Emulating the best practices of great bookstores and public libraries, Library Committee members put together the 166SIX PICKS list of some of our favorite books in the collection. To help you find them easily we put neon yellow labels on the spines. Use this list for find your next book or just browse the shelves to find a good read.
AFRICA/ASIA/MIDDLE EAST – HISTORY Return of a King – William Dalrymple From Beirut to Jerusalem – Thomas Friedman
AFRICAN AMERICAN INTEREST Another Country – James Baldwin Tally’s Corner – Elliot Liebow Black Boy: A Record of Childhood and Youth – Richard Wright
AGING Younger Next Year for Women – Chris Crowley and Harry S. Lodge The Last Lecture – Randy S. Pausch
AMERICAS/ANTARCTICA/AUSTRALIA – HISTORY 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created – Charles C. Mann
ARCHITECTURE At Home: A Short History of Private Life – Bill Bryson Boundaries – Maya Lyn Lost Twin Cities – Larry Millett Once There Were Castles – Larry Millett
ART HISTORY – U.S. American Visions: The Epic History of Art in America – Robert Hughes
ART HISTORY, WORLD Janson’s History of World Art Fifty Artists You Should Know – Thomas Koster
BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR – (biography shelved as SUBJECT) Cleopatra: A Life – Stacy Schiff Evening in the Palace of Reason (shelved as BACH) – James Gaines Bully Pulpit (shelved as ROOSEVELT, T) – Doris Kearns Goodwin Team of Rivals (shelved as LINCOLN) – Doris Kearns Goodwin No Ordinary Time (shelved as ROOSEVELT, F) – Doris Kearns Goodwin Letters to a Young Madman: A Memoir – Paul Gruchow Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (shelved as ZAMPERINI) – Laura Hillenbrand Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson Devil in the White City (shelved as MUDGETT) – Erik Larson In the Heart of the Garden of the Beasts: Love. Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin (shelved as DODD) – Erik Larson Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey – Countess Carnarvon Road from Coorain– Jill K. Conway Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks – Rebecca Skloot John Adams – David McCullough Truman – David McCullough The Wright Brothers – David McCullough A Beautiful Mind (shelved as NASH) – Sylvia Nasar Dreams from My Father – Barack Obama On the Move: A Life – Oliver Sacks My Beloved Country – Sonia Sotomayer Beyond the Hundredth Meridian (shelved as POWELL) – Wallace Stegner Night – Elie Wiesel Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity and the Making of the OED (shelved as MURRAY) – Simon Winchester A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir – Donald Worster Late Homecomer – Kao Kalia Yang Empty Mansions: The Mysterious Life of Huguette Clark – Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell, Jr.
BIOGRAPHY COLLECTIONS Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration – Isabelle Wilkerson The Great Journey: Americans in Paris – David McCullough The Presidents Club – Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy She Captains – Joan Druett
ECONOMICS/BUSINESS Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Making It – Barbara Ehrenreich The Lexus and the Olive Tree – Thomas L. Friedman Freakonomics: A Rogure Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything – Steven Levitt Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt – Michael Lewis Capital in the 21st Century – Thomas Piketty Lean In – Sheryl Sandberg
ESSAYS/COLUMNS Paper Trail – Michael Dorris Arguably: Essays – Christopher Hitchens Long Life: Essays and Other Writings – Mary Oliver Strength to Your Sword Arm: Selected Writings – Brenda Ueland Shiksa Goddess, or How I Spent My Forties: Essays – Wendy Wasserstein Essays – E.B. White
EUROPE – HISTORY Notes From a Small Island – Bill Bryson Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania – Erik Larson Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William Shirer
FICTION A Place Where the Sea Remembers – Sandra Benitez Possession: A Romance – A.S. Byatt Remarkable Creatures: A Novel – Tracy Chevalier My Antonia – Willa Cather Beach Music – Frank Conroy Claire of the Sea Light –Edwidge Danticat All the Light We Cannot See –Anthony Doerr A Yellow Raft in Blue Water –Michael Dorris Peace Like a River – Leif Enger Round House – Louise Erdrich Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet: A Novel – Jamie Ford Three Complete Novels – E.M. Forster Corrections – Jonathan Franzen Freedom – Jonathan Franzen Cold Mountain: A Novel – Charles Frazier Memoirs of a Geisha: A Novel – Arthur Golden Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy Eventide – Kent Haruf Staggerford – Jon Hassler Stones from the River – Ursula Hegi Orphan Master’s Son: A Novel – Adam Johnson The 100-Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd Flight Behavior – Barbara Kingsolver Ordinary Grace – William Kent Kreuger Welcome to the Great Mysterious – Lorna Landvik Crow Lake – Mary Lawson Independent People – Halidor Laxness Bring Up the Bodies – Hillary Mantel Wolf Hall – Hillary Mantel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami In the Lake of the Woods – Tim O’Brien The English Patient – Michael Onadatje Excellent Women – Barbara Pym Shipping News – Annie Proulx One True Thing – Anna Quindlen Lila – Marilynne Robinson Russka – Edward Rutherfurd Stone Diaries – Carol Sheilds Early Warning – Jane Smiley Angle of Repose – Wallace Stegner Kitchen God’s Wife – Amy Tan Four Complete Novels – Anne Tyler A Spool of Blue Thread – Anne Tyler Cutting for Stone – Abraham Verghese Red Earth, White Earth – Will Weaver House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
GENDER ISSUES In a Different Voice – Carol Gilligan
HUMOR The Most of Norah Ephron – Norah Ephron Happy to Be Here – Garrison Keillor
MEDICINE AND HEALTH On Immunity: An Innoculation – Eula Biss The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down – Anne Fadiman Being Mortal – Atul Gwande
MINNESOTA/MIDWEST Minnesota: A History of the State – Theodore Blegen Bring Warm Clothes – Peg Meier Dakota: A Spiritual Journey – Kathleen Norris Remembering the Good War: Minnesota’s Greatest Generation – Thomas Saylor Minnesota’s Rocks and Waters: A Geological Story – George M. Schwartz and George A. Thiel Women of Minnesota: Selected Biographical Essays – Barbara Stuhler and Gretchen Kreuter Pot Luck Supper with Meeting to Follow: Essays – Andy Sturdevant, Andy
MOTION PICTURES/TELEVISION Behind the Scenes at Downton Abbey – Emma Rowley
MYSTERY/SPY/ADVENTURE Deep South – Nevada Barr Superior Death – Nevada Barr Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil – John Berendt Death in a Tenured Position – Amanda Cross Water’s Edge – Karin Fossum Midnight in Europe – Alan Furst Blessing Way – Tony Hillerman Unsuitable Job for a Woman – P.D. James Iron Lake – William Kent Krueger Amends for Murder – M.D. Lake The Battle of Frankie Silver – Sharyn McCrumb Faceless Killers – Henning Mankell Bury Your Dead – Louise Penny Still Life – Louise Penny Portrait of a Spy – Daniel Silva Murder on the 31st Floor – Per Wahloo Masie Dobbs – Jacquline Winspear
MYTHOLOGY Mythology – Edith Hamilton
NATIVE AMERICAN INTEREST Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee – Dee Brown In the Spirit of Crazy Horse – Peter Matthiessen Walking the Rez Road – Jim Northrup Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life – Diane Wilson
NATURE/ENVIRONMENT Silent Spring – Rachel Carson Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation – Dan Fagin Journal of a Prairie Year – Paul Gruchow Civil Action – Jonathan Harr Crow Planet – Lyanda Lynn Haupt Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History – Elizabeth Kolbert Gifts of the Crow – John Marzluff and Tony Angel Botany of Desire – Michael Pollan A Plague of Frogs – William Souder The World Without Us – Alan Weisman Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883 – Simon Winchester
NATURE WRITING Pilgrim at Tinker’s Creek – Annie Dillard Listening Point – Sigurd Olson Singing Wilderness – Sigurd Olson
POETRY COLLECTIONS Aimless Love – Billy Collins Selected Poems: 1965-1995 – Michael Dennis-Browne The Orange Tree: Early Poems – Jane Dickerson This Wild Country – Dorothy Schlesselman
PSYCHOLOGY Ambiguous Loss – Pauline Boss Emotional Intelligence – Daniel Goleman
RELIGION AND SPIRITUALITY A History of God – Karen Armstrong The Gifts of the Jews – Thomas Cahill Abraham – Bruce Feiler Under the Banner of Heaven – Jon Krakauer Gnostic Gospels – Elaine Pagels
SCIENCE/TECH/MATH The New Cool: A Visionary, His FIRST Robotics Team – Neal Bascomb Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson Brief History of Time – Stephen Hawking The Way Things Work – David Macaulay Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America – Shawn L. Otto Omnivore’s Dilemma – Michael Pollan The Planets – Dava Sobel Double Helix: Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA – James D. Watson
SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGIES Twenty-Six Minnesota Writers
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald – F. Scott Fitzgerald The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
SOCIOLOGY Alone Together – Shery Turkle
TRAVEL WRITING A Walk in the Woods – Bill Bryson Great Plains – Ian Frazier Necessity of Empty Places – Paul Gruchow Coming Home Crazy – Bill Holm Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder – Kenn Kaufman The Snow Leopard – Peter Matthiesen Last Empty Places – Peter Stark Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories – Simon Winchester
U.S. HISTORY Undaunted Courage – Stephen Ambrose The Boys in the Boat –Daniel James Brown 1776 – David McCullough Battle Cry of Freedom – James McPherson Hallowed Ground – James McPherson Last Full Measure – Richard Moe The Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America – George Packer Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq 2003-2005 – Thomas Ricks The Generals – Thomas Ricks April 1865: The Month that Saved America – Jay Winik
WORLD HISTORY Guns, Germs and Steel – Jaren Diamond
WORLD POLITICS/GOVERNMENT Longitudes and Attitudes: Exploring the World After September 11 – Thomas L. Freedman Best and the Brightest – David Halberstam Bill Moyers’s Journal – Bill Moyers Moyers on America – Bill Moyers
WORLD WAR II The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War – Denise Kierman II Lost in Shangri-LA: A True Story of Survival, Adventure, and the Most Incredible Rescue Mission of World War II – Michael Zuckoff
Want more recommendations? Check out your neighbors’ Reader Recommendations. You can also look back at our recent purchases.