Books read in 2024

I read 57 books this year, satisfying my annual goal of reading at least 50. Some are re-reads (starred) —I was on an Oliver Sacks binge last month. As usual, the list is skewed toward non-fiction (verity) with some excellent fiction: Hernan Diaz's "Trust," an endlessly inventive novel, was a keeper. And as usual, science and history dominate the list.

My top five favorites were “The Best Minds” (a riveting real-life tale of schizophrenia and murder), “Fire Weather” (a brilliantly written investigation of the confluence of oil and fire country in the the vast wilderness of Canada), Oliver Sacks’s “Letters”, “More than Curious” (a revealing account of physics personalities and ideas from one on the frontier) and “Material World” (an endlessly fascinating account of the origins, properties, and geopolitical implications of the critical materials that fuel our civilization).

Happy reading in 2025!

1. Weapons of the Lewis and Clark Expedition - Jim Garry

2. The Indispensables - Patrick O’Donnell

3. From Falling Bombs to Radio Waves - Emilie Serge

4. New Cold Wars - David Sanger

5. The Fifties - David Halberstam

6. For Blood and Money - Nathan Vardi

7. Madame Curie - Eve Curie

8. Physics in the Twentieth Century - Victor Weisskopf

9. I’ve Been Thinking - Daniel Dennett

10. Letters - Oliver Sacks

11. Uncle Tungsten - Oliver Sacks*

12. On the Move - Oliver Sacks*

13. Awakenings - Oliver Sacks*

14. A Leg to Stand On - Oliver Sacks

15. Deadly Feasts - Richard Rhodes

16. The Man With a Shattered World - A. R. Luria

17. The Golden Road - William Dalrymple

18. Campaigning with Grant - Horace Porter

19. Poor Charlie’s Almanack - Charlie Munger*

20. Origin Story: The Trials of Charles Darwin - Howard Markel

21. Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction - Fergus Bordewich

22. No Ordinary Time - Doris Kearsn Goodwin

23. Playground - Richard Powers

24. Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine - Angela Creager

25. Areopagitica - John Milton

26. The Uranium Club - Miriam Hiebert

27. America’s Cold Warrior - James Wilson

28. Project Hail Mary - Andy Weir

29. Quanta and Fields - Sean Carroll

30. The Peacemaker - William Inboden

31. Reagan - Max Boot

32. Why We Die - Venki Ramakrishnan

33. Genius Talk - Denis Brian

34. Trust - Hernan Diaz

35. Waves in an Impossible Sea - Matt Strassler

36. Material World - Ed Conway

37. More than Curious - William Press

38. American Spring - Walter Borneman

39. Valley Forge - Bob Drury, Tom Clavin

40. American Colonies - Alan Taylor

41. Breaking the Spell - Daniel Dennett

42. Strategies of Containment - John Lewis Gaddis

43. Hinge Points - Siegfried Hecker

44. Washington: The Indispensable Man - James Flexner

45. The Best Minds - Jonathan Rosen

46. Fire Weather - John Vaillant

47. Inside the O’Briens - Lisa Genova

48. The Revolutionary - Stacy Schiff

49. Blind Spots - Marty Makary

50. The Quiet Damage - Jesselyn Cook

51. Foundation for the Future: The ABM Treaty and National Security - Arms Control Association

52. The Japanese Empire: Grand Strategy from the Meiji Restoration to the Pacific War - S. C. M. Paine

53. The Gravity of Math - Shing-Tung Yau and Steve Nadis

54. In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam - Robert McNamara*

55. The Fog of War - Robert McNamara and Erroll Morris

56. Because Our Fathers Lied - Craig McNamara

57. Making Weapons, Talking Peace - Herbert York

In addition, there were textbooks that I browsed and worked through to various degrees; many of them are old favorites and are part of my continued education. The books included Alberts et al.'s "Molecular Biology of the Cell", Patrick's "Introduction to Medicinal Chemistry", Taylor and Wheeler's "Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to General Relativity", Feynman's "Lectures" (Volume 2), Glasstone's "Nuclear Reactor Engineering" and Penrose's "Road to Reality".