From New York Times September 4, 2007:Junot Díaz’s “Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” is a wondrous, not-so-brief first novel that is so original it can only be described as Mario Vargas Llosa meets “Star Trek” meets David Foster Wallace meets Kanye West. It is funny, street-smart and keenly observed, and it unfolds from a comic portrait of a second-generation Dominican geek into a harrowing meditation on public and private history and the burdens of familial history. An extraordinarily vibrant book that’s fueled by adrenaline-powered prose, it’s confidently steered through several decades of history. More...
From New York Times October 5, 2008:
The environmental movement reserves a hallowed place for those books or films that have stirred people from their slumber and awoken them to the fragility of the planet: Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” Bill McKibben’s “End of Nature” and, most recently, Al Gore’s Oscar-winning documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Thomas L. Friedman’s new book, “Hot, Flat, and Crowded” may lack the soaring, elegiac qualities of those others. But it conceivably just might goad America’s wealthiest to face the threat of climate changeand do something about it. More....I don't want the other great books I've read (or reread) in Panama to slip through the cracks, so here are some other books to check out:
Development-Themed
Stones into Schools, Greg Mortenson
The End of Poverty, Jeffrey Sachs
The Bottom Billion, Paul Collier
Power Politics, Arundhati Roy
Other Non-Fiction
Natural Capitolism, Paul Hawken & Amory Lovins
The Devil & the White City, Erik Larson
Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer
Banana - The Fate of the Fruit the Changed the World, Dan Koeppel
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
Outlier, Malcolm Gladwell
Fiction
The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Persig
The Power of One, Bryce Courtenay
My Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt
Tinkers, Paul Harding
