Best of the Best… L.A. Times 45 Favorites

Posted on March 16, 2009 by

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Check out this long, lovely list of the Los Angeles Times 2008 Book Prize Finalists!

Biography

  • H.W. Brands, A Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • Ernest Freeberg, Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene V. Debs, the Great War, and the Right to Dissent
  • Paula J. Giddings, Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching
  • Jon Meacham, American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House
  • Jackie Wullschlager, Chagall: A Biography

    • Current Interest

  • Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century
  • Dexter Filkins, The Forever War
  • Barton Gellman, Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency
  • Jane Mayer, The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals
  • Jill Bolte Taylor, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey

    • Fiction

  • Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture
  • Richard Price, Lush Life
  • Marilynne Robinson, Home
  • Joan Silber, The Size of the World
  • Marisa Silver, The God of War

    • Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

  • Uwem Akpan, Say You’re One of Them
  • Zoë Ferraris, Finding Nouf
  • Sadie Jones, The Outcast
  • Roma Tearne, Mosquito
  • David Wroblewski, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

    • History

  • Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
  • Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War
  • Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: How the Nazis Ruled Europe
  • Thomas J. Sugrue, Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North
  • Rick Wartzman, Obscene in the Extreme: The Burning and Banning of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

    • Mystery/Thriller

  • Colin Harrison, The Finder
  • Michael Koryta, Envy the Night
  • Simon Lewis, Bad Traffic: An Inspector Jian Novel
  • Nina Revoyr, The Age of Dreaming
  • Tom Rob Smith, Child 44

    • Poetry

  • Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival: Poems
  • Jorie Graham, Sea Change: Poems
  • Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time: Poems
  • Cole Swensen, Ours
  • Connie Voisine, Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream

    • Science & Technology

  • Avery Gilbert, What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life
  • Kenneth R. Miller, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America’s Soul
  • Martin J.S. Rudwick, Worlds Before Adam: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Reform
  • Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics
  • Carl Zimmer, Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life

    • Young Adult Literature

  • Candace Fleming, The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary
  • Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book
  • Oscar Hijuelos, Dark Dude
  • Nate Powell, Swallow Me Whole
  • Terry Pratchett, Nation

    • I’ve only read Edgar Sawtelle so far…  How ’bout you?

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    About Kristen

    I have been a high school teacher for 15 years and am ready to embark on a new project! I hope to promote classic literature and help book clubs rediscover these gems.
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