Books

Paradox of Plenty Harvey Levenstein How America came to eat the way it does, from the Depression to the fast-food age. 1 recommender Parallel Lives: A Love Story from a Lost Continent Iain Pears A British art historian married a Russian curator who had survived the siege of Leningrad as a child. Their novelist son-in-law reconstructs the marriage from letters. 1 recommender Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy Maxwell Stearns The case for fixing American democracy by importing the parliamentary machinery rather than rewriting the values. 1 recommender Patriot Alexei Navalny Written partly in prison by a man who went back to Russia knowing what waited. 1 recommender Patsy Nicole Dennis-Benn She leaves her daughter in Jamaica for New York, and the promised life is not there. 1 recommender Paula Isabel Allende Written at her daughter's bedside, Isabel Allende's memoir tells her family's story and becomes a tribute to the daughter she lost. Pedro Páramo Juan Rulfo Juan Rulfo's novel of a man who travels to the ghost town of Comala to find his father, in Margaret Sayers Peden's translation. 2 recommenders People Power and Political Change April Carter 1 recommender Perestroika Mikhail Gorbachev The Soviet leader setting out, while still in power, what he thought he was reforming and why. 1 recommender Permission Marketing Seth Godin The 1999 book that saw it coming: attention would become the scarce resource, and the answer was to ask, not steal Personal History Katharine Graham Cast as the supportive wife, she ended up running the Washington Post through Watergate. 1 recommender Personal Pleasures: Essays on Enjoying Life Rose Macaulay Macaulay catalogues bed, hot baths, disbelieving and taking umbrage as pleasures worth defending, in 1930s essays by a novelist far better known for her ironies. 1 recommender Persuasion Jane Austen Anne Elliot was talked out of marrying the man she loved at nineteen, and meets him again eight years later with everything changed. 3 recommenders Pet Sematary Stephen King A doctor moves his family next to a burial ground that gives back what you bury there, changed. 1 recommender Phineas Finn Anthony Trollope A young Irishman with no money enters Parliament and finds out what keeping a seat actually costs. 1 recommender Picasso: Creator and Destroyer Arianna Huffington Huffington's controversial biography paints Picasso as a genius whose creativity ran in tandem with cruelty toward the women and friends around him. Picture Lillian Ross A reporter watches John Huston make a film and the studio quietly take it apart. 1 recommender Pierre Boulez: Organised Delirium Caroline Potter Boulez the composer read through French surrealism rather than through his reputation as an enforcer. 1 recommender Pigs at the Trough Arianna Huffington Written in the wake of Enron, a blistering account of executive excess and the cozy ties between corporate boardrooms and Washington. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek Annie Dillard A giant water bug dissolving a frog, a mockingbird in freefall, and the question of why there is so much of everything. Dillard was twenty-nine and won the Pulitzer. 1 recommender Pimps, Hos, Playa Hatas, and All the Rest of My Hollywood Friends John Leguizamo The comedian's raucous, profane memoir of clawing from Queens to Broadway, told in a voice that's pure stand-up on the page. Pink Brain, Blue Brain Lise Eliot A neuroscientist argues that small brain differences between boys and girls grow large through upbringing, and shows how to narrow them. 1 recommender Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren Astrid Lindgren's children's classic about a red-haired, immensely strong girl who lives alone with a horse and a monkey, in the Puffin edition. 1 recommender Piranesi Susanna Clarke A man lives alone in an endless labyrinth of halls and tides, keeping careful notes, until the truth of his world starts to surface. 1 recommender Pivotal Decade Judith Stein The 1970s as the hinge: manufacturing given up, finance favoured, and the ground prepared for the conservative turn. 1 recommender Plainwater Anne Carson Anne Carson's mixed volume of essays and poetry, from Vintage, gathering five separate pieces. 1 recommender Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces that Shape Your Life Alex Mayyasi The economics podcast's guide to the forces behind prices, jobs and money, for people who skipped the course. 1 recommender Play Nice But Win Michael Dell Dell's candid account of the fights that defined his later career, going private, the Icahn proxy war, and the $67 billion EMC deal. Playful Parenting Lawrence Cohen Play as the language children process fear in, and the one adults keep trying to replace with talking. 1 recommender Plenitude Juliet B. Schor An economist's case for working less, making more for ourselves and living well on less. Poems and Prose Georg Trakl A bilingual edition of Georg Trakl's poems and prose, translated by Alexander Stillmark and published by Northwestern University Press in 2005. 1 recommender Poke the Box Seth Godin A short, sharp shove toward starting: the scarce skill now is initiative, the willingness to begin before you are ready Pole to Pole Michael Palin Palin's journey from the North Pole to the South Pole along a single line of longitude, through Europe and Africa and on to Antarctica. Polis: A New History of the Ancient Greek City-State from the Early Iron Age to the End of Antiquity John Ma Two thousand years of the Greek city-state, treated as a working institution rather than a backdrop to philosophy. 1 recommender Politicians, Partisans, and Parasites Tucker Carlson Tucker Carlson's memoir of his early years in cable news. Politics and the English Language George Orwell Orwell's classic essay on how vague, stale language corrupts thought and shields bad politics, with rules for writing clearly.