Ellison

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime (2000)
by Miles Harvey

The Killer Inside Me (1952)
by Jim Thompson

King Solomon’s Mines (1885)
by R. Haggard

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000)
Anthony Bourdain

The Kite Runner (2003)
Khaled Hosseini

Knowledge and Information Technology (2000)
from Partisan Review

The Known World (2003)
by Edward P. Jones

Legs (1975)
by William Kennedy

Life of Pi (2001)
by Yann Martel

The Living & the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996)
by Paul Hendrickson

Lost Horizon (1933)
by James Hilton

Lost in Shangri-La: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II (2011)
by Mitchell Zuckoff

The Loved One (1948)
by Evelyn Waugh

The Maltese Falcon (1929)
by Dashiell Hammett

The Man in the Rockefeller Suit: The Astonishing Rise and Spectacular Fall of a Serial Imposter (2011)
by Mark Seal

Man Without a Gun (1999)
by Giandomenico Picco

Marie (1912)
by H. Rider Haggard

Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier (2004)
by Alfred F. Young

Master and Commander (1970)
by Patrick O’Brian

Mawson’s Will: The Greatest Polar Survival Story Ever Written (2000)
by Lennard Bickel

Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)
by David Sedaris

Milosz’s ABC’s (2001)
by Czeslaw Milosz

Monster (1997)
by John Gregory Dunne

The Moor’s Last Sigh (1995)
by Salman Rushdie

Motherless Brooklyn (1999)
by Jonathan Lethem

The Murder of Napoleon (1982)
by David Hapgood

My Antonia (1918)
by Willa Cather

No Other Life (1993)
by Brian Moore

Nothing Like it in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad 1863-1869 (2000)
by Stephen E. Ambrose

Now You See Him (2009)
by Eli Gottlieb

The Odyssey of Kostas Volakis (1999)
by Harry Mark Petrakis

The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 (2003)
various authors

The Old Gringo (1985)
by Carlos Fuentes

Ordinary Wolves (2004)
by Seth Kantner

The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America’s Dilemma (1998)
by Alex Kotlowitz

Out (2003)
by Natsuo Kirino

Out Stealing Horses (2007)
by Per Petterson

The Ox-Bow Incident (1940)
by Walter Van Tilburg Clark

Painter in a Savage Land (2008)
by Miles Harvey

Pellucidar (1915)
by Edgar Rice Burroughs

People of the Book (2008)
by Geraldine Brooks

Personal Memoirs of U.S. Grant (1885)
by Ulysses S. Grant

The Playboy of the Western World (1907)
by John Millington Synge

Playing the Moldovans at Tennis (2001)
by Tony Hawks

The Plot Against America (2004)
by Philip Roth

Poetry magazine (Dec. 1998 issue)
various authors

Popol Vuh: The Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life (1986)
translated by Dennis Tedlock

The Prince of Providence: The True Story of Buddy Cianci, America’s Most Notorious Mayor, Some Wiseguys, and the Feds (2003)
by Mike Stanton

Red China Blues (1996)
by Jan Wong

Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009)
by Max Blumenthal

The Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (1998)
by John Barry

The Road (2006)
by Cormac McCarthy

Runner in the Sun (1954)
by D’Arcy McNickle

The Russian Debutante’s Handbook (2002)
by Gary Shteyngart

The Secret Agent (1907)
by Joseph Conrad

The Secret Scripture (2008)
by Sebastian Barry

Seven Years in Tibet (1953)
by Heinrich Harrer

Shadow Country (2008)
by Peter Matthiessen

Shadow Divers: The True Adventure of Two Americans Who Risked Everything to Solve One of the Last Mysteries of World War II (2004)
by Robert Kurson

The Sheltering Sky (1949)
by Paul Bowles

Shipping News (1993)
by Annie Proulx

Ship of Gold (1987)
by Thomas B. Allen and Norman Polmar

The Silver Swan (2008)
by Benjamin Black

Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul (2007)
by Karen Abbott

Slaughterhouse Five (1969)
by Kurt Vonnegut

Slaves in the Family (1998)
by Edward Ball

So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)
by William Maxwell

Stones from the River (1994)
by Ursula Hegi

Stormy Weather (1995)
by Carl Hiaasen

Suite Française (2007)
by Irène Némirovsky

Tabloid Dreams (1996)
by Robert Olen Butler

Teller of Tales: The Life of Arthur Conan Doyle (1999)
by Daniel Stashower & Sherlock Holmes

The Terrible Hours: The Greatest Submarine Rescue in History (1999)
by Peter Maas

The Things They Carried (1990)
by Tim O’Brien

Thunderstruck (2006)
by Erik Larson

The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003)
by Audrey Niffenegger

The Treasure Of the Sierra Madre (1935)
by B. Traven

Triangle: The Fire That Changed America (2003)
by David von Drehle

True Grit (1968)
by Charles Portis

Twilight of Empire (1989)
by Allan W. Eckert

Unbroken: A WWII Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption (2010)
by Laura Hillenbrand

Water Music (1980)
by T.C. Boyle

When Nietzsche Wept (1992)
by Irvin D. Yalom

The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty (1998)
by Sebastian Barry

The White Devil (1612)
by John Webster

White Noise (1984)
by Don DeLillo

The White Tiger (2008)
by Aravind Adiga

Who You Gotta Kill (2009)
by Russell Fee

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1997)
by Haruki Murakami

Wine and War: The French, the Nazis, and the Battle for France’s Greatest Treasure (2001)
by Don & Petie Kladstrup

The Wings of the Dove (1902)
by Henry James

The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2006)
by Timothy Egan

The Yacoubian Building (2004)
by Alaa Al Aswany

The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)
by Michael Chabon