Zoya’s Story
HART TOP TEN BOOKS
The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care (T. R. Reid)
American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin)
An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World (Pankaj Mishra)
Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Stephen Kinzer)
Retribution: The Battle for Japan, 1944-1945 (Max Hastsings)
The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It (Paul Collier)
Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (John Lewis)
Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (Barack Obama)
*Lincoln (Gore Vidal)
*The Things They Carried (Tim O’Brien)
(In addition any short story anthologies by William Trevor or Alice Munro are my short cuts to brilliant fiction writing)
EXCELLENT CALIFORNIA BOOKS
The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (Leonard L. Richards)
A Rage for Justice: The Passion and Politics of Phillip Burton (John Jacobs)
*When the Emperor Was Divine (Julie Otsuka)
When the Great Spirit Died: The Destruction of the California Indians: 1850-1860 (William B. Secrest)
On Gold Mountain: The One Hundred Year Odyssey of My Chinese-American Family (Lisa See
The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream (H. W. Brands)
*Fiction