After spending many years as a historian, I could be really negative about humanity. We have done many bad things to each other and the planet, but I don’t think there is a downward trajectory. I don’t believe in fate. My last published works have been about using fear and conspiracy to gain certain ends, but 99% of those were imagined connections, not some sophisticated plans of evil geniuses. The imagined conspiracy came after the actions. So, the books I have listed that I think are excellent are ways out of terrible situations, some of our own making, but often not. I hope you enjoy the books.
I wrote
The Donkey, the Carrot, and the Club: William C. Bullitt and Soviet-American Relations, 1917-1948
This book was absolutely amazing. The author interviewed many Soviet citizens in the 1990s after the Soviet Union’s collapse. I loved this book because it showed how people dealt with the massive change of the fall of the Soviet Union.
I also happened to be doing research in the Soviet Union in 1990 and then in 1995. So, I had an idea or two about before and after, but what about the people themselves? It shocked me to learn how many people believed in Stalin and how they thought they were changing the world even as it went far astray.
I also learned in the wonderful stories how they struggled to survive, some more, some less. The stories were heartbreaking but also illuminating and even encouraging.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A symphonic oral history about the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the emergence of a new Russia, from Svetlana Alexievich, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE WINNER
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • The Boston Globe • The Wall Street Journal • NPR • Financial Times • Kirkus Reviews
When the Swedish Academy awarded Svetlana Alexievich the…
This is a lovely book about a Siberian Tiger that stocked and killed hunters who had been hunting tigers. Vaillant situates this fascinating story into the collapse of the Soviet Union. People on the far eastern edge of Russian Siberia, the Amur River area, were desperate to survive as the economy collapsed.
At the same time, China is taking off, and the affluent will buy tiger parts at great cost to increase their sexual stamina. Thus, desperate Russian hunters arrive. Vaillant does a great job following a game warden as he tries to solve the crime of a tiger seemingly bent on revenge.
I think he shows that good people are still out there trying to do right, no matter the cost.
'An unbelievable tale, expertly told' Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Empire of Pain
'A superb book ' Daily Mail * 'Masterful . . . mesmerising, rangy and relentless' Sunday Telegraph
A man-eating tiger is hunting villagers in the snowy forests of Far Eastern Russia.
A small team of men and their dogs must hunt the tiger in turn. As evidence mounts, it becomes clear that the tiger's attacks aren't random: it is seeking revenge. Injured, starving and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.
As he tracks the tiger's deadly progress, John Vaillant draws an unforgettable…
I had no idea what this book was when I picked it up, largely by accident. The plot mostly takes place in the Great Lakes area. A flu pandemic kills almost everyone on earth, and the question becomes, how do you survive?
There is no electricity, internet, or cell phones. Everything has collapsed. What does survival even mean? In this case, the survival mechanism is a traveling Shakespearean troupe putting on plays in various encampments.
St. John Mandel strings the whole thing together with a graphic novel the protagonist and antagonist read many years earlier, which connects them in weird ways. In the end, someone turns on a light.
'Best novel. The big one . . . stands above all the others' - George R.R. Martin, author of Game of Thrones
Now an HBO Max original TV series
The New York Times Bestseller Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction National Book Awards Finalist PEN/Faulkner Award Finalist
What was lost in the collapse: almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in…
I think Cline does a wonderful job explaining how civilizations can and do collapse or survive, but also bringing the distant past to life. The work takes on the tremendous change that happened around 1177 B.C. Yes, climate change, but volcanic explosions also helped push societies off course.
That may well have started the whole series of cataclysmic events, such as extended drought. Empires such as Egypt, Assyria, Phoenicia, and Israel all had to come to terms with massive change not of their own choosing.
I loved how Cline wrestles with how some survived, and others didn’t. Was geography, military, economics, or some level of hierarchy better than another? There is much to think about.
In this gripping sequel to his bestselling 1177 B.C., Eric Cline tells the story of what happened after the Bronze Age collapsed-why some civilizations endured, why some gave way to new ones, and why some disappeared forever
"A landmark book: lucid, deep, and insightful. . . . You cannot understand human civilization and self-organization without studying what happened on, before, and after 1177 B.C."-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bestselling author of The Black Swan
At the end of the acclaimed history 1177 B.C., many of the Late Bronze Age civilizations of the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean lay in ruins, undone by invasion,…
I had to read this one twice immediately and was so excited by it. Kirsch starts with those espousing anti-humanity. Humans have screwed up the planet, less working with and more taking control of all aspects of nature, often in the most negative ways.
For some, we are hopeless, and it would be just as good if humans winked out of existence. I found hope in such dire words because others believe humans are evolving. These are the transhumanists. Hopefully, before it’s too late, we can get off this rock. We can go into the solar system or even the galaxy. We can develop means to amend what we have ruined with robots, nanobots, CRISPR, solar and wind, etc. Kirsch provides hope, and I cling to it.
In this blistering book about the history of an idea, one of our leading critics draws on his dazzling range and calls our attention to a seemingly inconceivable topic that is being seriously discussed: that the end of humanity's reign on earth is imminent, and that we should welcome it. Kirsch journeys through literature, philosophy, science, and popular culture, to identify two strands of thinking: Anthropocene antihumanism says that our climate destruction has doomed humanity and we should welcome our extinction, while Transhumanism believes that genetic engineering and artificial intelligence will lead to…
My book explores Soviet-American relations from World War I to the start of the Cold War through the life and work of William C. Bullitt. Bullitt used his prestigious name and forceful personality to have his opinions heard even as those opinions flipped from one ideological extreme to another.
From World War I to 1935, Bullitt worked to include Soviet Russia into what Bullitt thought would be a New World Order. But everything changed when he became the American Ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Great Purges. Bullitt reversed his ideological course. From 1935 on, Bullitt worked consistently to keep the Soviets out of the new Liberal order created for the postwar world.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
