Monday, May 08, 2006

Summer Reading

When the semester ends and the summer stretches out before me, I tend to plunge into several books at once. That way different authors can vie for my attention. The best book is generally the one I finish first, although staggered starts often affect the order of the finish.

Here are the books I'm reading now (in the order in which I expect to finish them):

  1. Myths America Lives By by Richard T. Hughes
  2. The Illustrated Jesus Through the Centuries by Jaroslav Pelikan
  3. The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs by Madeleine Albright
  4. American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century by Kevin Phillips

The books I look forward to reading at some point this summer include:

  • The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the 21st Century by Michael Mandelbaum
  • Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers by Kwame Anthony Appiah
  • American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin
  • House of War by James Carroll
  • Mao Zedong by Jonathan Spence
  • Conscience and Power: An Examination of Dirty Hands and Political Leadership by Stephen Garrett
  • Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebles in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves by Adam Hochschild

Stayed tuned for excerpts and reviews throughout the summer.