12 Months of Reading
We asked 50 of our friends—from April Bloomfield to Mike Tyson—to name
their favorite books of 2013
Dec. 13, 2013 6:12 p.m. ET
Anat Admati

"Democracy in Retreat" by Joshua Kurlantzick starts with evidence that
the quality of democracy in the developing world has eroded in the past
decade. The author explains why, exposing the blind spots of the
so-called Washington Consensus and its one-size-fits-all approaches.
Policy makers should take note. In "This Town," Mark Leibovich provides
a cynical account of the Washington, D.C., bubble that is at once
hilarious and depressing. Can we expect thoughtful policies on anything,
from promoting democracy to reducing distortions in banking, when so
many in power are busy obsessing about the social hierarchy or about
"monetizing" their experiences by going through revolving doors?
Finally, I grew up in Israel and have significant ties there, so "My
Promised Land" by Ari Shavit feels personal. Mr. Shavit describes Israel
as a nation created by stubbornly determined dreamers, at once highly
successful and shrouded in conflict, contradictions and crises.

—Ms. Admati, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, is
co-author of "The Bankers' New Clothes."

Speakeasy

    Readers' Choice: The Best Book of 2013
    Which Books Topped the 'Best Of' Lists This Year?

Tash Aw

I fell in love with the heroines of two novels this year. Reno, in
Rachel Kushner's "The Flamethrowers," is every bit like the novel
itself: beautiful, ambitious and full of keen social observations. Ms.
Kushner captures the energy and artifice of the art world and also
dissects notions of class, gender and modernity. I can't remember when I
last read a novel so full of brilliant set pieces. Chimamanda Ngozi
Adichie's "Americanah" reinvents the Immigrant novel, the Race novel and
the Feminist novel. Lushly romantic, unapologetically confrontational in
its exploration of race and identity, it made me reconsider issues I
thought I'd figured out a long time ago. It's also very, very funny: The
blog postings of its main character, Ifemelu, taught me more than I
thought possible about the politics of hair and Hollywood. While both
these novels have an epic quality to them, neither can compare with the
monumental nature of David Tod Roy's translation of the 16th-century
classic "Chin P'ing Mei" ("The Plum in the Golden Vase"). The fifth and
final volume, "The Dissolution," completes the joyous rediscovery of a
genuine masterpiece.

—Mr. Aw's latest novel is "Five Star Billionaire."

Dan Barber

I ended 2013 reading only women. This wasn't accidental. After a list of
influential foodies appeared, with not a woman chef in sight, a food
fight over sexism erupted in kitchens across the country—with fingers
pointing at the "demi-glace ceiling." I tried to shrug it off, but my
wife suggested (read: demanded) that I institute my own grass-roots
effort to right the wrong. In a food world where self-promotion rules,
female chefs appear better able to resist the Food Network-ification of
the chef: forget the steak, sell the sizzle. Books like "Le Livre
Blanc," by the incredible French chef Anne-Sophie Pic, reminded
me—because we always need reminding—that haute cuisine is, at its
root, simple cooking (but as Einstein said, in a different context, "no
simpler"). Deborah Madison's "Vegetable Literacy" is brilliantly simple.
Instead of going from A to Z (A is for Asparagus), an approach as
exciting as overgrown zucchini, she organized the book by vegetable
family. Know the relationships between plants, and you can't help
improving your cooking. Other wisdom gained from women? Don't argue with
an insightful feminist that the demi-glace ceiling is
fiction—especially if that feminist happens to have written another
2013 favorite: "The Autobiography of Us," a novel by my wife, Aria Beth
Sloss.

—Mr. Barber is executive chef and co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant.

Dominic Barton

In the 21st-century knowledge economy, a nation's comparative advantage
is increasingly shaped by the quality and reach of its educational
system—its ability to prepare and lift not just some lucky citizens but
everyone. Still, in too many countries, the debates about how to improve
have only grown more contentious, contradictory and dispiriting. Enter
Amanda Ripley's "The Smartest Kids in the World," a book as readable as
it is important. The author follows three American students to foreign
lands and arrives at a bracingly simple conclusion. Despite different
cultures and approaches, today's best-performing systems share one
thing: "a pervasive belief in rigor." Class size? Spending per capita?
Cutting-edge IT? All basically noise. What matters are shared
expectations that tests will measure real results and policies that
attract, train and pay for top teaching talent. Most inspiring is Ms.
Ripley's message that deep change is possible. Her book focuses on
success stories—Finland, Korea and Poland. All are developed
democracies that moved from bottom to top in a generation or less. The
rest of us, she suggests, really have no excuse.

—Mr. Barton is global managing director at McKinsey & Co.

Rick Bayless

I love that we're in a vegetable revolution in this country. The people
leading it are the same people who have been talking about vegetables
for 30 years. Deborah Madison's "Vegetable Literacy" is beautifully
written and obsessively researched, a full college course of botany
lessons weaved between approachable recipes. Likewise Alice Waters, in
"The Art of Simple Food II," reaches into her wheelhouse and does what
she does best: seasonal, intuitive recipes that anybody can make.
There's a focus on gardens and the edibles we grow there, but the book
is valuable for city folk, too. On the other side of the spectrum is
David Kinch's "Manresa," which distills his California restaurant into a
lush, richly illustrated book. This is the opposite of simple
food—detail-oriented, special-occasion stuff—but it's true to who Mr.
Kinch is as a chef and the food he's quietly been perfecting for over a
decade. Practice makes perfect—a perfect book, anyway.

—Mr. Bayless is a chef, author and host of PBS's "Mexico: One Plate at
a Time."

Jeff Bewkes

Russell Shorto's "Amsterdam" is an insightful history not only of the
creation of the world's most nature-defying city but also of the role
Amsterdam played in the development of the United States. Mr. Shorto
masterfully describes how Amsterdam was built in only a few generations
by reclaiming water from the sea, literally by hand in the 1600s. And he
brings to life how the city attracted—with promises of freedom and
tolerance—the most energetic people from all over Europe to create a
free civic and economic society that became a model for the American
Republic a century later. I also found myself reading Richard
Hofstadter's "The American Political Tradition"—as relevant today as
when it was written 65 years ago.

—Mr. Bewkes is CEO of Time Warner.

April Bloomfield

I love to start my day with a cookbook and a cup of tea. This morning
ritual is how I generate ideas for my own menus. My favorite cookbook of
the year is Tom Adams's "Pitt Cue Co.: The Cookbook." A must-read for
any barbecue aficionado, his book brings readers along on his quest to
find the ideal sweet, smoky and spicy flavors that others spend their
lifetime trying to perfect, and with the wonderful illustrations you can
almost taste his cooking. The pride he takes in his craft makes me wish
I was at his London restaurant, enjoying his pulled pork and burnt ends
with bourbon and picklebacks. When I'm not reading cookbooks, I love
biographies and memoirs, so I was excited to get my hands on Anjelica
Huston's "A Story Lately Told"—an honest, unpretentious book about her
early life and what it was like to live with multiple generations of
thespians, famous family friends and a hugely talented director-father.
I can't wait for her next book.

—Ms. Bloomfield is a chef and author of "A Girl and Her Pig."
Neil Blumenthal

Business books fall into a few categories: They pose a counterintuitive
argument, focus on new research or offer management advice. It's pretty
rare for a new offering to cover all three bases. But if anyone could do
it, it's Adam Grant—the youngest tenured professor at Wharton and a
person known for being innovative, prolific and comprehensively
well-liked ("mensch" is the technical term). His book "Give and Take"
offers a new framework for relating to peers, employees and
customers—one based on the premise that acting in service to others is
one of the greatest motivators to success. In other words, the best
thing you can do for your career and happiness is to ask somebody else,
"How can I help?" Like all good writers, Mr. Grant has a knack for
storytelling, which makes the book's rigor—its foundation in research,
its case studies, its analysis—go down smoothly.

—Mr. Blumenthal is
a co-founder
of Warby Parker.

Ed Catmull

I am constantly struck by how many people think of stories solely as
entertainment—edifying or time-wasting but still: entertainment. "The
Storytelling Animal" by Jonathan Gottschall shows that the storytelling
part of our brain is deeper and more complex than that, wired into the
way we think and learn. This struck me as a powerful idea, that our
brain is structured for and shaped by stories whose value goes beyond
entertainment and socialization. On a lighter note is Chip Kidd's "Go: A
Kidd's Guide to Graphic Design." At a time when arts programs in schools
are under assault, this book offers a beautiful distillation of the
principles of great design and the careful decisions that go into making
things look the way they do. The book is "for kids," but this grown-up
was captivated too.

—Mr. Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation, is author of the
forthcoming "Creativity, Inc."

Francis Collins

Taking risks is part of genius, and genius is not immune to bloopers.
Mario Livio's "Brilliant Blunders" leads us through the circumstances
that surrounded famous gaffes. For instance, Charles Darwin proposed a
theory about how inheritance worked that was utterly fanciful, while
Albert Einstein introduced a "cosmological constant" to keep his
relativistic universe from collapsing. Einstein probably never actually
called this his "biggest blunder," but he did acknowledge that the
introduction of this fudge factor left him with a "bad conscience."
Ironically, that same constant is now being reconsidered to account for
dark energy, which neither Einstein nor anyone else in physics knew
about at the time. Some combination of too little data and too much
reliance on intuition played a role in most of these blunders. But the
author's goal is not to ridicule—quite the contrary. Mr. Livio helps us
see that such spectacular errors are opportunities rather than setbacks.
There's a lesson for young scientists here. Boldly attacking problems of
fundamental significance can have more impact than pursuing precise
solutions to minor questions—even if there are a few bungles along the
way.

—Dr. Collins is director of the National Institutes of Health.

Katie Couric

As a political junkie, I found Mark Halperin and John Heilemann's
"Double Down" to be a must-read. These guys get behind-the-scenes
details like no one else. Among novels, Karen Mack's "Freud's Mistress"
provides an intriguing look at the father of psychoanalysis and his
relationship with his sister-in-law, while Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch"
is a treasure from one of the most brilliant writers of our time. As for
memoirs, I read "Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake" by Anna Quindlen, who
makes me feel as if I'm listening to an old friend (or should I say a
friend of long standing?). Will Schwalbe, meanwhile, is a friend, and
"The End of Your Life Book Club" is a poignant memoir combining a love
of literature, a love of family and the clear-eyed perspective that only
cancer can provide.

—Ms. Couric hosts "Katie"
and will join Yahoo as
global anchor in 2014.
Stanley Crouch

A few days before James McBride won the National Book Award for fiction,
I met him at a reading and told him that he should win because his "The
Good Lord Bird" offered an alternative to a celebrated film about
slavery that sinks into ideological mud. The film was mercilessly
sincere, but the enslaved men and women in it appeared to be there only
for the white characters to exorcise their inner monstrosities. Mr.
McBride respects slaves' humanity, filling his novel with lore, hazard,
cruelty, romance and humor. His love of the black Southern voice pushes
him in Ralph Ellison's direction, which resonates free of sociology and
condescending sympathy. Mr. McBride refuses to put 19th-century Negro
characters in a place devoid of human unpredictability, what one of Duke
Ellington's nephews called "the compound." All of his people, black or
white, male or female, abolitionists or slavers, play by no premeditated
rules. In a time as contrived and phony as ours, "The Good Lord Bird"
seems a miracle, much more major than minor, a long drink of the blues,
so real it speaks to all listeners.

—Mr. Crouch is the author, most recently, of "Kansas City Lightning."

Clive Davis

The books I read this year that made a strong impression were those that
deepened my understanding of figures in worlds I profoundly care about:
politics and entertainment. In my field, there's a lot of trial and
error and second-guessing, but success is the result of instinct, hard
work and persistence. Obviously, I followed the 2012 election intently,
but certain incidents in "Double Down" by Mark Halperin and John
Heilemann were revelatory. The book is gripping even though there are no
surprises about the outcome. Robert Hilburn's "Johnny Cash" is a
thorough, compassionate and knowledgeable biography of an artist I knew
well and admired tremendously. Cash is a towering figure in American
music, one of the very few artists elected to both the Country and the
Rock and Roll halls of fame. Mr. Hilburn, from the first chapter about a
young Cash in Arkansas, pulls you into his story.

—Mr. Davis, chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment, is
author of "The Soundtrack of My Life."

Wendy Davis

I have enjoyed all of Malcom Gladwell's books, but "David and Goliath"
delivered a message that resounded most with me—being an underdog isn't
prohibitive to being successful. Nothing about my story, for example, is
probable. I went from a tiny trailer, to a successful business, to the
state Senate. Mr. Gladwell's book reminded me that if the naysayers had
been right, neither I nor my two daughters would have ever graduated
from college.

—Ms. Davis is a Texas state senator.

Junot Díaz

This has been a banner year for me as a reader. First came Óscar
Martínez's extraordinary (and harrowing) "The Beast." Mr. Martínez is a
Salvadoran reporter who, insanely enough, traced the immigrant route
from Central America up through Mexico. Few books better illuminate the
nightmare abyss many immigrants must navigate to reach our militarized
borders, and the courage and hope and resourcefulness that make such
journeys possible. As a humanizing act of fearless front-line reporting,
as a document of the lives and hearts that make up the "immigrant"
abstraction, the book is extraordinary. Then came Hilton Als's "White
Girls," a brilliant, disturbing, electrifying collection of essays in
which readings of Truman Capote, Eminem, Michael Jackson and all the
other "white girls" become an incandescent meditation on all the
important things of this moment: death, belonging, race, art, sexuality
and of course fame. This book is many things; it is certainly my
favorite book this year. Finally Edwidge Danticat's "Claire of the Sea
Light," an indelible portrait of a Haitian community where it seems that
everything is coming undone but where the heart and all its dreams
remain.

—Mr. Díaz's most recent book of stories is "This Is How You Lose Her."

Donald Fagen

I used to think the business culture that supports pop music had to be
the all-time slimiest and the most incestuous. After reading "This Town"
by Mark Leibovich, I'm inclined to vote for the gang that inhabits
Washington, D.C. Mr. Leibovich channels Tom Wolfe's early work in this
bestiary devoted to the creatures that run our country and the symbiotes
that report on them, lobby them, throw parties for them and hype them
into office. Like some documentary filmmakers, Mr. Leibovich holds the
close-up of his target a bit too long in order to get a snarky chuckle.
To be sure, there are some good laughs, but after reading the last page
I wanted to take a long, scorching shower. On page 31 of "The
Goldfinch," Donna Tartt's Dickensian hero, Theo Decker, loses his
lively, loving mother to a terrorist's bomb placed in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art. This event—and the emotional devastation that
follows—drive the book. As Theo's lifeline unwinds, Ms. Tartt explores
the dithering emotional lives of adolescent boys, the fine points of
antique-furniture restoration, and the glory and desolation of opiate
addiction. At different points, Theo reminded me of coming-of-age heroes
from Pip to Nabokov's Van Veen. Treat yourself to this soulful
masterpiece.

—Mr. Fagen is a musician, songwriter and author of "Eminent Hipsters."

Ronan Farrow

This was not a year Americans will recall with undiluted pleasure. An
unhinged gunman ripped through an airport; a government pried into our
communications; a center of American industry collapsed into bankruptcy.
The books that imprinted themselves on me shared that dark edge, few
more so than George Packer's "The Unwinding." It's the feel-good family
comedy of the year about how everything that could go wrong is going
wrong. Mr. Packer's subdued rage ripples off "The Unwinding's" pages. He
even defaces the great American edifice that is Oprah. "How could he?"
we gasp. Doesn't he share Liz Lemon's gauzy dream of a happenstance
therapy session? Doesn't he want a free car? You may, as I do, continue
to want to grow up to be Oprah. But you'll also likely find your own
broken dreams in "The Unwinding's" elegiac sprawl. If Mr. Packer's work
frightens enough to resemble fiction, Margaret Atwood's terrifies
because it feels so close to reality. Her novel "MaddAddam" is chilling,
profane and riotously funny. Ms. Atwood's speculative indictment of
humankind is as scathing as Mr. Packer's real one.

—Mr. Farrow is author of the forthcoming "Pandora's Box."

Richard Fisher

In fiction, John Grisham's newest, "Sycamore Row," is a stunning tale of
redemption. In nonfiction, Christian Caryl's "Strange Rebels" may be the
year's best book. It brilliantly documents 1979, when "the twin forces
of markets and religion came back with a vengeance" through Margaret
Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping, the Iranian revolution, the start of the
Afghan jihad, and the pilgrimage of Pope John Paul II to Poland; the
book is a must-read for any serious student seeking to understand what
has ensued in the 21st century. Jon Meacham's "Thomas Jefferson: The Art
of Power" provides remarkable insight into one of history's great
transformational leaders. And Neil Irwin's "The Alchemists" offers
perhaps the best account yet of the accidentally transformational
leaders that central bankers became with the financial crisis that
erupted in 2007.

—Mr. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

John Eliot Gardiner

I fell upon the mouthwatering biographies of two heroic writers: George
Herbert, the 17th-century divine and Metaphysical poet; and Patrick
Leigh Fermor, surely the most adventurous of interwar travelers as well
as a phenomenal prose stylist and craftsman. John Drury's "Music at
Midnight" excels at braiding biographical fact with expository guidance
to Herbert's poetry, while in "Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure,"
Artemis Cooper has done a brilliant job of piecing together the shards
of evidence about this glamorous but elusive writer, who seemed not to
be able to resist mixing fact and fiction in his own life story. In case
anyone were to forget Leonard Bernstein's monumental gifts as a
musician, polymath and the most persuasive exponent of the "infinite
variety of music" there has ever been, along comes "The Leonard
Bernstein Letters." As a rookie conducting student in Paris in 1967, I
was privileged to sit in on Lenny's rehearsals with the Orchestre
Nationale and spent a bizarre evening with him crisscrossing Paris in a
taxi singing Arabic folk and pop songs at the top of our voices. So it
is refreshing to hear his voice again bursting forth from the pages of
this fascinating book.

—Mr. Gardiner, a conductor, is the author of "Bach: Music in the Castle
of Heaven."

Elizabeth Gilbert

My prize for this year's How We Live Now novel is Jonathan Miles's "Want
Not," which examines in explicit but humane detail the American way of
waste, trash and hope. For best Inspirational True Story, it's a tie
between Daniel James Brown's "The Boys in the Boat" (sports and Nazis!)
and Jill Lepore's "Book of Ages" (Ben Franklin and his sister!). In the
Harrowing Memoir category, I nominate Rayya Elias's "Harley Loco"—an
amazing drug-survival story whose subtitle ("A Memoir of Hard Living,
Hair, and Post-Punk, From the Middle East to the Lower East Side") says
it all. If you want laughter on every page, treat yourself to "The
Stench of Honolulu" by Jack Handey, but if you prefer laughter
interspersed with tears, read my hands-down favorite of 2013: "Hyperbole
and a Half," by Allie Brosh.

—Ms. Gilbert's most recent novel is "The Signature of All Things."

Donald Graham

This recommendation goes against everything about the season, but:
Please read David Finkel's "Thank You for Your Service." The Americans
who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan bore a special burden. Because no one
wants to hear of a draft, we sent these men back again and again—two
tours, four, five, more. And we asked them to leave their base camps
daily, to live, travel and work among the people. There, diabolical bomb
makers and IED builders saw them as targets. Mr. Finkel lived off and on
among a battalion of soldiers for a year and wrote about them in "The
Good Soldiers," a brilliant earlier book. "Thank You for Your Service"
goes back to many—so, so many—of the same soldiers after their
homecomings. He focuses on Adam Schumann, a sergeant who is as brave as
ever but frustrated by his new mission of finding a job and a good life,
as well as balance in his own mind. I want to believe (as was true after
Vietnam) that most soldiers who fought for us will go on to happy,
productive lives. But as the author looks through his entire battalion
and finds few such stories, I worry. I don't worry that none will
succeed; I know many will. I worry that we asked too much of them.

—Mr. Graham is chairman and CEO of Graham Holdings Co.

Amy Gutmann

As the first in my low-income, immigrant family to graduate college, I
couldn't agree more with Justice Sonia Sotomayor's observation in "My
Beloved World" that "you cannot value dreams according to the odds of
their coming true." Her memoir is a testament to the power of education,
an American Dream-come-true story and a stark reminder of how elusive
that dream is for so many. "The Smartest Kids in the World," by Amanda
Ripley, is a truly fresh twist on an exhaustively debated topic, one
that should encourage rigorous critical thinking about how and why we
educate our children. Finally, at a time when many underestimate the
importance of the humanities, I would urge everyone to read "The
Interestings" by Meg Wolitzer, an insightful tale of six friends who
share a passion for art and thought from their teen years forward. What
matters in life? What does success look like? Ms. Wolitzer's characters
struggle with answers to these questions, and her novel both entertains
and enlightens.

—Ms. Gutmann is president of the University of Pennsylvania.

Daniel Hannan

We've waited a long time for the authorized biography of Margaret
Thatcher, and it has been worth the wait. Through Charles Moore's vivid
prose, we relive the extraordinary story of Britain's greatest peacetime
leader—how she found her country bankrupt, demoralized and dishonored
and left it prosperous, confident and free. Mr. Moore weaves numerous
new revelations into the narrative of the single-minded, humorless,
workaholic, patriotic force of nature that was Margaret Thatcher. Half
of Jesse Norman's "Edmund Burke: The First Conservative" is a biography
of the brilliant Irish seer; the other half discusses his thought. You
won't find a more impressive political philosopher than the 18th-century
MP who more or less invented Anglosphere conservatism. And you won't
find a pithier, more readable treatise on his life and works than this
one. I reckon any open-minded reader will finish the book as a
conservative.

—Mr. Hannan, a British Conservative Member of the European Parliament,
is the author of "Inventing Freedom."

Richard Hell

Ron Padgett's "Collected Poems" is 810 pages long, and every page is a
good time. Mr. Padgett started out as a wild Francophile avant-gardist
in the lineage of the previous generation of New York poets; he soon
settled into his own insanely elastic consciousness-play, which is by
turns (or all at once) sweet, hilarious, moving and mind-bogglingly
imaginative. This book is for anyone who likes writing or who thinks
it's interesting to have a mind (or simply a forehead). "Respect
Yourself," an account of (as the subtitle has it) "Stax Records and the
Soul Explosion" by Robert Gordon, is a book about music, joy, soul,
racism, Memphis, joy and soul, as they were back in the middle of the
last century, which is not that long ago. Stax brought us Otis Redding,
Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Booker T. and the MG's,
Isaac Hayes, and many more magnificent musicians, and Mr. Gordon brings
us Stax. It's a joyous and heartbreaking story that says a lot about
America. Lastly, James Salter's novel "All That Is" has gotten a lot of
attention but not as much as it deserves. Mr. Salter's macho patrician
remove grates on me a bit, but his writing, the specificity and limpid
clarity of the sentences, is exhilarating. This is a very good book,
worthy of his others; it's encouraging that he wrote it in his 80s.

—Mr. Hell is the author of "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp."

Ben Horowitz

In May, George Packer released "The Unwinding." While I disagree with
many (if not most) of his implied conclusions, I still very much enjoyed
the book. How is that possible? In "The Unwinding," I met several people
whom I wouldn't have otherwise met in life. Through Mr. Packer's
storytelling, I felt as if I actually got to know these
people—experienced their challenges, felt their pain and understood
their hopes. I was able to temporarily live the life of a factory
worker, a political operative and a highly unusual evangelist for the
clean-tech economy. Their perspectives have had a great influence on my
thinking and understanding of our country. Mr. Packer compares today's
world to a potentially better America in earlier times; I think the
nostalgic America was actually much worse. But I feel very lucky to have
read this book and am elated that he wrote it.

—Mr. Horowitz is co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.

Glenn Hubbard

"The Presidents Club" by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy ties together
leadership lessons imparted by presidents to one another. The book isn't
just interesting to students of politics; it has lessons for leadership
and how to obtain advice in lonely-at-the-top jobs. That the
relationships are complicated and evolve also gives hope that today's
leaders may find their way out of the political woods in which we find
ourselves. Jung Chang's "The Empress Dowager Cixi," tracing its
subject's rise to de facto ruler of China in the late 19th century, is a
story of challenges, strategy and leadership. The book's account of this
amazing person offers a lens through which to view China's evolution
into modernity and is an excellent reminder of the role a leader with
political skills can play even in a complex and disorganized system.

—Mr. Hubbard is dean of Columbia Business School and co-author, with
Tim Kane, of "Balance."

Michio Kaku

I confess. In weaker moments, I sneak a glance at "The Big Bang Theory"
on TV. As a theoretical physicist, I chuckle and cringe at this hapless
crew of fumbling physicists. Why can't the media portray scientists as
ordinary people, driven by an extraordinary fascination with nature's
mysteries? Astronomer Fred Watson's "Star Craving Mad" is like a breath
of cool, spring air, convincing us the splendor of the night sky is
truly the greatest show on tonight. But scientists have our own
skeletons in the closet, such as the scandalous treatment of women
scientists. In "The Universe in the Rearview Mirror," Dave Goldberg
writes about the humiliations suffered by early 20th-century
mathematician Emmy Noether, who had to publish papers under a male name.
The conservation of energy is one of the most cherished principles in
physics. But where does it come from? Noether proved that if nature's
laws have a symmetry (e.g., don't change in time), energy is
automatically conserved. She was, Einstein said, "the most significant
creative mathematical genius thus far produced since the higher
education of women began."

—Mr. Kaku, a theoretical physicist at the City College of New York, is
author of "The Future of the Mind."

Piper Kerman

For 2013, I pick Domenica Ruta's beautiful memoir "With or Without You."
Ms. Ruta grew up two towns away from me on the North Shore of
Massachusetts—a childhood lived in the anarchic orbit of her mother, a
notorious addict and sometime drug dealer. Despite these failings, her
mother instilled a lyrical sense of narrative in her daughter via books,
films and the example of her own crazy life. Both unrelenting and
tender, this book captures how a kid living in chaos makes sense of her
world and reconciles trauma with love for a difficult parent. Ms. Ruta's
survival story, her process of self-discovery and self-acceptance, makes
for riveting reading.

—Ms. Kerman is the author of the memoir "Orange Is the New Black."

Christopher Kimball

I love Yotam Ottolenghi. His cookbooks, like "Plenty" and "Jerusalem,"
have changed my approach to home cooking. Unlike European-style chefs,
who slowly meld flavors, Yotam and his partner, Sami Tamimi, take bright
fresh flavors and mishmash them in new ways. If you aren't afraid of new
pairings—lentils with Gorgonzola or barley with pomegranate seeds—give
"Ottolenghi: The Cookbook" a try. "Maximum Flavor" by Aki Kamozawa and
H. Alexander Talbot pairs cooking science with everyday recipes—call it
"Modernist Cuisine for the 99%." French fries are started in a pressure
cooker, guar gum replaces eggs in ice cream. Culinary adventure meets
the home kitchen with tongue only slightly in cheek. Finally, so many
Chinese cookbooks ask too much of home cooks. The food in Fuchsia
Dunlop's "Every Grain of Rice" is approachable but not dumbed down to
the level of bad takeout. Stir-Fried Potato Slivers With Chili and
Sichuan Pepper? Yes, just the thing!

—Mr. Kimball is the publisher of Cook's Illustrated.

Doug Liman

My father ran the investigation into the 1971 Attica prison uprising. I
grew up knowing there was a hacksaw behind his desk that his co-workers
gave him when the district attorney threatened to throw him in jail for
not turning over prisoner-interview transcripts. Hill Harper's "Letters
to an Incarcerated Brother" is powerful under any circumstances, but if
you've had exposure to America's criminal-justice system, this is a
must-read. As the warden of Attica once told me, Hollywood thinks the
story ends when the judge bangs his gavel and the bad guy is convicted,
but a new story is just beginning. Hill Harper gives voice to some of
those stories. At the other end of the spectrum are those who can break
free even of the bonds of gravity—by going into space. I became
fascinated by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield when I saw his homemade
music video—he sings David Bowie's "Space Oddity" while floating in the
International Space Station. Behind that video was a lifetime of
commitment, and Mr. Hadfield's "An Astronauts Guide to Life on Earth"
doesn't disappoint. Finally, I'm fascinated by how human beings try to
understand the unknowable—usually through religion. Lawrence Wright's
exposé of the Church of Scientology, "Going Clear," joins Jon Krakauer's
book about Mormon fundamentalism, "Under the Banner of Heaven," as a
riveting portrayal of a young religion. You can't deny that a
science-fiction writer turned messiah makes us believe that anything is
possible.

—Mr. Liman is the director of the forthcoming film "Edge of Tomorrow."

Claire Messud

This year, I spent a lot of time rereading Albert Camus, prompted by the
publication in English—over 50 years after its appearance in French—of
a collection of writings on Algeria. "Algerian Chronicles" is
beautifully translated by Arthur Goldhammer and edited, with an incisive
introduction, by Alice Kaplan. Camus, so out of sync with his times on
the Algerian question, proves, these many years later, morally sound and
strikingly relevant to contemporary discussions about change in North
Africa and the Middle East. If this book takes you back to "The
Stranger," or to "The Rebel," or to Camus's beautiful essays, then it's
worth it for that alone. I also greatly enjoyed Rachel Cohen's "Bernard
Berenson: A Life in the Picture Trade." Berenson's extraordinary and
colorful life—from his humble birth in Lithuania, to Harvard and thence
to his august and influential position as a critic and art historian, to
the renowned splendor of his Florentine villa I Tatti—makes a rich and
compelling subject. Ms. Cohen's remarkable book affords the occasion
also for rumination upon self-invention and authenticity, upon the
making of the man, and of taste, too. Another of the year's pleasures
was Amity Gaige's "Schroder," another account of self-invention—though
in this case gone awry. The novel's protagonist, Erik Schroder, tells
his story from a jail cell, having lost everything, including his
beloved daughter. Ms. Gaige's skill is such that, while you can't help
seeing Schroder's errors—and ultimately, technically, crimes—they seem
to make perfect sense. This man will break your heart.

—Ms. Messud's most recent novel is "The Woman Upstairs."

Philipp Meyer

Thousands of men killed in America's modern wars have never been found;
Wil Hylton's uplifting, heart-wrenching "Vanished" is about the teams of
people who are sent to bring them back. We meet the crew of a B-24
Liberator shot down over the Pacific, their families, and the men and
women who, 60 years after the plane goes down, devote their lives to
bringing the crew home. Colm Tóibín's novel "The Testament of Mary" is a
daring and thought-provoking book, especially fascinating given the
author's Catholic upbringing. It was a finalist for the 2013 Man Booker
(the third time the author has come within a whisker). It's baffling,
meanwhile, that Kate Atkinson's "Life After Life" wasn't on the Booker
shortlist, which is just a reminder that, in the end, these prizes are
judged by people who are just as fallible as the rest of us. This is a
brilliant literary novel that happens to be a page turner.

—Mr. Meyer's most recent novel is "The Son."

Charles Moore

Robert Harris's "An Officer and a Spy," which will be published in the
U.S. next month, is about France's famous anti-Semitic Dreyfus Affair in
the 1890s. Mr. Harris turns history into a cliffhanger—which is clever,
since we already know what happened. "Breakfast With Lucian" by Geordie
Greig succinctly captures the world of a remarkable artist and a
horrible man, and shows, alarmingly, how the horribleness was part of
the artistic success. Mr. Greig knew Lucian Freud and often supped (or
rather, breakfasted) with the devil. Yeats famously wrote that man is
forced to choose between "the perfection of the life, or of the work."
Mr. Greig shows intimately, vividly, how Freud chose the latter and so
was left, as Yeats said all such men are, "raging in the dark."

—Mr. Moore is the author
of "Margaret Thatcher:
From Grantham to the Falklands."

Edmund Morris

I guarantee that Alan Rusbridger's "Play It Again" will be a major best
seller among the admittedly rather small circle of readers who have a
passionate interest in both the naughty revelations of Julian Assange
and Chopin's G-minor Ballade. The author is editor of the Guardian, and
I am hard put to say which bits fascinated me most—the ongoing drama of
WikiLeaks or Mr. Rusbridger's determination to see if he could master
the Ballade in a year. The book is valuable, above all, as a case
history of how a 59-year-old journalist's micromanagement of a
world-shaking journalistic scoop was neurologically enhanced by the
intellectual and physical effort he had to put into his daily sessions
at the piano. "Levels of Life," Julian Barnes's aching memoir of grief
for his dead wife, is similarly a demonstration of how discreet
metaphor, perfectly imagined and precisely deployed, can say so much
more about love and loss than the slopover specifics of most American
literary mourners. Yasmina Khadra's horrifying novel "The Attack" also
mixes love and loss—in this case, the self-detonation of a young
Arab-Israeli woman from, of all places, Bethlehem. Except for a few
passages of over-expressed rage and suffering, Mr. Khadra's prose
reminds me often of Camus, who had the same Algerian sensibility. A
reading of Leonard Michaels's marvelous short story "Cryptology" on NPR
(mystery, humiliation and grotesque humor successively leading to a
sidewalk epiphany) had me instantly ordering his "Collected Stories."
They're too variable to be impressive en masse, but the best of them
communicate that most elusive of qualities, the strangeness of reality.

—Mr. Morris is the author of "This Living Hand: And Other Essays."

Janet Napolitano

For fiction this year, I enjoyed Philipp Meyer's "The Son" and Donna
Tartt's "The Goldfinch." Both are deeply textured, deeply satisfying
novels. For pure fun, I discovered the mystery novels of Andrea
Camilleri and his wonderful Sicilian Inspector Montalbano. I'd like to
have lunch with that guy (Montalbano, that is). For nonfiction, I
enjoyed Rick Atkinson's "The Guns at Last Light," the third volume of
his Liberation Trilogy about the Allied forces during World War II. I
also enjoyed Brenda Wineapple's "Ecstatic Nation," a wonderfully written
history of the U.S. during the critical time period surrounding the
Civil War.

—Ms. Napolitano is the president of the University of California
system.
Diana Nyad

I lined up a number of 2013 books, both on Kindle and at the bedside,
that I never got a chance to open. ("Lean In" is on my list; Donna
Tartt's "The Goldfinch" too.) I did enjoy Doug Wilson's "The World Was
Our Stage: Spanning the Globe With ABC Sports." If you remember the
phrase "the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat," you will revel in
these stories, from the terror of the Munich Olympics to the delight of
Muhammad Ali. Also, while preparing this summer for my Cuba Swim, I
finally got to Laura Hillenbrand's "Unbroken," the unbelievable but true
story of an Olympic runner and World War II soldier who is shot down
over the Pacific and must dig deep within himself to survive. Finally,
lay astrophysics has always been a passion, and I flew through Lawrence
Krauss's "A Universe From Nothing" in one sitting. This is a sublime and
mind-blowing account of the evolution of our vast and seemingly
inexplicable universe. Mr. Krauss's words and ideas were flooding
through my brain in the early, pitch-black hours as I swam out through
the huge, dangerous wilderness between Cuba and Florida.

—Ms. Nyad's memoir is
forthcoming from Knopf.

Lynda Obst

If you are looking to this producer for a preview of books likely to be
made into movies, stop now. I read to escape from work, to stay sane, to
chase authors I love, or even these days to follow the byways of social
media looking for clues of future curiosities. Mostly, I read
nonfiction. But this year I gorged on Meg Wolitzer's "The Interestings."
I was enthralled from the moment I began. I hadn't been swept into a
novel's world like this since Jonathan Franzen's "Freedom." Its
characters are startlingly specific, yet each reminds you intimately of
your own family and friends. In "The Interestings" Ms. Wolitzer explores
the way we make compulsive comparisons to our peers and family to our
own detriment—the people we need and love the most. No book so mirrors
and chronicles the questions of what the author calls the "pudding of
middle age." How can I read a book for work when I am so absorbed that I
am forgetting to go to work?

—Ms. Obst is the producer of the forthcoming film "Interstellar" and
author of "Sleepless in Hollywood."
Annise Parker

I am an avid reader, though, as mayor of the fourth-largest city in the
country, I have little time for it. I read plenty of reports and
technical documents, so my personal reading is pure escapism and leans
toward science fiction and fantasy. I also love books with female
heroines, like those of favorite authors Lois McMaster Bujold, Kate
Elliott and Elizabeth Moon. This past year I read "Frost Burned" and
several other books in a series by Patricia Briggs. Her strong female
lead character is named Mercedes "Mercy" Thompson: She owns her own VW
mechanic shop and also happens to be a shape-shifter who has friends who
happen to be vampires and werewolves.

—Ms. Parker is the mayor of Houston.

Jayne Anne Phillips

"The Roy Stories" by Barry Gifford are short gems, comprising a bedside
book the reader hopes will never end. Roy is to Barry Gifford what Nick
Adams was to Ernest Hemingway, but there the resemblance ends. Mr.
Gifford's loopy consciousness informs tight, simple lines that bring a
lost America to roaring life and illumine a life full of uncontainable
emotions. This gorgeous edition includes Mr. Gifford's line drawings of
numerous characters in Roy's life; each glows up like a dream in the
lamplight. "The Roy Stories" engenders an amazing happiness. "Her" is
Christa Parravani's debut memoir, the incandescent story of loving and
losing her identical twin, Cara. The girls had each other throughout a
hardscrabble childhood, but Christa became her sister's keeper after
Cara was abducted and raped in 2001; Cara struggled with post-rape PTSD
and died of a drug overdose in June 2006. Christa's struggle for
survival began. In one of my favorite lines, Christa writes about names:
"The cruel and loving ones we give our siblings. Cara took her nicknames
for me with her when she died: pumpkinseed, digger, shave, and newt."
Writing really is, or should be, a matter of life and death.

—Ms. Phillips's most recent
novel is "Quiet Dell."

Steven Pinker

Many people probably think that the first name of lawyer Alan Dershowitz
is "Controversial." But when you read "Taking the Stand," you realize
that his opinions and actions are backed by cool reason. Recently
retired after 50 years on the faculty of Harvard Law School, Mr.
Dershowitz mixes autobiography, legal scholarship, the back story to his
celebrity trials and many excellent Jewish jokes. "Moral Tribes," by
Joshua Greene, explains the fascinating new field of moral neuroscience:
what happens in our brains when we make moral judgments and how ancient
impulses can warp our ethical intuitions. With the help of the parts of
the brain that can engage in careful reasoning, the world's peoples can
find common ethical ground in a morality that maximizes human
flourishing and minimizes suffering. Finally, babies are smarter than
you think, and their cognitive and moral lives, revealed by ingenious
experimental techniques, show that fairness, empathy and punitive
sentiments have deep roots in human development. Paul Bloom's "Just
Babies" illuminates this research with intellectual rigor and a
graceful, easygoing style.

—Mr. Pinker's most recent book is "The Better Angels of Our Nature."

Samantha Power

Domestic and global poverty statistics are well known—more than 100
million Americans now live beneath the poverty line, and more than 1.2
billion people around the world live on under $1.25 per day. In
"Scarcity," Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir offer groundbreaking
insights into, among other themes, the effects of poverty on cognition
and our ability to make choices about our lives. The authors
persuasively show that the mental space—or "bandwidth"—of the poor is
so consumed with making ends meet that they may be more likely to lose
concentration while on a job or less likely to take medication on time.
The book shows how scarce resources and scarce bandwidth blunt the
impact of public-policy interventions, and it explores how what we know
about human behavior can help inform poverty-alleviation programs. I'm
just digging into Doris Kearns Goodwin's latest masterpiece, "The Bully
Pulpit," where inequality in America is a prominent theme. Ms. Goodwin
tells the enthralling tale of Theodore Roosevelt, William Howard Taft,
and the early-20th-century reformers and journalists who exposed
political corruption and the human consequences of the growing gaps
between rich and poor and in so doing helped spur a wave of meaningful
government action. Finally, while the book on Pope Francis is nowhere
near complete, I'm one of many Catholics who've been so moved by his
early gestures toward the disenfranchised that I have read what I can
find on Jorge Bergoglio. I'm looking forward to the authoritative
biography of Pope Francis, which, if what we've seen so far is
predictive, will be inspiring.

—Ms. Power is U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations.

Willie and Korie Robertson

Both of Marcus Luttrell's books—"Lone Survivor" and "Service"—should
be required reading in every school in America. We take for granted the
freedoms we have in this country and have very little idea of the
sacrifices military families make to ensure that we keep them. "Service"
will open your eyes: Mr. Luttrell honors those who have lost their lives
fighting for our freedoms and reveals a strength of character and a
commitment to fellow man and country that we should all aspire to have.
The message of "David and Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell is that you're
really only the underdog if you believe yourself to be. I love the
passage in the Bible, Philippians 4:13: "I can do all things through Him
who gives me strength." You may have to work a little harder, a little
smarter, or a little longer, but every one of us can turn disadvantages
into advantages and overcome what may seem to be insurmountable odds.
Finally, a recommendation of "Si-cology 1." Our uncle is a great family
man and a great man of God. This sad and funny book shows how he became
who he is today.

—Mr. and Mrs. Robertson are
stars of "Duck Dynasty."

Mitt Romney

Books are compressed experience: They open us up to other times and
places and to other lives. In "David and Goliath," Malcolm Gladwell
reintroduces us to people we thought we knew, and by showing them in the
revealing light of his telling, we gain new and unexpected perspectives.
What appears to be advantage may not be as it seems. Likewise
disadvantage: Exceptional heights can be reached from low and adverse
circumstance. Bill Bryson's "One Summer: America, 1927" could serve as
an illustration of Mr. Gladwell's premise. Watching the famed lives of
Charles Lindbergh, Babe Ruth and Calvin Coolidge reveals that what we
think of as the felicitous rewards of success were not at all what these
men experienced. In my favorite book of the year, "The Boys in the
Boat," Daniel James Brown traces the life of Joe Rantz and other "boys"
who won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics in Hitler's Germany. From a
heart-rending childhood, this man overcame the injuries to his soul to
win and, thereafter, to live a full and abundant life. The more
experience we gain from books like these, the more we are inclined to
rethink our assumptions: in the words of Charles Krauthammer, to "view
certainty with suspicion."

—Mr. Romney is a former
governor of Massachusetts.
Marco Rubio

My grandfather instilled in me a love of reading. He had a large
collection of books on everything from politics to history to sports. As
I grew up, my taste in literature evolved to match his very closely.
These days, despite responsibilities at home and at work, I make time
when I can to lose myself in a book. I recently picked one up on a topic
that interests me greatly but was unprepared for the effect it would
have. "Persecuted" details in stunning and often graphic fashion the
misery that so many Christians are subjected to around the world just
because of their beliefs. Authors Paul Marshall, Lela Gilbert and Nina
Shea give chilling examples from Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin
America—including my parents' and grandfather's homeland of Cuba—that
underscore the great risk that so many undertake to worship in
accordance with their faith. Brutal violence, imprisonment, separation
from family and even public execution are the prices that many
Christians pay for their beliefs. "Persecuted" reminded me of just how
profound a gift the Founders gave to Americans of all faiths—and of no
faith at all—by enshrining freedom of religion in the Bill of Rights.
The book also reminded me that Americans have an enormous responsibility
to help spread those God-given rights to people around the world who
live in desperate need of them. The right to worship how you choose is
central to human liberty and personal fulfillment, and America must
remain unshakable in its defense of this right, both around the world
and at home.

—Mr. Rubio is a senator from Florida.
Lawrence Summers

Josef Joffe's "The Myth of America's Decline" provides valuable
perspective on current despair over America's future, powerfully and
perceptively making a case that it is amply precedented in our history
and that by global standards the United States is playing a very strong
hand. Michael Young's "The Rise of the Meritocracy" was published more
than 50 years ago but has never been more relevant as questions of
inequality and the legitimacy of the way our economic system distributes
rewards have come to the fore throughout the industrial world. If Young
is even close to right, a great deal of tumult lies ahead as the
industrial world grapples with an economy being transformed by
technology.

—Mr. Summers is a Harvard professor and former U.S. Treasury Secretary.

Joan Silber

A favorite book of 2013 was Andrea Barrett's "Archangel." When I'm
explaining Ms. Barrett's work to people, I'll say that a lot of it uses
the history of science, but this barely approaches what she does in
fiction or why I love it. This collection of five stories is very much
about how ideas work their way into lives. We're used to seeing politics
and religion as beliefs we act on, but Ms. Barrett has plots about
shifts in scientific thought. The outside world (rich in strangeness,
often violent) casts its shadow into these subtle, complicated stories.
Another book that impressed me greatly was Paul Yoon's "Snow Hunters."
It's a spare novel, set in an unexpected bypath of history. Yohan, a
young North Korean soldier, takes the chance to defect after the Korean
War and is sent to the coast of Brazil, of all places. At a certain
point, I realized this wasn't going to be a regular novel—where we
watch who does what to whom—but a book about solitude, the hardest
thing to frame fiction around. The transplanted Yohan is a great
observer of the physical world, but he can only reflect so far; other
people are mysteries to him. Who would think you could make a story out
of this? Mystery in the wider sense is what this novel evokes.

—Ms. Silber's most recent book is "Fools: Stories."

Mike Tyson

I'm currently reading "The Quotable Kierkegaard," edited by Gordon
Marino, a collection of awesome quotes from that great Danish
philosopher. (He wanted his epitaph to read: "In yet a little while / I
shall have won; / Then the whole fight / Will all at once be done.") I
love reading philosophy. Most philosophers are so politically
incorrect—challenging the status quo, even challenging God. Nietzsche's
my favorite. He's just insane. You have to have an IQ of at least 300 to
truly understand him. Apart from philosophy, I'm always reading about
history. Someone very wise once said the past is just the present in
funny clothes. I read everything about Alexander, so I downloaded
"Alexander the Great: The Macedonian Who Conquered the World" by Sean
Patrick. Everyone thinks Alexander was this giant, but he was really a
runt. "I would rather live a short life of glory than a long one of
obscurity," he said. I so related to that, coming from Brownsville,
Brooklyn. What did I have to look forward to—going in and out of
prison, maybe getting shot and killed, or just a life of scuffling
around like a common thief? Alexander, Napoleon, Genghis Khan, even a
cold pimp like Iceberg Slim—they were all mama's boys. That's why
Alexander kept pushing forward. He didn't want to have to go home and be
dominated by his mother. In general, I'm a sucker for collections of
letters. You think you've got deep feelings? Read Napoleon's love
letters to Josephine. It'll make you think that love is a form of
insanity. Or read Virginia Woolf's last letter to her husband before she
loaded her coat with stones and drowned herself in a river. I don't
really do any light reading, just deep, deep stuff. I'm not a light kind
of guy.

—Mr. Tyson is the author of "Undisputed Truth."

Adelle Waldman

One of my favorite novels of the year was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's
rich and engrossing "Americanah." Ms. Adichie has an Edith Wharton-like
eye for social detail and is a wonderful observer of people—smart,
funny, insightful and most of all just. Another novel I enjoyed was
Teddy Wayne's "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine," a mordant account of
the life of an 11-year-old pop singer. I tend to be skeptical of child
narrators (they often seem eye-rollingly precocious or else realistic
but insufficiently interesting). Mr. Wayne, however, pulls it off. And
for all the book's dark comedy, Mr. Wayne also deftly renders Jonny's
sharp loneliness, making the novel surprisingly touching.

—Ms. Waldman is the author of "The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P."

Brenda Wineapple

The hurrier I go, the behinder I get. I've only just finished reading
some of the great books of 2010. But of the books from 2013 that I
managed to read, I'd single out Lawrence Wright's illuminating "Going
Clear," about the origins of Scientology, with its roots in the
dislocations of the nuclear age and its flowering in the hothouse of
Hollywood. A courageous book, "Going Clear" is so-called long-form
journalism at its clear-eyed and well-researched best. Though completely
different in tone and aim, Hilton Als's singular "White Girls" is also
about, among other things, the need for fame and the equivocal wages of
celebrity. With a series of interrelated essays (meditations, really) on
such figures as Malcolm X, Flannery O'Connor, Eminem and Richard Pryor,
Mr. Als combines memoir, portraiture and fiction in a dazzling tour de
force of cultural criticism. Then Kate Atkinson's novel "Life After
Life" surprised me with its delicacy and narrative grace, and I enjoyed
David Gilbert's witty, regretful and ambitious novel "& Sons." And
recently I happily received "The Gorgeous Nothings," a beautiful gift
book that reproduces in color the poems that Emily Dickinson scribbled
on envelope scraps, providing a glimpse into her very odd poetic
workshop.

—Ms. Wineapple's latest book is "Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis,
Compromise, 1848-1877."

Daniel Woodrell

"Brewster" by Mark Slouka is a masterfully written novel about a
small-town working-class bunch during the 1960s. It is very difficult to
make good fiction set at that time—too much going on, too rich, so much
explaining required—but Mr. Slouka pulls it off. "Brewster" sent me to
an earlier story collection, "Lost Lake," another wonder I'd missed
along the trail. "Manson" by Jeff Guinn knocked me down and took a
weekend away from me, as did his earlier book about Bonnie and Clyde,
"Go Down Together." In "Manson," Mr. Guinn displays all the narrative
virtues, gives a full picture of the man and the times, and shows how
this begat that and then the other. Mr. Guinn has become a truly great
writer of nonfiction Americana.

—Mr. Woodrell's most recent novel
is "The Maid's Version."