5 Books To Spend Your Holiday Money On

Some of you read books. If friends and family know you read books, you may have received some money to spend on them at Amazon or elsewhere. Here are a few brief recommendations, from books I read in 2015. Some are classic. Some are recent. Do with them what you will. 

The Narrow Road To The Deep North [Richard Flanagan]

It’s hard to do fresh things with a war novel, especially one about well masticated World War II. Flanagan’s tale, based on the experience of his father, bounces between present Australia and a Japanese POW camp elucidates the meaning of love, war, and being human in a poignant, jarring way.

No Good Men Among The Living [Anand Gopal]

We’re approaching 15 years since 9/11, the U.S. military is still waging an active conflict in Afghanistan. Gopal’s reporting describes the war from an Afghan perspective. If even half the details were true, it would be a stalwart indictment of American military intervention in the Islamic world. This book should make it into the right hands. In our time of empty rhetoric and political echo chambers, it won’t..

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went To War In 1914 [Christopher Clark]

Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on June 28. Modern, purportedly enlightened men led Europe to war by August. The grisly conflict tore apart empires, amassed casualties in the tens of millions, and planted the seeds of an even greater conflict. It’s one of humanities stupidest moments. This is a comprehensive, readable history about how that came about. It addresses both structural factors and individual decisions, without the burden of blame or a simplistic thesis.

A Passage To India [E.M. Forster]

Forster unraveled British Imperialism with one novel in 1924. Raising more questions than he answered, he presaged the complexity, misconceptions and prejudice that continue to plague East and West long after the demise of formal Empire. Aside from the historical context, his imagery and attention to detail with human interactions keep a now dead world alive.

A Moveable Feast [Ernest Hemingway]

Hemingway eschewed bullshit. He used the words that needed to be used, and no others. His shearing directness keeps his voice feeling present and modern, decades after his time. This is a collection of wry meditations on 1920s Paris. His interactions with notable contemporaries are interesting. His development as a writer and man even more so. The audio version can be plowed through during a moderate length car ride.