We’ve asked for book recommendations before—either for
a hot summer day or
a cold winter night—and you’ve always come through with
lots of great ideas.
Last year’s
winter reading list from our readers included classics like Upton Sinclair’s
The Brass Check, and newer selections, like
The Lonely Soldier by Helen Benedict and
Hella Nation by Evan Wright. This past summer, Tom Rachman’s
The Imperfectionists—a darkly comic novel tracing tracing a fictional English-language newspaper in Rome through its slow decline—
topped the list as most recommended by our commenters.
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism – Andrew J. Bacevich
Supermedia: Saving Journalism So It Can Save the World – Charlie Beckett
The Wealth of Networks – Yochai Benchler
The Bible
Friday Night Lights – H.G. Bissinger
Our Constitution: The Myth That Binds Us – Eric Black
Alphabet Juice – Roy Blount Jr.
Terror and Consent – Phillip Bobbitt
What Color is Your Parachute? – Richard Nelson Bolles
The Image – Daniel Boorstin
The New New Journalism – ed. Robert Boynton
The Gay Place – Billy Lee Brammer
The Path to Power – Robert A. Caro
Silent Spring – Rachel Carson
The Boys on the Bus – Timothy Crouse
Black and White and Dead All Over – John Darnton
Flat Earth News – Nick Davies
Return to Tsugaru: Travels of a Purple Tramp – Osamu Dazai
Anything by St. Francis de Sales
The New Muckrackers – Leonard Downie
Waiting for an Ordinary Day: The Unraveling of Life in Iraq – Farnaz Fassihi
The Forever War – Dexter Filkins
Economics for Dummies – Sean Masaki Flynn
The Predator State – James K. Galbraith
City Room – Arthur Gelb
The Tipping Point – Malcolm Gladwell
Personal History – Katharine Graham
Corrupted Science – John Grant
News is a Verb – Pete Hamill
Pulitzer’s Gold – Roy J. Harris, Jr.
Machete Season – Jean Hatzfeld
Economics in One Lesson – Henry Hazlitt
Laura Ingalls Wilder, Farm Journalist: Writings from the Ozarks – Edited by Stephen W. Hines
B-Four – Sam Hodges
Anti-Intellectualism in American Life – Richard Hofstadter
Who You Are when No One’s Looking – Bill Hybels
In Search of Memory – Eric Kandel
The Shock Doctrine – Naomi Klein
The Elements of Journalism – Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel
Never Shoot a Stampede Queen – Mark Leiren-Young
Startup Guide to Guerilla Marketing – Jay and Jeannie Levinson
The Journalist and the Murderer – Janet Malcolm
The Road – Cormac McCarthy
Annals of the Former World – John McPhee
Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found – Suketu Mehta
The Vanishing Newspaper – Philip Meyer
On Liberty – John Stuart Mill
The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers – Jane Miller
Joe Gould’s Secret – Joseph Mitchell
The Tender Bar – J.R. Moehringer
Anything by Haruki Murakami
Innumeracy – John Paulos
The Truth – Terry Pratchett
Lush Life – Richard Price
Once Upon a Distant War – William Prochnau
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
What Are Journalists For? – Jay Rosen
One More Time: The Best of Mike Royko – Mike Royko
Slats Grobnik and Some Other Friends – Mike Royko
Here Comes Everybody – Clay Shirky
Claim of Privilege: A Mysterious Plane Crash, a Landmark Supreme Court Case and Rise of State Secrets – Barry Siegel
The Creation of the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications – Paul Starr
The Kingdom and the Power – Gay Talese
Hard Times – Studs Terkel
The Palliser novels – Anthony Trollope
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again – David Foster Wallace
All the King’s Men – Robert Penn Warren
Taking on the Trust – Steve Weinberg
Legacy of Ashes – Tim Weiner
The Man Who Owns the News –
Michael Wolff
The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History – Gordon Wood
Tokyo Vice—Jake Adelstein
The Ambition and the Power—John Barry
The Lonely Soldier—Helen Benedict
The New New Journalism: Conversations with America’s Best Nonfiction Writers on Their Craft—Robert Boynton, ed.
Battle for Justice—Ethan Bronner
Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo Van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance—Ian Buruma
The Associated Press Guide to News Writing—Rene J. Cappon
Ghost Wars—Steve Coll
The Chicago Manual Of Style
Necessary Illusions—Noam Chomsky
Homer and Langley—E.L. Doctorow
The Unknown Soldier—Joshua Dysart
Breaking the News—James Fallows
The Great War for Civilization—Robert Fisk
Great Plains and Family—Ian Frazier
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda—Philip Gourevitch
Gaily, Gaily—Ben Hecht
War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning—Chris Hedges
Out of His Skin: The John Barnes Phenomenon—Dave Hill
The True Believer—Eric Hoffer
The Great Game—Peter Hopkirk
The Curse of the Mogul—Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald and Ava Seave
Finding George Orwell in Burma—Emma Larkin
Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx—Adrian Nicole LeBlanc
The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes you a Happy Birthday: Unexpected Encounters in the Changing Middle East—Neil Macfarquhar
Paris 1919—Margaret MacMillan
China Safari: On the Trail of Beijing’s Expansion in Africa—Serge Michel, Michel Beurut, and Paulo Woods
Journalistas: 100 Years of the Best Writing and Reporting—Eleanor Mills and Naomi Wolf, eds.
I.F. Stone: A Portrait—Andrew Patner
Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels: The Casebook of an Investigative Reporter—James Phelan
Don’t Make No Waves … Don’t Back No Losers—Milton Rakove
The Girls in the Balcony—Nan Robertson
Queen of the Oil Club: The Intrepid Wanda Jablonski and the Power of Information—Anna Rubino
Lords of the Press—George Seldes
The Brass Check—Upton Sinclair
Deogratias—JP Stassen
Taking on the Trust: The Epic Battle of Ida Tarbell and John D. Rockefeller—Steve Weinberg
Hella Nation—Evan Wright
Winter Reading List Revisited : CJR
