​

Go read a book. Then let's talk about it!

​

If you are looking for suggestions for world affairs-related reading, our reading history is listed below. Each year's list is sorted by title.

​​

2024

​

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Empress of the Nile: The Daredevil Archaeologist Who Saved Egypt's Ancient Temples from Destruction by Lynne Olson

How the World Really Works: The Science Behind How We Got Here and Where We're Going by Vaclav Smil

Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong by Louisa Lim

The Other Name: Septology I-II by Jon Fosse

Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris 

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

The Quiet American by Graham Greene

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Hochschild

War of Shadows: Codebreakers, Spies, and the Secret Struggle to Drive the Nazis from the Middle East by Gershom Gorenberg

Where I Was From by Joan Didion

​

2023

 

Beloved by Toni Morrison

China's Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption by Yuen Yuen Ang

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

Money: The True Story of a Made-Up Thing by Jacob Goldstein

The Murders That Made Us: How Vigilantes, Hoodlums, Mob Bosses, Serial Killers and Cult Leaders Built the San Francisco Bay Area by Bob Calhoun

The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes

The Radetzky March by Joseph Roth

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The Vanquished: Why the First World War Failed to End by Robert Gerwarth

We Are Bellingcat: The Online Sleuths Solving Global Crimes by Eliot Higgins

Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil

​

2022​

​

The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America by Marcia Chatelain

French Lessons: A Memoir by Alice Kaplan

How the South Won the Civil War by Heather Cox Richardson

Human Voices by Penelope Fitzgerald

In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova​

The Leopard: A Novel by Giuseppe Di Lampedusa

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson

A State of Freedom by Neel Mukherjee

Stoner by John Williams
Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World by Elinor Cleghorn 

Why Liberalism Failed: Politics and Culture by Patrick J. Deneen

​

2021

​

The Bastard of Istanbul by Elif Shafak

Celestial Bodies by Jokha Alharthi 

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay

Homecoming by Yaasa Gyasi

A House Is a Body: Stories by Shruti Swamy

In Times of Fading Light by Eugen Ruge

The Lonely City: Adventures In The Art Of Being Alone by Olivia Laing

Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America by Timothy Snyder

The Sun on My Head: Stories by Geovani Martins

Troubling Love by Elena Ferrante

​

2020

​

Everything Under the Heavens: How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power by Howard W. French

Life with Picasso by Francoise Gilot

Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano

Ramona by Helen Hunt Jackson

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable by Amitav Ghosh

The Inconvenient Indian by Thomas King
The Good Immigrant: 26 Writers Reflect on America by Nikesh Shukla (Editor) and Chimene Suleyman (Editor)

The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library by Edward Wilson Lee

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming by David Wallace-Wells

This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality by Peter Pomerantsev 

Walk Through Walls: A Memoir by Marina Abramović

​

2019

​

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou

The Common Good by Robert Reich

Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler

Dubliners by James Joyce

Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think by Hans Rosling, with Ola Rosling and Anna Rosling Ronnlund

​Fascism: A Warning by Madeleine Albright

The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia by Masha Gessen

Leonardo Da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

The Mueller Report by Robert S. Mueller

The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life by John le Carré
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari

Under Fire: Reporting from the Front Lines of Trump’s White House by April Ryan​
​

2018

​

The Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra

Go, Went, Gone by Jenny Erpenbeck

It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis

How Bad Writing Destroyed the World: Ayn Rand and the Literary Origins of the Financial Crisis by Adam Weiner

Love in a Torn Land: Joanna of Kurdistan: The True Story of a Freedom Fighter's Escape from Iraqi Vengeance by Jean Sasson

Out of Egypt: A Memoir by Andre Aciman

The Revenge of Analog by David Sax

The President's Book of Secrets by David Preiss

The Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall

The Season of the Witch by David Talbot

An Unnecessary Woman by Rabih Alameddine

Zama by Antonio De Benedetto

​

2017

​

All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin by Mikhail Zygar

Children of the New World by Alexander Weinstein

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

Glass House: The 1% Economy and the Shattering of the All-American Town by Brian Alexander

Green Island by Shawna Yang Ryan
A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories by Lucia Berlin

The News: A User’s Manual by Alain de Botton
Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia by Anne Garrels
Spain In Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 by Adam Hochschild

The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen
The Tenderloin: Sex, Crime, and Resistance in the Heart of San Francisco by Randy Shaw
Turkish Reflections: A Biography of a Place by Mary Lee Settle
 

2016

​

The Architect's Apprentice by Elif Shafak

The City of Falling Angels by John Berendt

Danubia by Simon Winder

A Fighting Chance by Elizabeth Warren

In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson

The Invention of Everything Else by Samantha Hunt
King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild

Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner

The Pope and Mussolini by David Kertzer

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

A Problem from Hell by Samantha Power (Discussed over two months)

​

2015

​

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Amsterdam, A History of the World's Most Liberal City by Russell Shorto

Berlin Now: The City After the Wall by Peter Schneider  

The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric

Food in History by Reay Tannahill

Love InshAllah: The secret love lives of American Muslim women by Ayesha Mattu, Nura Mazani editors

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking by Anya von Bremzen

How We Got to Now: Six Innovations that Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson

The Price of Inequality by Joseph Stiglitz

The Wandering Falcon by Jamil Ahmad

Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson

​

2014

​

Alif the Unseen by Willow Wilson

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

First World, Ha, Ha, Ha!: The Zapatista Challenge by Elaine Katzenberger

Latino Americans by Ray Suarez

Life Inc.: How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff 

1984 by George Orwell

The Orphan Master’s Son: A Novel by Adam Johnson 

Silent House by Orhan Pamuk

Strange Pilgrims by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt

This Is How You Lose Her by Junot Diaz

Why the West Leads--For Now by Ian Morris

​

2013

​

After the Quake by Haruki Murakami

American Nations by Colin Woodard

Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie 

Country of My Skull by Antjie Krog 

The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1945-1956 by Anne Applebaum 

The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto 
The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller
No Ancient Wisdom, No Followers: The Challenges of Chinese Authoritarian Capitalism by James McGregor
Shadow of the Silk Road by Colin Thubron

Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton

The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

 

2012

​

Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa

The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson

Ayn Rand Nation: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul by Gary Weiss

The Death of Artemio Cruz by Carlos Fuentes

The Invisible Cure: Why We Are Losing the Fight Against AIDS in Africa by Helen Epstein 

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt

The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity by Jeffrey Sachs 

The Radiance of the King by Camara Laye

The Secret History of Dreaming by Robert Moss

Things I’ve Been Silent About by Azar Nafisi

Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century by P.W. Singer

Who Killed the British Empire? an Inquest by George Woodcock

​

2011

​

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

The Commoner by John Burham Schwartz

Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche by Ethan Watters

The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy 

Idiot America: How stupidity became a virtue in the land of the free by Charles P. Pierce

Persepolis: The story of a childhood by Marjane Satrapi

Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain

To Live by Yu Hua

The Turbulent World of Franz Göll by Peter Fritzche

23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang

Your Republic Is Calling You by Young-ha Kim 

​

2010

​

Amerigo: The Man Who Gave His Name to America by Felipe Fernando-Armesto

Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government by Glenn Beck 

The Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

The Essential Chomsky by Noam Chomsky

A Gesture Life by Chang-rae Lee

Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder

The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff

Stubborn Twig: Three Generations in the Life of a Japanese American Family by Lauren Kessler

A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini

Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power, and Civilization by Steven Solomon

The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

What Is the What by Dave Eggers

​

2009

​

The Bottom Billion by Paul Collier 

Breathless in Bombay by Murzban F. Shroff

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba -- and Then Lost It to the Revolution by T.J. English

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

A Mind at Peace by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar

The Parliament of Man by Paul Kennedy

The Post American World by Fareed Zakaria

Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China by James Fallows

Suite Francaise by Irène Némirovsky

Taras Bulba by Nikolai Gogol 

Warrior Politics by Robert D. Kaplan

​

2008

​

The Bridegroom: Stories by Ha Jin 

Brick Lane by Monica Ali

Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future by Bill McKibben

Freakanomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner

The Heart of Redness by Zakes Mda

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca: The Extraordinary Tale of a Shipwrecked Spaniard Who Walked Across America in the Sixteenth Century by Andres Resendez

The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer 

Prisoner of Tehran: A Memoir by Marina Nemat

Shame by Salman Rushdie

Thomas Paine: Enlightenment, Revolution, and the Birth of Modern Nations by Craig Nelson

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin

​

2007 and Prior 

(Partial Listing. The group predates 2007.)

The Assassination of Julius Caesar  by Michael Parenti
Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress by Sijie Dai
The Basque History of the World by Mark Kurlansky
Becoming Madame Mao by Anchee Min
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman: 24 Stories by Haruki Murakami
Bone by Fae Myenne Ng
By Night in Chile by Roberto Bolaño
The Cave by José Saramago
Charlie Wilson's War by George Criles
The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinge
The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
Crescent and Star by Stephen Kinzer 
The Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri

A Death in Brazil: A Book of Omissions by Peter Robb
Desire of the Everlasting Hills by Thomas Cahill

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight  by Alexandra Fuller

The Essential Gandhi: His Life, Work, and Ideas: An Anthology by Louis Fischer (Editor)
From the Land of the Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World  by Jack Weatherford

The Great Unraveling by Paul Krugman

The Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw
The Hiding Place by Trezza Azzopardi

High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them by Jean-François Rischard

A Human Being Died That Night by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela

I Saw Ramallah by Mourid Barghouti

In the Shadow of a Saint by Ken Wiwa

Iraq: In the Eye of the Storm by Peter Hiro

Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

Last Dance in Havana by Eugene Robinson

The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman

The Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah

A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe

Memoirs by Pablo Neruda
The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara

Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance by Ian Buruma

Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women by Geraldine Brooks

No Place to Hide: Behind the Scenes of Our Emerging Surveillance Society by Robert O'Harrow

Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea by Mark Kurlansky

Of Love and Shadows by Isabel Allende

The Ornament of the World by María Rosa Menocal

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq by Stephen Kinzer
Persian Pilgrimages: Journeys Across Iran by Afshin Molavi
Prague by Arthur Phillips
A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Powers

Putin's Russia: Life in a Failing Democracy by Anna Politkovskaya

The Quark and the Jaguar: Adventures in the Simple and Complex by Murray Gell-Mann

The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII by Iris Chang

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler
Sky Burial: An Epic Love Story of Tibet by Xinran Xue

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

Songlines by Bruce Chatwin

Soul Mountain by Gao Xingjian

Spiritual Perspectives on Globalization by Ira Ifkin

The Trial of Henry Kissinger by Christopher Hitchens

The Trouble with Islam by Irshad Manji

War in a Time of Peace by David Halberstam

West of Kabul, East of New York by Tamin Ansary

What's the Matter with Kansas? by Thomas Frank

When the Elephants Dance by Tess Urize
The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al-Aswan

​

Find a title to explore? Click here to visit our bookstore friend Books Inc., or find independent bookstores near you by at Indie Bound.