A Few Reading Lists from Our Book Groups
BAiP's Living Room Groups offer reading groups aplenty. Below are some of the books several of the groups have tackled.
READING THE GREAT WAR: WW1 AND BEYOND
Michael Howard, “Europe on the Eve of the First World War” in The Lessons of History
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918
A selection of poetry: Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, et al.
Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Peter Englund, The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the First World War
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Adam Tooze, Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global order, 1916-1931
Modres Eckstein, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
Robert Gewarth, Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Eugen Weber, The Hollow years: France in the 1930s
Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination
Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945
Peter Jackson, “They Shall Not Grow Old”
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
Tim Bouverie: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War
P.E. Caquet, The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
Peter Fritzsche, Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich
Richard Overy, 1939: Countdown to War
NON-FICTION READING GROUP
Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Kenneth Feinberg, What is Life Worth? Who Gets What
Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: Thinking Like Sherlock Holmes
Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes
John McPhee, The Control of Nature
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
George Packer, The Unwinding
John Leonard, Reading for My Life
Scott Anderson: Lawrence in Arabia
Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World
Nathanial Philbrick, Sea of Glory
Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways
David Brown and D.J. Brown, The Boys in the Boat
Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
Ta-Nahesi Coates, Between the World and Me
Angus Deaton: The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Steven Lee Myer, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
Ian Buruma, Year Zero: 1945
James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton: A Global History
Peter Stark, Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson
David McCullough, The Wright Brothers
Caroline Moorehead, Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France
Penny Le Couture, Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules that Changed History
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
William L. Adler, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe Hill
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees
Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The First White President"
Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroin Who Outwitted America's Enemies
Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
Janet Wallach, Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kins, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
Dan Wakin, The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Martin Doyle, The Source: How Rivers Made American and America Remade Its Rivers
Lisa Moses Leff, The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History
Michael Kazin, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-18
Michelle Obama, Becoming
Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning
Jill Lepore, These Truths
Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Maria Arana, Silver, Sword and Stone: Three Crucible in the Latin
American Story
Martha Saxton, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
Ron Chernow, Grant
THE FINALISTS
Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Han King, The Vegetarian
David Szalay, All That Man Is
Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in WWII
David Grossman, A Horse Walks Into a Bar
Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
José Eduardo Agualusa, A General Theory of Oblivion
Paulette Jiles, News of the World
Amos Oz, Judas
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Hamid Mohsin, Exit West
Leopoldine Core, When Watched
Sean Greer, Less
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS
Marilynn Robinson, Gilead
Richard Ford, Canada
Nadia Sashimi, The Pearl that Broke Its Shell
Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
Barbara Pym, An Excellent Woman
Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
Anne Tyler, The Blue Thread
Robert Hicks, Orphan Mother
Kent Hauf, Our Souls at Night
Muriel Spark, Girl of Slender Means
Judith Newman, To Siri With Love
Anne Patchett, Commonwealth
Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
HISTORY
Lauren Hillenbrand, Unbroken
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
Edmund de Waal, Hare with Amber Eyes
Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing
Isabel Wilkerson, Warmth of Other Suns
Geraldine Brooks, March
Julie Otsuka, Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine
Barbara Denick, Nothing to Envy
Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts
Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts
Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Pat Barker, Regeneration
Sebastien Barry, On Canaan's Side
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power
Monique Truong, The Book of Salt
Walter Isaacson, Ben Franklin: An American Life
Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Anya Van Brezman, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan
George Packer, The Unwinding
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Ari Shavit, My Promised Land
Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
Daniel Brown, Boys in the Boat
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
Dinaw Mengetsu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Viet Tranh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time
Peter Stark, Astoria
Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk
Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name
David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
Joseph Kanon, Leaving Berlin
Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives
Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: 400 Year Untold History of Class in America
Alice Hoffman, Marriage of Opposites
Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Ron Chernow, Hamilton
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad:A Novel
Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the Sea
Philip Roth, Plot Against America
Rosalind Rosenberg, Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest Finest Hour
READING THE GREAT WAR: WW1 AND BEYOND
Michael Howard, “Europe on the Eve of the First World War” in The Lessons of History
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914-1918
A selection of poetry: Robert Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, et al.
Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front
Peter Englund, The Beauty and the Sorrow: An intimate history of the First World War
Robert Graves, Goodbye to All That
Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace
Adam Tooze, Deluge: The Great War, America and the Remaking of the Global order, 1916-1931
Modres Eckstein, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age
Robert Gewarth, Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End
Ian Kershaw, To Hell and Back: Europe 1914-1949
Eugen Weber, The Hollow years: France in the 1930s
Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination
Rana Mitter, Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945
Peter Jackson, “They Shall Not Grow Old”
John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945
Adam Hochschild, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
Tim Bouverie: Chamberlain, Hitler, Churchill and the Road to War
P.E. Caquet, The Bell of Treason: The 1938 Munich Agreement in Czechoslovakia
Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon
Peter Fritzsche, Hitler's First Hundred Days: When Germans Embraced the Third Reich
Richard Overy, 1939: Countdown to War
NON-FICTION READING GROUP
Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns
Kenneth Feinberg, What is Life Worth? Who Gets What
Sonia Sotomayor, My Beloved World
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Maria Konnikova, Mastermind: Thinking Like Sherlock Holmes
Mitri Raheb, Faith in the Face of Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes
John McPhee, The Control of Nature
Christopher Clark, The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
George Packer, The Unwinding
John Leonard, Reading for My Life
Scott Anderson: Lawrence in Arabia
Steven Johnson, How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World
Nathanial Philbrick, Sea of Glory
Hasia R. Diner, Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways
David Brown and D.J. Brown, The Boys in the Boat
Margaret MacMillan, Paris, 1919: Six Months that Changed the World
Oliver Sacks, Uncle Tungsten
Ta-Nahesi Coates, Between the World and Me
Angus Deaton: The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality
Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk
Steven Lee Myer, The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir Putin
Ian Buruma, Year Zero: 1945
James Shapiro, The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606
Sven Beckert, The Empire of Cotton: A Global History
Peter Stark, Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson
David McCullough, The Wright Brothers
Caroline Moorehead, Village of Secrets: Defying the Nazis in Vichy France
Penny Le Couture, Napoleon's Buttons: 17 Molecules that Changed History
J.D. Vance, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
William L. Adler, The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times and Legacy of Joe Hill
Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Hope Jahren, Lab Girl
Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton
Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right
Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees
Trevor Noah, Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
Ta-Nehisi Coates, "The First White President"
Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroin Who Outwitted America's Enemies
Andrea Wulf, The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt's New World
Janet Wallach, Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kins, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia
Dan Wakin, The Man with the Sawed-Off Leg and Other Tales of a New York City Block
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Martin Doyle, The Source: How Rivers Made American and America Remade Its Rivers
Lisa Moses Leff, The Archive Thief: The Man Who Salvaged French Jewish History
Michael Kazin, War Against War: The American Fight for Peace, 1914-18
Michelle Obama, Becoming
Madeleine Albright, Fascism: A Warning
Jill Lepore, These Truths
Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution
Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations
Zora Neale Hurston, Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo
Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
Maria Arana, Silver, Sword and Stone: Three Crucible in the Latin
American Story
Martha Saxton, The Widow Washington: The Life of Mary Washington
John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive: A Family Story from Early America
Ron Chernow, Grant
THE FINALISTS
Karan Mahajan, The Association of Small Bombs
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad
Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
Han King, The Vegetarian
David Szalay, All That Man Is
Svetlana Alexievich, The Unwomanly Face of War: An Oral History of Women in WWII
David Grossman, A Horse Walks Into a Bar
Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
Viet Thanh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo
José Eduardo Agualusa, A General Theory of Oblivion
Paulette Jiles, News of the World
Amos Oz, Judas
Kazuo Ishiguro, When We Were Orphans
Hamid Mohsin, Exit West
Leopoldine Core, When Watched
Sean Greer, Less
Erica Armstrong Dunbar, Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge
Olga Tokarczuk, Flights
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS
Marilynn Robinson, Gilead
Richard Ford, Canada
Nadia Sashimi, The Pearl that Broke Its Shell
Elizabeth Strout, My Name is Lucy Barton
Barbara Pym, An Excellent Woman
Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
Anne Tyler, The Blue Thread
Robert Hicks, Orphan Mother
Kent Hauf, Our Souls at Night
Muriel Spark, Girl of Slender Means
Judith Newman, To Siri With Love
Anne Patchett, Commonwealth
Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
HISTORY
Lauren Hillenbrand, Unbroken
Colum McCann, Let the Great World Spin
Edmund de Waal, Hare with Amber Eyes
Geraldine Brooks, Caleb's Crossing
Isabel Wilkerson, Warmth of Other Suns
Geraldine Brooks, March
Julie Otsuka, Buddha in the Attic
Julie Otsuka, When the Emperor was Divine
Barbara Denick, Nothing to Envy
Isabel Allende, Island Beneath the Sea
Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts
Erik Larson, In the Garden of Beasts
Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses
Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve
Louise Erdrich, The Round House
Katherine Boo, Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Pat Barker, Regeneration
Sebastien Barry, On Canaan's Side
Robert Caro, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: The Passage of Power
Monique Truong, The Book of Salt
Walter Isaacson, Ben Franklin: An American Life
Jonathan Lethem, Dissident Gardens
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Anya Van Brezman, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking
Vaddey Ratner, In the Shadow of the Banyan
George Packer, The Unwinding
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
Ari Shavit, My Promised Land
Colm Toibin, Brooklyn
Daniel Brown, Boys in the Boat
Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
Jeff Hobbs, The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace
Dinaw Mengetsu, The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow
Viet Tranh Nguyen, The Sympathizer
Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo
Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time
Peter Stark, Astoria
Helen MacDonald, H is for Hawk
Scott Anderson, Lawrence in Arabia
Elena Ferrante, My Brilliant Friend
Elena Ferrante, The Story of a New Name
David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story
Joseph Kanon, Leaving Berlin
Phyllis Rose, Parallel Lives
Nancy Isenberg, White Trash: 400 Year Untold History of Class in America
Alice Hoffman, Marriage of Opposites
Stephen Kinzer, The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Ron Chernow, Hamilton
Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad:A Novel
Imbolo Mbue, Behold the Dreamers
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the Sea
Philip Roth, Plot Against America
Rosalind Rosenberg, Jane Crow: The Life of Pauli Murray
Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose
Lucette Lagnado, The Man in the White Sharkskin Suit
Marguerite Yourcenar, Memoirs of Hadrian
Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli
Jennifer Egan, Manhattan Beach
Lynne Olson, Citizens of London: The Americans Who Stood with Britain in Its Darkest Finest Hour