Books Read in 2010 – Sam Ryan

Books Read in 2010

131 titles

Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606–1676

Walter Woodward

★★★★☆

Maps & Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands

★★★☆☆

John the Revelator

★★★☆☆

A Sand County Almanac, with Essays on Conservation from Round River

★★★☆☆

American Nerd: The Story of My People

Benjamin Nugent

★☆☆☆☆

The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party’s Revolution and the Battle over American History

★★★★★

★★★☆☆

Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State

★★★★☆

Let the Great World Spin

★★★☆☆

Screening Out the Past: The Birth of Mass Culture and the Motion Picture Industry

★★★☆☆

The British in Boston: Being the Diary of Lieutenant John Barker of the King’s Own Regiment

★★★☆☆

Jonathan Lethem

★★★★☆

Invisible Ink: Spycraft of the American Revolution

★★☆☆☆

If He Hollers Let Him Go

★☆☆☆☆

Learning from Las Vegas: The Forgotten Symbolism of Architectural Form

Robert Venturi, Steven Izenour, & Denise Scott Brown

★★☆☆☆

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Frederick Douglass

★★★☆☆

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Arthur Conan Doyle

★★★★☆

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. 2

★★★★★

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

★★★☆☆

America’s First Black Woman Political Writer: Essays and Speeches

Maria W. Stewart

★★☆☆☆

David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World

★★☆☆☆

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

★★★☆☆

For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War

James McPherson

★★★★☆

Bob Dylan in America

★★★☆☆

Science: The Endless Frontier

★★☆☆☆

★★★★☆

Jason Fried & David Hansson

★★★★☆

Modern Arms and Free Men: A Discussion of the Role of Science in Preserving Democracy

★★★☆☆

The Making of a Radical: A Political Autobiography

★★★☆☆

The Varieties of Religious Experience

★★★★★

Social Sanity: A Preface to the Book of Social Progress

★★☆☆☆

God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Christopher Hitchens

★★★★☆

Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World

★★★★☆

Intimate Frontiers: Sex, Gender, and Culture in Old California

★★★★☆

The Theory of the Leisure Class

Thorstein Veblen

★★★★☆

Soul By Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

★★★★☆

The Slave Power: The Free North and Southern Domination, 1780–1860

Leonard L. Richards

★★★☆☆

Consider The Lobster and Other Essays

David Foster Wallace

★★★★★

The Slave Ship: A Human History

★★★★☆

The Apple Trees at Olema: New and Selected Poems

★★★★★

The Crying of Lot 49

★★☆☆☆

Crime and Punishment [trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

★★★★★

The Picture of Dorian Grey

★★★★☆

Shalimar the Clown

★★★★☆

The Age of the Infovore: Succeeding in the Information Economy

★★★☆☆

At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past

A. Roger Ekirch

★★★★☆

The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

★★★★★

Girl With Curious Hair

David Foster Wallace

★★★★☆

Bicycle Diaries

★★★☆☆

Body Toxic: An Environmental Memoir

Susanne Antonetta

★★★★☆

★★★★★

The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy

Nicholas Lemann

★★★★★

The Sound and The Fury

William Faulkner

★★☆☆☆

Highway 61 Revisited: Bob Dylan’s Road from Minnesota to the World

Colleen J. Sheehy & Thomas Swiss, ed.

★★★☆☆

Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse

Richard R. John

★★★★☆

Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Herman Melville

★★★★★

Cormac McCarthy

★★★★☆

The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays

Richard Hofstadter

★★★★★

The Waste Land and Other Poems

★★★★☆

The Savage Detectives

Roberto Bolaño

★★☆☆☆

The Disappointment Artist: Essays

Jonathan Lethem

★★☆☆☆

The Rough Riders

Theodore Roosevelt

★★★☆☆

Kafka on the Shore

Haruki Murakami

★★★★☆

Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture

★★★★☆

Chuck Palahnuik

★★☆☆☆

Time and Materials: Poems, 1997–2005

★★★★☆

The Long Goodbye

Raymond Chandler

★★★★☆

Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World

★★☆☆☆

The Possessed (Demons) [trans. Constance Garnett]

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

★★☆☆☆

Town Born: The Political Economy of New England from Its Founding to the Revolution

★★★★☆

The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemingway

★★★★★

The Illustrated Man

★★★★☆

The Book of Disquiet [trans. Richard Zenith]

Fernando Pessoa

★★★★☆

Snow Country [trans. Edward G. Seidensticker]

Yasunari Kawabata

★★★★☆

Wampeters, Foma, & Granfalloons (Opinions)

★★★☆☆

Size Matters: How Height Affects the Health, Happiness, and Success of Boys—and the Men They Become

Stephen S. Hall

★☆☆☆☆

Between the Wars: America, 1919–1941

David A. Shannon

★★★☆☆

★★★☆☆

Jack Tar vs. John Bull: The Role of New York’s Seamen in Precipitating the Revolution

★★★★☆

Farmers & Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1630–1830

★★★☆☆

Prom Night: Youth, Schools, and Popular Culture

★★★☆☆

For Whom the Bell Tolls

Ernest Hemingway

★★★★★

Crossing to Safety

Wallace Stegner

★★★★☆

The Golden Ass, or, Metamorphoses [trans. E. J. Kenney]

★★★☆☆

Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families

J. Anthony Lukas

★★★★★

The White Album

★★★★★

Gun, With Occasional Music

Jonathan Lethem

★★★☆☆

The Dharma Bums

★★★★☆

Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture

★★★★☆

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

C. Vann Woodward

★★★☆☆

The Postal Age: The Emergence of Modern Communications in Nineteenth-Century America

David M. Henkin

★★★★☆

Dylan’s Visions of Sin

Christopher Ricks

★★★★★

Music from Big Pink

★★★★☆

Vampires, Dragons, and Egyptian Kings: Youth Gangs in Postwar New York

★★★☆☆

★★☆☆☆

Abraham Lincoln: The War Years, Vol. I

★★★★★

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

★★★★☆

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

★★★☆☆

The Man in the High Castle

★★★★☆

The Diverted Dream: Community Colleges and the Promise of Educational Opportunity in America, 1900–1985

Steven Brint & Jerome Karabel

★★★★☆

The Education of Henry Adams

★★★☆☆

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America

★★★☆☆

God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West

Todd M. Kerstetter

★★★★★

Highway 61 Revisited

Mark Polizzotti

★★★☆☆

Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life

★★★★★

From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America

★★★★☆

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History

★★★☆☆

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald

★★★☆☆

The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860–1935

James D. Anderson

★★★★☆

The Era of Reconstruction, 1865–1877

Kenneth M. Stampp

★★★★☆

★★★★★

Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform

David Tyack & Larry Cuban

★★★☆☆

Learning to Forget: Schooling and Family Life in New Haven’s Working Class, 1870–1940

Stephen Lassonde

★★☆☆☆

The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece

★★★☆☆

That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession

★★★☆☆

Letters to a Young Contrarian

Christopher Hitchens

★★★☆☆

Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn-of-the-Century New York

★★★☆☆

★★☆☆☆

The Turn of the Screw

★★☆☆☆

The Final Solution: A Story of Detection

★★★☆☆

Jonathan Lethem

★★★★☆

The Wordy Shipmates

★★★★☆

What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848

Daniel Walker Howe

★★★☆☆

Blood Meridian, or The Evening Redness in the West

Cormac McCarthy

★★★☆☆

Dr. Bloodmoney, or How We Got Along After The Bomb

Phillip K. Dick

★★★☆☆

Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction

★★★☆☆