82 books like The Man Who Loved Dogs

It is no surprise this book won a Pulitzer Prize. Particularly compelling is how, through a deeply personal and beautifully crafted story of a complex life and mind, it offers profound insight into the uneasy relationship among politics, science, war, and morality.

Oppenheimer, one of the greatest and most influential physicists of the 20th century, spearheaded not only the invention of the atomic bomb but also the quantum theory that made it possible and the policies governing its use and development. A left-wing thinker and sometimes communist sympathizer in his youth, and driven throughout his life by strong humanistic impulses, his work on the atomic bomb was motivated by a desire to defeat fascism in Europe.

Yet, in his work thereafter – which included opposing the development of the much more powerful hydrogen bomb – he was tragically undone by another authoritarian force: McCarthyism. The multiple Oscar-award winning film based… show more.

I really enjoyed this novel for several reasons. For one, Jess Walter is a fantastic storyteller. As a history geek, this book gives a fascinating retro look into an era I otherwise would’ve ignored: Hollywood during the making of the movie Cleopatra. One of the strengths of fiction is fleshing out a historical personality by putting him or her on stage, giving them voice, emotion, and substance that would be difficult to do in nonfiction.

We meet Richard Burton in all his self-centered, boozy, womanizing splendor, and you can’t help but feel disappointed that you never got to spill drinks with him. But the guy who steals the show is Hollywood producer Michael Deane, a narcissistic schemer who tramples over everyone to get his way, on the surface self-absorbed, yet inwardly fully aware of the effect he’s having. 

I love every book Barbara Kingsover writes, but this one is special for me because of its deeply personal account of key 20th-century political events.

Leon Trotsky and Frida Kahlo are at the centre of a story that juxtaposes Trotsky’s humanistic vision against the inhumanism of Stalin’s Soviet Union and McCarthyism in the United States. All of this is built around the character-driven narrative of a protagonist unwittingly caught up in the political churn of the times. 

In Princess a reader feels the fears, panic, and illusions in post-World War I Germany that led to the rise of Hitler and World War II. A young German-speaking American, in love with the daughter of a Jewish banking family, witnesses the explosive growth of racist nationalism, blaming Jews for war loss and economic disaster, and how a youth socially related to that family is turned into a furious, murderous Nazi. We also glimpse young Bertolt Brecht, singing scathing critiques of the nationalists, and a Bohemian artist much like George Grosz, representing the left opposition. The book helped me understand how a movement for the exact opposite of the Paris Commune’s ideals of “Freedom, equality, and fraternity,” could develop among frightened and ignorant people, a warning for all of us.

Moon Brow describes the social tensions between ideals of freedom, religion, and authoritarianism that provoked Iran’s 1978 revolution, but only increased under Islamic rule. Amir, a formerly rich, wild playboy, flogged by the morality police after a drunken orgy, joins the army to escape shame and find meaning for his life in the brutal and futile 10-year war against Iraq. Commanding artillery in the borderland, he encounters the mysterious, sprite-like woman he calls “Moon Brow,” who, after an Iraqi shell maims him, becomes a magical force in his PTSD hallucinations. Her true identity will come as a rebuke for his comparatively pointless existence, while his sister’s spurning of her rich, pretentious suitor will be another rebuke, of his machismo. A brilliant evocation of the illusions that sustain violence.

Gate of the Sun is one of the most acclaimed novels about the so-called “question of Palestine.”

Although fictional, it hews closely to real life; the author Elias Khoury, a Lebanese writer, was informed by the extensive time he spent talking to Palestinian refugees in various camps. The book is set in Shatila refugee camp in Lebanon and has an epic scope, weaving together different characters’ experiences of displacement and exile and spanning six decades from the 1930s to the 1990s.

Along the way, we engage with some of the most pivotal moments in recent Palestinian history: the original displacement of 1948 (known as the Nakba); the Arab defeat of 1967; the 1982 massacre in Sabra and Shatila camps. Epic in every sense.

Libra is a chillingly realistic novel that re-imagines the assassination of John F. Kennedy. What particularly delighted me was the very realistic-sounding dialogue of the very dissimilar actors in the rambling, uncoordinated but ultimately successful conspiracy, including right-wing Aryan-nation types, non-ideological drifters desperate to leave a mark on history, and (in this version) mobsters and Cuban exile terrorists who blamed Kennedy for the "loss" of Cuba. DeLillo’s renderings of Jack Ruby’s mobster lingo, the uptight tersely coded grunts of the CIA men, the incoherencies of revolutionary wannabe Lee Harvey Oswald and others, are a model of dialogue for any fiction writer.  

What I loved most about this book was the voice. Woodrell did a fantastic job presenting the period Biblical lyricism through the narrator, Jake Roedel, a reluctant Confederate soldier.

The scene is the largely overlooked Kansas-Missouri front of the US Civil War, where bloody vendettas were just as much of the fighting as were skirmishes between the blue and the gray. We ride with the young men, boys really, as they raid and pillage, hide and survive, and there’s nothing romantic about the loss and pointless savagery. 

Isabelle Allende is truly one of the great writers of our time, a strong recommendation in itself. What I found particularly thrilling about this book, however, was the way she shed light on how authoritarianism and fascism are disproportionately devasting for the most vulnerable among us – children.

By weaving together narratives about the displacement of and harm to children during the Nazi holocaust and under the brutal immigration policies of President Trump, Allende provokes outrage and inspires compassion.

I found this book compelling because of its chilling reminder of a lesson we apparently learned, but seem to have forgotten, from the 1930s rise of European fascism – that a robust democracy can quickly and easily, and through its own democratic processes, become a viciously fascist order.

Set in modern-day Ireland, the book beautifully weaves its political criticism through the moving story of one ordinary family caught up in the horrible transformation.