While year-end lists often include books that were released in the last year, here at To the Best of Our Knowledge we know that big ideas take time to marinate. With that in mind, here is our Executive Producer’s list of books that have blown his mind recently, with hopes that some of them will expand yours, too.
This is a short list of some of my favorite books over the last decade or so. They’re not exactly beach reads, but then I want my vacation books to be mind-expanding, to take me into unfamiliar territory or imaginative worlds. I have interviewed most of these authors, and in every case I found the writers to be thoughtful and engaging. So in no particular order….
“Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology” by David Abram (Vintage)
Abram is a cultural ecologist and environmental philosopher, with a twist. He’s an animist. I confess, I’ve always been intrigued by animism, but I never gave it serious thought until I read this book. Abram urges us to think with our entire bodies, to experience the world through all of our senses, not just our heads. He’s also a sleight-of-hand magician by training. In his early twenties, he spent a lot of time roaming around Southeast Asia and the mountains of Nepal as an itinerant magician. He’d wander into a village, hoping to meet - and learn from - the local shaman. In Abram’s view, magic isn’t really about trickery; the goal is to alter our ordinary perceptions by shifting the perceptual field. He tells remarkable stories about his encounters with shamans and how they changed his life.
Listen to an interview with Abram here.
“Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage” by Laura Waterman (Counterpoint)
On a cold February morning in 2000, mountaineer Guy Waterman kissed his wife goodbye and hiked up to his favorite New Hampshire mountain to die. After years of living with crippling depression, Guy told Laura he couldn’t go on living, so they came to an agreement that this is how Guy would end his life. This memoir begins with Laura’s memory of watching her husband walk out of the house for the last time. It’s a heartbreaking story about a complex and fascinating marriage. Laura and Guy were urban sophisticates who moved to the land and lived for three decades without running water, electricity or a telephone, but they still had devoted friends and a rich intellectual life. It’s a book that’s bound to get you talking about what matters most in life.
Listen to an interview with Waterman here.
“The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science” by Richard Holmes (Vintage)
The history of science fascinates me because it’s filled with strange twists and turns about our never-ending effort to understand the nature of reality. Holmes is a British writer who’s best-known as a literary biographer (author of acclaimed books on Shelley and Coleridge). “The Age of Wonder” is a riveting account of how science and art converged in early 18th century England, not only shaping the Romantic movement but also launching a second scientific revolution. It’s essentially a series of mini-biographies of innovative scientists such as Humphry Davy and William and Caroline Herschel, along with a great chapter on Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”
Listen to an interview with Holmes here.
“Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity” by Katherine Boo (Random House)
Boo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who works in the tradition of immersion journalism. She spent three years in a Mumbai slum, where some people don’t even have a roof over their heads and rats bite sleeping children, and everyone is trying to scrape out a living, often by picking through scrap heaps to sell what they find. Poverty in India is different than American poverty. The Indian caste system has its own cultural rules, and the winners and losers of globalization live side by side. Boo focuses on a few of the people she came to know as they grapple with violence, corruption and the Indian criminal justice system.
Listen to an interview with Boo here.
“Open: An Autobiography” by Andre Agassi (Vintage)
This is the best sports book I’ve ever read, partly because it’s not really a book about sports. Agassi had a love/hate relationship with his father, who badgered the young Andre into endless practicing and ultimately sent him to live at Nick Bollettierri’s famed - and cutthroat - tennis academy. As a former competitive tennis player and a lifelong fan, I followed Agassi’s career through thick and thin - from his teenage flash to his years of burnout, and then to his resurgence as a respected tennis elder. Agassi has always been one of the most thoughtful athletes around. Unlike his greatest rival, Pete Sampras, who lived and breathed tennis, Agassi’s interests were never confined to the tennis court. That’s why this book is far better than the typical sports memoir.
Listen to an interview with Agassi here.
“The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinction” by David Quammen (Scribner).
Quammen is a brilliant writer who fuses science journalism and natural history with stories from his own treks into wilderness areas around the world. This is a study of island biogeography, which has served as a laboratory for scientists studying evolution. He tells the remarkable story of 19th century naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, co-discoverer of the theory of natural selection. We also get contemporary case studies of modern island biography, from the lemurs of Madagascar to the Komodo dragon of Indonesia. Quammen brings science alive with vivid anecdotes and personal stories.
Listen to an interview with Quammen here.
“The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness” by Karen Armstrong (Anchor).
Armstrong has written a series of big books about religion, from “A History of God” to biographies of Muhammad and the Buddha. “The Spiral Staircase” is perhaps her most personal book. It’s the fascinating story of her own spiritual journey from entering a Catholic convent (“I wanted to find God”) when she was 17 and then, after a series of panic attacks, epileptic seizures and growing disillusionment with her life as a nun, she left after 7 years and became an atheist. By studying the sacred texts of the Abrahamic religions, Armstrong eventually found her way back to religion, though it’s a far more nuanced and intellectual understanding than what she previously believed. Armstrong has emerged as the go-to writer for many people who call themselves “spiritual but not religious.”
Listen to an interview with Armstrong here.
“The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by Haruki Murakami (Vintage).
Murakami is one of my favorite writers. There’s a paradox at the heart of every Murakami novel. The prose is not actually great and some of the plot twists leave you scratching your head. But he creates a world that’s mysterious and often mesmerizing. Dreams figure prominently in the psychic lives of his characters, and he veers between surrealism and the mundane details of ordinary life. His best novel, “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,” gives us the Murakami universe in all its glory - women with psychic and healing powers, battles in an alternative universe, the violence of Japan’s war-time past, Murakami’s love of jazz and American culture, and the story of a man who loses everything and then finds himself after a long and difficult journey.